India’s high commissioner to Canada — who has been expelled from the country — says while the economic relationship between Canada and India will likely be preserved, the political one is now characterized by “mistrust.”
In an exclusive interview with CTV’s Question Period, airing Sunday, Sanjay Kumar Verma said any decision by India about whether or not to replace him and his expelled colleagues would entail a “discussion” between the two governments.
“Largely given the mistrust that we have in (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau and his team, we’ll have concerns, and we’ll discuss it very carefully with them,” he told host Vassy Kapelos. “Our security and safeties are concerned, so there are so many things.”
Verma also accused the Trudeau government of failing to tamp down the Sikh separatist movement operating in Canada, and elements of it that India sees as extreme in nature. The expelled high commissioner pointed to 27 outstanding extradition cases as a significant point of friction for India.
“We only want the Canadian regime of the day, the government of the day, to understand my core concerns, and try to act on that sincerely, rather than being bedfellows with those who are trying to challenge Indian sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.
Canada’s most recent high commissioner to India, Cameron MacKay, said the federal government is acting on the issue, and that Canada has sought more information from India on 26 of those 27 extradition files.
“Let me be clear,” he told Kapelos, also in an interview on CTV’s Question Period, airing Sunday. “In the past, where India has shared sufficient information, we have successfully extradited people from Canada to face law.”
“It’s a diversion tactic to claim that Canada has been uncooperative in these law enforcement matters,” he also said. “I consider it to be simply not true.”
The RCMP and the federal government earlier this week accused Indian diplomats and consular officials based in Canada of engaging in clandestine activities linked to serious criminal activity in this country, including homicides and extortions.
Verma, along with five other Indian officials working in Canada, was declared persona non-grata by the Canadian government and expelled this week, for refusing to waive diplomatic immunity to be questioned by law enforcement.
High Commissioner of India to Canada Sanjay Kumar Verma poses for a photo in Ottawa, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle
India is categorizing Canada’s accusations as politically motivated. It’s since expelled six Canadian diplomats in kind.
It’s also been little more than a year since Trudeau rose in the House of Commons and said there were “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in B.C. last summer. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been tense ever since.
Verma also criticized Trudeau for how he handled the investigation into Nijjar’s murder, and allegations related to it. Verma accused the Canadian prime minister of relying on intelligence and not evidence.
“On the basis of intelligence, if you want to destroy a relationship, be my guest,” Verma said. “That’s what he did.”
The government of India has so far refused to cooperate with Canada’s investigation into Nijjar’s murder. It is cooperating, however, in a U.S. investigation into the foiled assassination plot of another Sikh activist and dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York City last year.
On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department announced criminal charges against a then-Indian government employee. The unsealed indictment also connects that assassination attempt to Nijjar’s case.
When pressed on the contents of that newly unsealed indictment, and the connection laid out in it between the American investigation and Nijjar’s murder, Verma said he “entirely refute(s)” the connection, pointing instead at Trudeau for failing to follow proper diplomatic “practice.”
“Evidence should have been shared first, but someone decided to stand in the Parliament and talk about a thing for which, he himself has said, there was no hard evidence,” Verma said. “So let’s be very clear what we are talking about.”
“And the day on which he did that, since then, he has made it show that the bilateral relations with India only goes downwards, spiraling down,” he added, later calling Trudeau’s alleged evidence “hearsay.”
MacKay insists Canada, at multiple junctures, tried to share evidence with the Indian government.
“Frankly, Canada was seeking India’s cooperation and collaboration in this regard,” he told Kapelos. “We just haven’t seen it.”
“Instead, the Indian government, I think, for domestic political purposes, has responded by vilifying Canada, by dismissing evidence that we provided to them,” he said.
MacKay said the move appears to have worked for a domestic audience in India.
“That’s been a very successful domestic communications strategy for India,” he said. “Internationally, I don’t think it’s credible at all, but certainly it has worked for them within India.”
Canada-India Trade Relationship
In terms of other aspects of Canada-India relations, Verma said he “absolutely” agrees with Canadian International Trade Minister Mary Ng that there won’t be an impact on the trade relationship between the two countries, despite increasingly fraught diplomatic relations.
“People-to-people relationship, trade relationship, cultural relationship, science and technology, you know, education, those relationships have got nothing to do with it,” he said. “This is a very different conversation what we were having today, and there will be emotions on both sides, and we cannot stop that.”
“So there will be emotions which may impact a few of those deals, but larger picture is that I don’t see much impact on non-political bilateral relations,” he added.
Verma’s comments echo those made by Ng earlier this week, who in a statement posted on social media, sought to reassure businesses that the federal government “remains fully committed to supporting the well-established commercial ties between Canada and India.”
“However we must consider our economic interests with the need to protect Canadians and uphold the rule of law,” Ng also wrote. “We will not tolerate any foreign government threatening, extorting, or harming Canadian citizens on our soil.”
India is among the world’s 10 largest economies, and in 2020, launched negotiations with Canada toward a free trade agreement — talks that were indefinitely put on pause shortly after Trudeau’s accusations in the House of Commons related to Nijjar’s killing.
Ng, in an interview with CTV’s Question Period in February, said the status of the negotiations was not tied to the accusations levied by Trudeau, and at the time wouldn’t specify what Canada needed to see from India to resume work on a free trade deal.
Relations with India, meanwhile, are a critical piece of Canada’s nearly two-year-old Indo-Pacific Strategy, and its efforts to bolster economic ties with other countries in the region while taking a tougher stance against China.
With files from CTV News’ Brennan MacDonald and Stephanie Ha
You can watch the High Commissioner’s full interview on CTV’s Question Period at 11 a.m. EST.