Opinion: Trudeau’s fumble on India

Opinion by Michael Bociurkiw

(CNN) — It is hard to imagine any world leader wanting to share the foreign policy swamp in which the beleaguered Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, currently finds himself.

Having spent the past months fighting accusations that he acted too slowly to address serious allegations that China attempted to meddle in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections, Trudeau’s has landed in a potentially costly diplomatic dog fight with the world’s most populous democracy, India, at exactly the time he needs Delhi the most.

Put simply, the timing couldn’t be worse.

Earlier this week, Trudeau claimed in Parliament that Canadian intelligence agencies had been investigating “credible allegations” that “agents of the government of India” carried out the killing of Sikh Canadian separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia last June while sitting in his truck. Nijjar led a group pushing for the creation of an independent Sikh homeland in northern India called Khalistan. India has vehemently denied Canada’s claim, calling it “absurd and motivated.”

What has surprised critics is that Trudeau made the allegations public before the police investigation was completed. That has angered the Indian government, which is demanding that Ottawa show the evidence.

Another head scratcher is why, shortly after Trudeau’s bold claim, foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly expelled an Indian diplomat — whom she described as the head of Indian intelligence in Canada and who would’ve presumably known about the alleged assassination — while the investigation continues. (Meanwhile, despite intense pressure from the Ukrainian diaspora over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Joly has not expelled a single Russian diplomat).

Facing accusations of moving too slowly on the Chinese interference file, Trudeau may have felt a need to press forward. “Given the prime minister spent the better part of a year dealing with a foreign interference scandal – allegations he knew about Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections and turned a blind eye because it helped his party — there was no way he could sit on this information. Imagine if it got out that he buried knowledge of a foreign state assassinating a Canadian on Canadian soil. He’d be done,” Yaroslav Baran, of Pendulum, an Ottawa-based political analysis and communications firm, told me.

Trans-Pacific diplomatic dog fight

In a rapidly deteriorating bilateral relationship, both sides have expelled diplomats. A Canadian trade mission has been postponed and trade talks frozen. Delhi has gone even further by temporarily stopping the processing of visas for Canadian citizens and warning its citizens about visiting Canada.

Meanwhile, pressure on Trudeau to fill the information vacuum is growing: “The Prime Minister needs to lay out his case, immediately, to bolster support for the government’s actions both at home and abroad,” the Toronto Globe and Mail said in an editorial. “Canadians deserve clarity on such an important matter, particularly given the potential for significant diplomatic and economic repercussions.”

Oh, Canada!

India is the most important counter balance that the West has to China’s ascension as the dominant superpower of the 21st century. That explains why Canada’s main ally, the United States, is sitting resolutely on the sidelines. The Biden administration can’t be blamed for prioritizing its ongoing bromance with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the bilateral relationship with Ottawa.

For Trudeau and Joly — his former Quebec lieutenant who came to the post with no foreign affairs experience — the crisis comes shortly after the government unveiled a long-awaited and much vaunted Indo-Pacific strategy meant to make relations with India and the region a cornerstone of Canadian foreign policy.

The current crisis — coming after one with China over the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in 2018 on a US warrant for alleged bank fraud and evasion of economic sanctions against Iran — places Canada in a difficult position to boost ties with the two major powers in the region. (The charges against Meng were dismissed by a federal judge last year.)

In addition to losing a protracted and costly 2020 campaign to snag one of the two temporary seats on the UN Security Council, Canada is losing its mojo on the international stage as a middle power.

“This is a big deal,” Baran said. “Canada’s relations with China have been in a deep freeze since China abducted two Canadians in retaliation for the Meng arrest. The new Indo-Pacific strategy calls for a pivot away from China towards India — an equally massive market but with democracy and the rule of law thrown in. India was the big hope for a China offset.”

Facing an election between now and 2025, Trudeau needs to keep domestic political considerations in mind going forward. Canadians of Indian origin represent a significant voting bloc, almost four percent of the population or 1.3 million; more than half of them Sikhs, including minority opposition leader Jagmeet Singh whose New Democratic Party keeps Trudeau’s ruling Liberals in power.

If the relationship with India becomes more corrosive, it could impact the ailing Canadian economy: Indian students represent a whopping 40% of total overseas foreign students, it is one of Canada’s top ten trading partners and the fourth biggest source of tourism.

For Trudeau, who has survived three ethics violations and will go down in history as the first Canadian prime minister to be found guilty of breaking federal ethics laws, the crisis occurs in the background of plummeting ratings, brought about by a stubborn cost of living and housing crisis.

A cynic might say that prematurely publicizing the explosive findings against India is a diversion tactic to steer attention away from the China interference file and the domestic issues piling up. Or that it is simply amateur hour at the offices of the prime minister and foreign affairs.

Or — as was acknowledged Tuesday in an Atlantic Council panel on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly — that major actors are increasingly leaning into transnational repression to eliminate or silence opponents. Goody-two-shoes Canada, wanting to defend freedom of expression at home, innocently finds itself in the jaws of the very superpowers it is trying to court.

Whatever the case, even for someone described as being made of Teflon, the consequences of the India crisis for Trudeau could be politically fatal if not deftly handled — especially with Ottawa’s traditional best friend, Washington, unlikely to throw a lifeline.

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