Pro-Trudeau media’s support for Khalistan terror and anti-India agenda – Firstpost

As political and economic storms rip through Canada, Justin Trudeau’s wrecked prime ministership already in their wake and creating the circumstances for an
early election, Canada’s problems with India no longer make the front pages. While Trudeau’s exit is a positive for ties with India, Khalistani influence over Canadian politics can temper expectations of a dramatic rapprochement.

Regardless of who comes to power in April and how bilateral relations shape up going forward, a necessary and useful exercise would be to analyse Canadian governmental and media discourse through the crisis. This analysis can serve as a tool, a filter, to gauge Canada’s intent through these elections and into the new dispensation.

On the surface, India’s Canada conundrum can appear puzzling. Substantial academic and journalistic work exists showing the Khalistan movement’s
umbilical ties to Pakistani intelligence agencies, its links to
narcoterror and gunrunning, its misuse of the
Canadian immigration system, its sprawling
influence empire of nonprofits, lobbyists, and media organisations, and its political clout in
Canada and
the USA – yet, or because of this, the Canadian government and media’s moral panics centre on India.

As Canada plays victim, the Khalistan-movement-infused dysfunction in its institutions – including the media – renders it unable to see that it is egregiously guilty of the very actions it accuses India of carrying out.

Screenwriting guru Robert McKee’s schematic describing the
‘Principle of Antagonism’ may help us better understand Canada’s antagonism – and therefore its discourse – towards India. (Given the Khalistanis’ malign intent and Canada’s cynical support, I have no hesitation assigning her the term ‘antagonist’ in this particular context.) McKee illustrates how a struggle between protagonist and antagonist over ‘truth’ would evolve.

The antagonist’s behavioural progression would start off with the use of half-truths, progress to lies, and ultimately end in self-deception. So Canada may well have started off turning a blind eye to the activities of Sikh extremists and Cold War ally, Pakistan (half-truths), but by the 1980s it had progressed to actively giving militants operational space and denying it (lies), and now it rains sanctimony upon India in the defence of inimical forces it has mainstreamed into its political and social life (self-deception).

The Rapid Response Mechanism Canada’s (RRM)
report on Potential Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference following PM Statement on Killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar (September 12, 2024) is a remarkable example of such self-deception. What’s even more striking is the extent to which Canada’s ‘free and fair’ media adhere to the biases in this report. Here, we examine the elements of just one of the seven Indian-media
‘narratives’ Canada finds objectionable and subject them to the simple tests of equivalency and context: ‘Threats and accusations targeted at Canadian diplomats’.

Element One

The first concern mentioned is that ‘some [Indian media] outlets looked to portray specific members of Canada’s diplomatic mission to India in an unsavoury light.’ That Canada views such a portrayal as a grievance must have come as a shock to the Indian government.

Posters displaying photographs of Indian diplomats as wanted criminals were widely used by Khalistanis in Canada; these posters also declared Indian diplomatic sites to be ‘war zones’ (which may be interpreted as threatening if used to justify violence against sovereign diplomatic spaces). Even objectionable depictions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Home Minister Amit Shah were displayed, and a mock trial charging them with Nijjar’s murder was held in Vancouver.

The Canadian government and media did not condemn any of these acts. Internally, India tolerates as much or more in the name of freedom of expression, but it doesn’t justify them. Similar protests outside the Canadian High Commission could have been organised if the Indian government tacitly lent support, but it chose not to.

Canadian media even failed to widely report or condemn something as deplorable as a float showing the assassination of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in Brampton. That it’s unfair to India is a minor concern compared to the disservice to the values and fabric of its own society.

Element Two

The second concern mentioned is that Canadian diplomats were portrayed as ‘haughty, or uncooperative with India’s Ministry of External Affairs’. This is rather thin-skinned considering Canada subsequently declared the Indian High Commissioner a ‘person of interest’ along with other senior diplomats in a murder case!

The diplomats were recalled by the Indian government even as Canada rushed to expel them; India expelled Canadian diplomats in response. In the run-up to this event, Canadian media faithfully reported alarmist Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) leaks, unsubstantiated allegations, and Trudeau’s rants about Indian diplomats being involved in ‘criminal activities’. It is certainly no one’s case that these should not have been reported, but shouldn’t an ‘independent’ press have also worried about institutional misuse of the RCMP or Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) if the allegations weren’t well-founded?

Trudeau himself admitted later on that he had no ‘hard evidentiary proof’ before making these allegations in Parliament. The final report this very RRM report was a precursor to, the Public Inquiry Into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, inadvertently let slip in its final report that no ‘definitive link’ to India was found in Nijjar’s killing.

Damage-control statements were then issued that the commission wasn’t mandated to probe the killing, but Trudeau’s and the commission’s admissions taken along with India’s statement that ‘not a shred of evidence’ of wrongdoing has been produced by the Canadian side incline one to believe that such evidence never existed.

The report mentioned above elaborately discusses the challenges in using intelligence in legal proceedings, stating at one point, ‘Courts have rules of evidence to ensure decisions are made on information that is credible and reliable. As explained above, intelligence may not satisfy these requirements.’ Even if read narrowly as protection of an individual’s rights, the care demanded for accusing foreign leaders and diplomats of criminality should only be higher! And this is not even the full extent of the Trudeau government’s recklessness.

That the
RCMP’s press conference about Indian diplomats lacked any details of wrongdoing was commented on even by Canadian experts; Deputy Foreign Minister David Morrison leaked allegations against Indian Home Minister Amit Shah to The Washington Post; another leak alleged that PM Modi, Minister Jaishankar, and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval knew about the Nijjar assassination; PM Trudeau then rubbished it, calling the officials who leaked it ‘criminals’. What self-deception blacks out commentary on such mismanagement of international relations and the Khalistani chokehold on the government?

On the theme of equivalence, Minister Jaishankar has also questioned why the collection of information and visa-related activities that Canadian diplomats carry out as a matter of right in India are treated as suspect when Indian diplomats do the same in Canada. Indian diplomats have also been subjected to ‘audio and video surveillance’, including their ‘private communications’. India has protested and described it as being ‘incompatible with established diplomatic norms’.

Not only does Canadian media not worry about the long-term consequences of such transgressions, it actively partakes of it. A
CTV Question Period interview with withdrawn High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma (posted on October 20, 2024) reveals the level of media co-option in Canada.

The interviewer absurdly insists that the RCMP is independent and apolitical––a laughable claim given its past conduct and even current failures in dealing with Khalistani violence––and she strenuously objects to Verma making an analogous reference to CSIS and vacuously insists he should waive diplomatic immunity and subject himself to RCMP questioning, as though the diminishment of national pride and his high office weren’t factors. Verma’s response is dignified: On what basis? He asks; there is no substantive reply, just more performative aggression.

A running theme in Canadian media coverage is the expectation that Indians take their law enforcement and intelligence seriously with no expectation of reciprocation. The Globe and Mail, for instance, regularly trots out former CSIS officer Daniel Stanton to diminish India’s concerns and her security agencies. He plays the same part in a
piece on Nijjar as well. The CSIS and RCMP’s shameful track record – documented by journalists like Terry Milewski, who is an exception – in all matters Khalistan explains India’s wariness. But ultimately, if Canadian media expects India to take its concerns seriously, then it cannot do so while treating Indian intelligence concerns, legal processes, security services, and Indian extradition requests with contempt.

Element Three

‘[A]nonymous threats to High Commission staff’ is the last concern mentioned in this section. In the face of the open threats and physical intimidation that Indian diplomats endure, this statement makes sense only ironically. High Commissioner Verma himself faced attempted violence in Alberta, and Canada was forced to provide security cover to Indian diplomats and premises.

Even after the release of this report, India was compelled to cancel consular camps after attacks in Brampton (at the Hindu temple) and Surrey and because of the ‘inability conveyed by security agencies to provide minimum security against heightened threats’. Jaishankar has commented on how India is expected to stomach ‘cleverly worded’ threats against its leaders, diplomats, and even airlines.

Khalistani protesters even chanted, ‘Kill Modi! Politics!’ The ‘politics’ is an afterthought, a mere legal requirement. A Globe and Mail report criticises the Indian media for quoting Indian investigative ‘sources’ saying grenades were thrown into the Indian High Commission building in Ottawa when they were possibly mere gas canisters. Wouldn’t that still be a serious security breach? Jaishankar’s question is pertinent here: ‘Suppose you were at the receiving end of this threat?’

Canadian media
reporting on High Commissioner Verma having to cancel a March 2023 event in Surrey over security concerns is hard to find, but Globe and Mail promptly publishes a petty hit job gleefully stating that Verma was being ‘booted’ from Canada.

Even attacks on Canada’s Hindu community, temples, and Indian diaspora media persons (across ideological lines) are believed to be covered more reliably on social media rather than on legacy media. These acts of commission and omission don’t harm India, but they do harm Canada’s own people and institutions.

The days of Indians worrying about Western media coverage are in the past: their reach and credibility in India are at all-time lows. In fact, Canada categorising Indian media and social media coverage as ‘foreign interference’ shows that the concerns run in the opposite direction.

Even so, this interim RRM report couldn’t establish any coordinated activity in the Indian media’s coverage, and Indian media’s coverage has been more varied. But blinkered by ideological and political considerations, Canadian media avert their eyes from the Khalistan movement’s malign influence on their institutions and seek to place blame elsewhere: India. It is self-deception of the worst kind.

Given Khalistani influence across political parties in Canada, a significant change in discourse during these elections is unlikely, but it is worth watching closely. It’s interesting to note that the same RRM report makes brief mention of ‘
Godi media’, derogatorily referring to sections of Indian media perceived to be supportive of PM Modi. In the same vein, one may refer to the Trudeau government’s press enablers as ‘Toady media’ and observe if, going forward, their line is weakened or reinforced.

The writer is the published author of two novels (Penguin, India and Westland, India) based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.