In leveling the explosive charge of the Indian government’s complicity in the killing of the Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18 in Surrey, British Columbia province, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not just gone for broke but has perhaps in the process irretrievably damaged India-Canada relations, at least as long as he is the prime minister.
To go behind the current crisis, SAM Conversation and Mayank Chhaya Reports spoke to well-known Canadian journalist-writer Terry Milewski who has spent decades tracking the Khalistani movement outside India.
To go behind the current crisis, SAM Conversation and Mayank Chhaya Reports spoke to well-known Canadian journalist-writer Terry Milewski who has spent decades tracking the Khalistani movement outside India.
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00:35 - In leveling the explosive charge
00:37 of the Indian government's complicity
00:39 in the killing of the Khalistani separatist leader,
00:42 Hardeep Singh Nidjar on June 18th in Surrey, British Columbia
00:47 Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has gone for broke.
00:52 In the process, he has perhaps irretrievably damaged
00:56 India-Canada relations,
00:57 at least as long as he's the Prime Minister.
01:01 Coming back from this precipice
01:03 for the two countries could take years.
01:06 What is remarkable is that Trudeau chose
01:08 to make the allegations citing his intelligence service,
01:12 but without providing any specific evidence.
01:15 However, Bob Ray, Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations
01:20 has spoken about quiet diplomacy
01:22 that preceded Trudeau's parliamentary statement,
01:26 but without any results.
01:28 In order to understand the state of the Nidjar investigation
01:31 without any arrests or even a formal police statement,
01:35 my entire report spoke to the well-known
01:38 Canadian journalist and writer, Gerry Malewski,
01:41 who has spent decades tracking
01:44 the Khalistani movement outside India.
01:46 Quite clearly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
01:51 is going for broke on this issue.
01:53 That's my sense.
01:54 Do you think he has such damning evidence
01:57 that he feels confident to risk
01:59 permanently damaging relations with India?
02:02 - Well, he better, because otherwise he's through.
02:06 I think that if he fails to fill
02:08 the scaping hole in his presentation,
02:10 that hole being the evidence,
02:13 if he fails to fill it, I don't see how he can survive.
02:17 He has tried to strike back against the humiliation
02:22 that he suffered in New Delhi at the G20
02:24 at the hands of Prime Minister Modi,
02:26 who basically delivered a sharp punch in the nose
02:28 over this issue.
02:29 And he is fighting back by saying,
02:33 "Okay, I've got you.
02:35 Your government is involved in murder in my country."
02:39 And if he cannot prove it,
02:43 then I don't see how he can survive.
02:45 He's already at a very low ebb,
02:48 as you well know in the polls.
02:49 If there were an election held tomorrow,
02:51 the Conservative Party would win it handily,
02:54 according to those polls.
02:56 And he doesn't want to antagonize
03:00 his partners in his minority government,
03:03 the people who are sustaining his government in power,
03:06 the NDP, which is led by Jagmeet Singh,
03:09 who is a Pakistani sympathizer.
03:11 So the electoral math, if you will,
03:14 says don't rock the boat.
03:16 Try to keep the coalition such as it is,
03:20 the alliance with the NDP together,
03:24 and go after India.
03:26 You're going to be a hero if you can prove this.
03:31 But what if he can't?
03:32 If he can't prove it,
03:34 or his evidence proves faulty or insufficient,
03:39 or the Indians can punch a hole in it,
03:42 then as I say,
03:44 I think that this could be the end of his prime ministership.
03:49 I don't see how he could survive that.
03:51 He's got the whole world on edge now
03:53 with this and he cannot answer questions
03:57 by saying it's classified,
04:00 I don't want to rock the boat in the investigation.
04:03 He's already done that.
04:04 He's announced the conclusion of the investigation,
04:08 if you really get right down to it,
04:09 by saying we've found out who the villains are.
04:13 And this is doubly difficult to prove,
04:16 given that, have you noticed
04:18 that we haven't yet heard anything
04:21 from the police investigating this matter?
04:24 Have they, for example, charged the shooters?
04:27 Nevermind who paid them, but the shooters.
04:29 This is how it goes in Surrey, British Columbia.
04:32 There is a routine for these contract killings.
04:34 Two masked men, they gun you down,
04:36 they see that when you get it,
04:38 come out of your office to go to your car,
04:40 and then they run to a getaway car,
04:42 and later you find the getaway car in flames,
04:45 because the modus operandi is that if you burn the car,
04:50 there's no DNA, there's no fingerprints,
04:53 the police can't track you down.
04:54 Well, in the assassination,
04:57 these very similar contract killing of Ruputaman Malik,
05:00 the financier at one time of the Baba Khalsa,
05:03 the terrorist group which blew up Air India in 1985,
05:07 the wealthy businessman who was assassinated
05:09 in July of last year.
05:11 In that case, they did find the shooters pretty quickly.
05:17 Couple of punks, goons with criminal records,
05:19 but who paid them?
05:21 Did they even know who paid the money?
05:23 And they haven't identified who paid them,
05:27 but they do have the shooters.
05:29 But in this case, in Nijar's case,
05:30 they don't have the shooters.
05:32 So if they have the shooters,
05:33 tell me how do they know who paid them?
05:35 I mean, it becomes rather difficult
05:38 if you don't have that piece of evidence.
05:41 So there's a hole in the middle of the hole,
05:44 in the middle of Trudeau's presentation.
05:47 And if he can't fill it,
05:49 and I would suggest rather quickly,
05:52 he's gonna be in a lot of trouble.
05:54 - What are your sources saying
05:56 about where the investigation is at this stage?
05:58 I mean, like you said,
06:00 the prime minister almost indicated
06:02 that it's sort of concluded that India is guilty.
06:05 Where do you think the investigation is at this stage?
06:08 - Well, the best I can tell you for the record is this,
06:11 that it would behoove all of us, I believe,
06:14 to consider the possibility
06:16 that motives may be mixed.
06:18 Here's what I mean.
06:19 In the main, to be crude about it, there are two theories.
06:24 One is local gangland vendetta.
06:27 The other is geopolitical masterminds in New Delhi
06:31 send out hit squad of 007 diplomats
06:33 to wipe out the Khalistani figures around the world.
06:38 What if it's a mixture of the two?
06:41 What if you investigate the background of Mr. Malik,
06:45 who we just discussed, and his assassination a year ago?
06:49 Well, he's well-known, and this is public information,
06:55 to have written a letter,
06:57 a gushing letter to prime minister Modi
06:59 in January of last year,
07:01 praising Modi for opening the door to Sikhs,
07:06 for the wonderful work he's done for the Sikhs,
07:08 a great friend of the Sikhs.
07:10 An extraordinary letter coming from the financier
07:13 of a terrorist group which attacked India
07:15 by blowing up a plane in 1985
07:18 with the loss of 331 innocent civilians.
07:21 This must have struck Mr. Malik's old friends
07:26 of the Khalistan movement as treachery,
07:30 and very dangerous too, if he will say that.
07:32 What else will he say?
07:34 This is very alarming from their point of view.
07:40 And we also know, and it's on the record,
07:43 there is a lawsuit laying out the dispute,
07:48 a dispute over money, essentially,
07:51 between Mr. Malik and Mr. Nijjar.
07:53 And there is a television interview,
07:55 but maybe the last one that he ever did,
07:58 that Malik ever did, in which he is very uncomplimentary
08:03 about Mr. Nijjar.
08:05 So there was bad blood between them, let's put it that way.
08:09 We also know that Mr. Nijjar was publicly
08:12 not complimentary and was a rival of Mr. Malik.
08:17 So the feeling was mutual.
08:19 Now imagine that the problem with Malik's new friendship
08:24 with the BJP and with the prime minister Modi,
08:29 even if it was reciprocated,
08:32 who knows if Modi knew about this letter.
08:34 But what if that just happened to fit rather well,
08:40 not just with the agenda of the Indian deep state,
08:45 if you will, but also with the agenda
08:51 of Mr. Malik's criminal rivals?
08:53 What if the, in other words,
08:56 if the two rival theories for Mr. Malik's death,
09:01 what if they commingled?
09:03 What if the motivation of revenge against Mr. Nijjar
09:10 for allegedly arranging the death of Mr. Malik,
09:14 what if that was combined?
09:15 It just happened to be convenient.
09:17 What if a couple of guys meet and one of them has friends
09:21 at the Indian consulate and the other has friends
09:25 in the Surrey underworld, and they both thought
09:30 that it'd be a good idea if Mr. Malik was taken out.
09:34 And what if they both thought that Mr. Nijjar,
09:38 in the wake of this, what if the Malik camp decided
09:41 that taking Mr. Nijjar out would be a handy bit of revenge
09:46 and that fits the Indian deep state agenda as well.
09:51 In other words, this rather murky stew,
09:54 I realized this is hard to follow.
09:57 It's based on speculation only.
10:00 I offer it as a theory that is doing the rounds today.
10:05 - Absolutely.
10:06 - And that's my answer.
10:07 It's something that we should consider.
10:09 We can't prove it, but we should consider it.
10:12 Now, imagine that Justin Trudeau's intelligence people
10:16 were able to put flesh on those bones,
10:18 were able to give a fuller account than I just gave
10:21 of why Mr. Nijjar was assassinated.
10:25 Well, that would be interesting, wouldn't it?
10:27 - Right, yeah, but the way you described it,
10:29 and if the intelligence is able to finesse it
10:32 in such a way that it becomes a actionable court case,
10:36 do you think it can seriously put the blame
10:41 at India's door because it sounds so complicated
10:43 there is necessarily plausible deniability in it already?
10:48 - Absolutely, I do not think that the theory
10:52 as I've just laid it out in broad strokes,
10:56 it doesn't prove anything.
10:58 Maybe two guys had lunch and maybe they didn't
11:03 and maybe, maybe, maybe, it doesn't prove a damn thing.
11:07 But I offer it simply as a possibility
11:12 which if you did know more could explain
11:17 if you did have the details and the names
11:19 and the places and the dates, which might fit the facts.
11:23 And it might explain why intelligence people might say
11:27 to the prime minister and to the prime minister's
11:29 national security advisor,
11:31 listen, we've cracked the case here
11:35 and we just need a few more pieces.
11:37 We need to get the Indians to cooperate
11:39 and they're not cooperating.
11:42 So we need to put the boot in
11:45 in order to get them to cooperate.
11:48 Say, oh yeah, you don't wanna cooperate?
11:50 Well, how about if we go public with this?
11:52 How are you like that?
11:54 And then you'll be in the position of having to deny it
11:57 and we've got enough to fry you.
12:01 Well, if that's the game that's being played,
12:03 it's a risky, risky game for Trudeau.
12:06 It's a roll of the dice
12:07 and he's nowhere near yet winning it.
12:11 - Correct.
12:12 At some stage, this will have to go to a court of law, right?
12:17 Otherwise it's just a parliamentary statement
12:21 of some dramatic effect.
12:23 It means nothing eventually.
12:25 So given your experience,
12:28 what do you think a Canadian court might see this as?
12:33 As it stands now,
12:35 do you think it has enough to respond to that seriously?
12:40 - No, I mean, go back to where we started.
12:44 If they don't even have the shooters.
12:46 - Exactly.
12:47 - And I doubt that the shooters would necessarily know
12:50 who their paymaster was.
12:53 I mean, believe it or not,
12:54 people find this hard to believe,
12:57 but I mean, I've heard stories about literally a job board
13:02 posted online,
13:03 saying, "We wanna get rid of so-and-so.
13:06 Do you wanna bid on this job?"
13:08 A job of murder.
13:10 - Right.
13:11 - Contacting out murder on the internet
13:13 without revealing who you are, okay?
13:15 It's gonna be $30,000
13:18 and it's gonna be half of it cash up front
13:21 and you get the other half when we see the body.
13:26 And this is nasty stuff.
13:31 - Right.
13:33 - But on the basis of,
13:34 I've heard that this guy had lunch with that guy
13:38 and they might've been behind.
13:39 That's not a court case.
13:42 And that could explain why there is no court case.
13:45 And there are no charges against anyone.
13:47 But at the very least, you need to have the shooters.
13:50 You need to have the actual goons who did the job.
13:55 - And in this case, in the Nijja case,
13:56 there were three of them.
13:57 There were two masked men
13:58 and one at the wheel of the getaway car
14:00 the other side of the park.
14:01 They ran off down the park and then they drove off
14:03 and then you found the car in flames.
14:06 - Unless-
14:07 - I don't think there's a court case yet.
14:09 - Yeah, unless the investigators
14:11 are really brilliantly hiding those three men
14:16 and they are going to prop them up when the time comes.
14:19 This is astounding that without a single suspect,
14:22 they are able to make a claim that they've made.
14:25 - Yes, it doesn't.
14:27 I mean, it simply doesn't hold water.
14:29 I mean, it's not ready to go to court by any means.
14:34 What if they suspect somebody
14:36 who is not in Canada's jurisdiction?
14:39 I mean, that would explain things too, wouldn't it?
14:45 Because Canada would be unable to pursue the investigation
14:49 to interview this guy or guys
14:53 if they are in the bosom of India,
14:58 if they've returned to mother India
15:00 and they're not here
15:01 and the Indians don't wanna give them up.
15:04 Say, "No, we're not gonna surrender him
15:06 to the Canadians for interrogation.
15:08 We're not gonna agree to that."
15:10 Well, that would explain why Trudeau felt driven to say,
15:12 "Okay, in that case, I'm going public
15:15 and you'll feel the heat."
15:17 But at the moment, until he reveals what he's got,
15:21 he's the one feeling the heat.
15:23 - Exactly, yeah.
15:24 You know, attached to this is an interview I saw
15:27 of Bob Ray, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations.
15:31 He was on CBC where he says the quiet diplomacy
15:36 had proceeded before the prime minister
15:39 chose to make the statement.
15:41 - Yeah.
15:42 - Are you aware of that diplomacy
15:43 and what kind of information you think Trudeau
15:46 might have furnished the Indian prime minister?
15:48 - Well, he certainly would have to furnish some.
15:51 And I think that Mr. Ray is correct and he's in the know,
15:56 but we all are in this sense
15:58 that the government has confirmed,
16:01 the Canadian government has confirmed,
16:03 and so has the US and the British governments,
16:05 that they were to a degree,
16:07 we don't know precisely what that degree is,
16:10 brought into the confidence of the Canadians.
16:12 And that the Canadians prior to the G20
16:15 were already trying to work with the Indians,
16:18 trying to persuade them to cough up,
16:21 to give them help in their investigation
16:24 and must've been frustrated, or that's what it looks like.
16:27 And also shared some information with the Five Eyes allies
16:32 to include obviously Canada, US, UK, Australia.
16:37 And the evidence suggests that the allies
16:45 were A, reluctant to antagonize India
16:48 at a time when India is of rising importance.
16:51 Britain is on the cusp of a free trade agreement with India.
16:54 Australia has just signed one, I believe.
16:56 India is supposed to be the great new ally
17:02 in the contest of the geopolitical contest
17:04 between the West and China.
17:06 So this is not a good time to antagonize India,
17:11 but B, the allies do say that they are not
17:16 completely unimpressed by what the Canadians have offered.
17:20 The Americans have said, for example,
17:24 that they view with deep concern
17:27 the information that Canada has presented.
17:29 And the British minister, Mr. Cleverley,
17:32 has expressed similar, saying,
17:35 "We've really got to get after this.
17:36 "We've got to have a full investigation."
17:39 Which if indeed my theory that the Canadians
17:43 encountered resistance from the Indians, that would fit.
17:47 So it may be that this all hinges
17:53 on something that the Canadians think
17:57 the Indians are holding back,
18:00 a name, or they have the name,
18:03 but they don't have the person,
18:05 that they want to interview this person,
18:08 and they want information about movements,
18:11 travel, tickets, phone calls, wiretaps,
18:15 from the Indians in order to solve the case.
18:20 And having become suspicious about Indian motivations,
18:24 having encountered resistance from the Indians,
18:27 that the Canadians decided, "Okay, that's it.
18:30 "We've had enough of this fooling around.
18:33 "We're gonna go to our allies and say,
18:35 "we want you to support us on this.
18:37 "Here's what we have, or some of it."
18:39 And they said the same to the Indians,
18:42 "We're going public if you don't cooperate."
18:45 And that I think fits what we know,
18:48 but we still have that hole in the heart
18:51 of the presentation of the prime minister.
18:53 No evidence, none.
18:56 - Yeah, if it's such a spandish plot,
18:59 let's say for the sake of argument
19:01 that it is indeed an Indian plot,
19:04 don't you think they would have gotten rid of the guy
19:06 who carried out the hatchet job?
19:08 - Well, the guy that carried out the hatchet job
19:15 might not even be known to them.
19:18 There may have been a broker in between, right?
19:22 We're talking about a very dangerous murder.
19:26 A murder that was going to cause waves
19:32 in the case of Nijabh because of his position
19:35 as the number two in Sikhs of Justice
19:36 and the president of the temple,
19:39 the Guru Nanak temple in Surrey.
19:42 He was somebody, at least locally.
19:44 I mean, outside that, nobody knew who he was,
19:47 but he was a significant figure.
19:49 So it seems to me that if indeed my imaginary scenario
19:54 of a couple of guys having lunch,
19:57 one with links to the Indian government's,
20:00 however tenuous those links might be,
20:03 and one with links to the criminal underworld,
20:06 it makes sense that somebody might have
20:08 brought them together.
20:08 Okay, now I can't talk about who the client is,
20:11 but the client, whoever it is, wants this man eliminated.
20:16 Can you arrange it?
20:18 Okay, I can arrange it,
20:21 and I'm not gonna ask who the client is.
20:24 I mean, they're not exactly writing a legal contract,
20:29 are they?
20:31 It's not even on the back of a napkin
20:33 in the lunch restaurant.
20:36 - It doesn't exist, yeah.
20:38 - No, it doesn't exist, yeah.
20:40 So, I mean, unraveling that is not going to be easy,
20:43 but obviously Trudeau and his advisors
20:46 believe that they've got persuasive evidence.
20:49 They've got something, some nugget of information
20:52 that suggests to them that there's an Indian government
20:56 hand in this, and I'm merely speculating.
20:59 The theory that I advanced to you,
21:01 which I think we ought to at least be open to,
21:06 that we should consider it a possibility,
21:09 is that Mr. Malik may have become identified
21:13 with, as it were, the Indian government side,
21:16 as bizarre as that may seem, given his record,
21:19 an Air India bombing financier,
21:23 that he should be considered on the Indian side,
21:27 but as amazing as that might be, it's possible,
21:31 and he did write that letter.
21:33 By the way, I'm not revealing any secrets,
21:35 that's a public document, that's public information.
21:39 So we know that it did happen,
21:41 and we know that he did cozy up to Prime Minister Modi
21:44 and to his government,
21:46 and got a visa to go and visit India,
21:49 despite his background.
21:50 He's off the blacklist.
21:51 He's able to travel to India.
21:53 What are the odds that the US intelligence
21:58 may have tipped the Canadians off?
22:01 - Well, it's always a possibility,
22:06 because of the immense reach
22:09 of the National Security Agency, the CIA,
22:11 the American intelligence agencies,
22:13 massively funded, massively capable,
22:16 wiretapping thousands and thousands of lines all the time,
22:23 able to then to go back in time
22:26 and to replay the tape that may become interesting later on.
22:31 Canada doesn't have those kinds of capabilities.
22:35 I'm certainly open to the possibility
22:38 that Canada may have learned some key piece of information,
22:41 that so-and-so did indeed have a phone call
22:44 with so-and-so else at the operative time,
22:48 when the deal might've been done
22:52 to eliminate Mr. Nijjar.
22:54 I think that's entirely possible,
22:56 but none of this is definite.
23:00 We are simply filling a vacuum with speculation,
23:07 which to some degree is informed,
23:10 the letter by Malik to Modi and so forth,
23:13 the lawsuit between the Malik camp and the Nijjar camp,
23:18 proof that there was bad blood between the two.
23:20 There are bits of information,
23:22 but none of it bearing directly on who paid
23:26 and who carried out the killing of Mr. Nijjar.
23:28 And that's the number of it.
23:32 - Right, just last couple of things.
23:34 One is whether or not this case goes the distance.
23:39 Don't you think the prime minister's parliamentary statement
23:42 has had the effect of bolstering
23:45 the Khalistanis within Canada?
23:47 Whether it's true or not,
23:48 they will choose to believe that it's true.
23:50 - Absolutely.
23:51 Oh, they're jumping for joy.
23:54 Yes, they're jumping for joy.
23:56 I mean, they have been vindicated
23:59 that they've been saying this all along
24:01 and now the government's on our side.
24:02 They are cashing in, they're putting out press releases.
24:05 They're saying this proves that we're right.
24:07 The government has endorsed our point of view
24:09 that we've said all along that this was an Indian hit.
24:12 And the skeptics like that awful guy,
24:15 Terry Malavsky on Twitter has been saying the opposite.
24:17 We proved him wrong and we are victorious.
24:20 We're marching to victory.
24:21 We have the government on our side.
24:23 So they've gone a little bit beyond where we are.
24:29 They're exaggerating the scale of their victory, I think.
24:32 But there's no question that the wind is in their sails.
24:35 Yes, absolutely.
24:36 And that's unfortunate.
24:38 - So either way, they are the winners.
24:39 Either way, they are the winners.
24:41 - Well, it depends how this ends.
24:44 You know, they may regret some of those press releases
24:47 if it turns out that Trudeau doesn't have the goods.
24:51 Or if he never does get to the point
24:55 of being able to prove it.
24:56 And this all becomes part of history as an unsolved mystery.
25:01 I mean, that's possible too.
25:03 You don't necessarily get a Hollywood ending.
25:06 - Sure.
25:07 Finally, why is it that Justin Trudeau
25:11 did not take a similarly tough stand
25:13 over years of Chinese interference,
25:16 especially in the context of the two Canadians
25:19 who were detained as hostage?
25:21 He practically did nothing there.
25:24 - Yes, it's a puzzle, isn't it?
25:27 I share your curiosity about that.
25:32 And I don't have a good answer except to say
25:35 that there is a history on both sides,
25:38 that is the Chinese and Indian side.
25:40 The history on the Chinese side, of course,
25:42 is Trudeau's own father.
25:45 Pierre Trudeau was one of the pioneers
25:47 of opening the West to the new communist China.
25:50 He explored and traveled around China,
25:53 wrote a book about it, became a bit of a hero in China
25:58 because of his openness at the time
26:00 when the West was saying, "No, no, no,
26:02 we're gonna have nothing to do
26:04 with the red menace in China."
26:07 And Pierre Trudeau took a different attitude
26:10 and admired the Chinese.
26:13 Trudeau is on record as having,
26:15 the younger Trudeau, I mean,
26:17 is on record as having similar feelings.
26:19 He once indiscreetly said that he sort of admired
26:22 in a way the Chinese dictatorship
26:25 because they were able to get things done.
26:26 He wasn't saying that he admired dictatorship,
26:28 but it was an unfortunate phrase
26:30 which he has worn to his cost ever since.
26:34 By contrast, there's always been a deep antagonism
26:41 in some quarters in Canada towards the Indians.
26:45 There was a long, decades-long dispute
26:48 over nuclear technology, which didn't thaw out really.
26:51 I think I was on that trip
26:53 when Prime Minister Harper went to India.
26:55 And I remember the press conference
26:57 with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as he then was,
27:01 in which that was finally put in the dustbin of history,
27:05 that old dispute over India's alleged misuse
27:08 of Canada's nuclear technology.
27:11 And we were going to march forward,
27:13 and now we're gonna have a free trade agreement,
27:14 which now, of course, is on ice
27:16 as a result of this latest fracas.
27:18 So there is a difference in the historical background
27:23 and the relationships between Canada and China,
27:26 and the Liberal Party and China, and the Indian case.
27:31 But that's only a partial explanation.
27:35 It fills in the background a little bit.
27:38 But it doesn't explain all of it.
27:41 I mean, it doesn't explain why, for example,
27:43 Pierre Trudeau turned Indira Gandhi down
27:47 when she asked for the extradition of Talvinder Parmar
27:50 for the murder of policemen in Punjab.
27:52 And Canada said no.
27:53 Why exactly did we say no?
27:56 I mean, you've heard the story
27:58 about how Canada told the Indians that,
28:02 well, India doesn't recognize
28:04 the queen of head of states,
28:06 and so the extradition treaty doesn't apply.
28:09 And I mean, it's just a piece of comedy.
28:13 What's the queen's got to do with this?
28:15 I mean, it just made no sense.
28:17 And of course, that was three years
28:18 before the Air India bombing.
28:20 And he went on to blow up a civilian aircraft
28:24 with 331 people died.
28:27 And so it's hard to explain why it's evolved this way,
28:32 but it has.
28:34 And here we are with the two nations now at daggers drawn,
28:38 at least the two administrations.
28:41 I don't think that this is reflected
28:43 within the popular feeling towards India,
28:47 which across Canada is generally warm, I would say,
28:51 because of the presence throughout Canada
28:53 of a very large Indian diaspora.
28:57 We've got over 800,000 Hindus in Canada, 770,000 Sikhs.
29:03 And I mean, they're all over Canada and people know them.
29:07 They're very successful, unusually successful
29:11 as an immigrant community,
29:13 with the exception of this small minority
29:16 of Palestinians within them,
29:18 which have created no end of trouble.
29:21 - Yeah, and finally, before I let you go,
29:23 how do you see this travel advisory from New Delhi?
29:26 That it's extremely dangerous to travel to Canada.
29:28 - Yeah, it's all part of the tit...
29:32 This won't be the end of it.
29:34 This is part of the tit for tat.
29:36 You expel our diplomat, we're expelling yours.
29:39 By the way, the Indians didn't escalate.
29:41 They didn't go all the way up
29:42 to expelling the high commissioner.
29:44 They went one level down.
29:46 And so it's a strictly equal expulsion, if that's the word.
29:51 And similarly with the travel warnings,
29:55 Canada moved first on that,
29:57 warning Canadians about the dangers of travel
29:59 to that terrible place, India.
30:01 And so India has felt bound to reciprocate on that.
30:05 Next, what about the visas?
30:08 What about the Indian students studying in Canada?
30:10 You know, there are 100,000 Indian students studying
30:14 in Canada.
30:16 I mean, the integration of the people,
30:18 so proceeds are paced.
30:20 We had 35,000 Indians take Canadian citizenship last year.
30:24 35,000 in one year.
30:27 So, I mean, we're becoming an Indian country
30:31 and as fast as we're becoming an Asian country.
30:35 I mean, we also had thousands and thousands of Chinese.
30:39 So Canada is changing.
30:41 The face of Canada is changing.
30:43 And some of it has an Indian flavor.
30:47 - So as long as Justin Trudeau remains,
30:50 there is next to no possibility of India-Canada relations
30:54 improving in the foreseeable future.
30:55 - Oh no, it's got to, no.
30:56 I mean, it's hard to see how this gets repaired.
31:00 I mean, I mentioned the squabble over nuclear technology.
31:04 I mean, that went, lasted the better part of 30 years.
31:08 I'm not suggesting that this is going to go on that long
31:10 because once Trudeau departs the scene,
31:13 it'll be a clean break.
31:14 We can start afresh,
31:16 assuming that if the conservatives take over,
31:20 that they do not go the same route
31:25 as the liberals have done vis-a-vis India
31:28 and that they make an effort to mend fences with India.
31:32 I'm assuming that that would be the case,
31:34 but we can't guarantee it so far.
31:36 We haven't heard much from the conservative leader
31:38 other than a vaguely supportive statement
31:42 that if this is all true, then it's a terrible thing
31:46 and condolences to Mr. Najjar's family and so on.
31:50 So that, we can't guarantee
31:53 that the conservatives will radically alter the picture,
31:57 but it can't get much worse, can it?
31:59 - No.
32:00 On that note, Terry, great pleasure.
32:02 I'm sorry, I'm sure you're tired
32:04 of answering the same questions.
32:06 I tried to keep them very different.
32:08 I hope that that worked.
32:09 - It did work, yes.
32:12 They're not all the same.
32:13 They're not all the same, and I thank you for that.
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