Suspension of visa services to Canadian citizens: The curveball Trudeau didn’t see coming

Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.

In this tit-for-tat diplomatic war, India has now responded in kind to Canada by suspending visa services “till further orders” to Canadian nationals who want to visit India. It is quite certain that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught on the wrong foot by the Indian move.

For his own so-called political gains, Trudeau may have pandered to the squeaky hinges that make the usual Khalistan noises, especially after Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s killing. His ambition is to remain at the helm till 2025 – 17 MPs of Punjab origin in the Canadian Parliament are backing him on this issue. But Trudeau’s very own Liberal Party members, will, in this diplomatic tussle see more red than green.

It’s Cold, Hard Diplomacy

After all, the suspension of visas by India means that out of the 17 lakh Canadians of Indian ethnicity, those who want to fly back home cannot apply for a visa to visit their loved ones. In 2021 and 2022, about 1.6 lakh Canadian tourists visited India. Before the pandemic, foreign tourist arrivals from Canada were in the range of 3.5 lakh annually in 2018 and 2019. A huge majority of these tourists are Canadian citizens of Indian descent.

One may say that the onus lies on both Trudeau and Modi, but while Indians would see this as a victory from a jingoistic standpoint of a “lesson taught well” to a Western nation, tens of thousands of Canadian citizens of Indian descent will hold Trudeau squarely responsible for starting this diplomatic war which is delaying their homecoming.

Even if a section of the Canadian-Indians holds the Indian government responsible for this diplomatic war, politically, for the Modi government this will not be more than a side issue.

And at the international level if at all our soft power status sees a challenge coming from some quarters, a positive out of it is that the countries of the Global South and other rivals will see in India, a nation daring to look its recent Western ally in the eye, which prides itself as the little sibling of the most powerful nation. But to Canada’s embarrassment, the US has mostly remained silent on this issue.

Why Canada Stands To Lose?

Canada may not be able to extend this tit-for-tat further, and here is why.

India sends lakhs of students to Canada each year for higher education and this money is used to subsidise the education of Canada’s domestic students. In 2022 alone, 2.2 lakh Indians flew to Canada for higher studies, a staggering 40 percent of all overseas students as per the Canadian Bureau of International Education.

If India-Canada relations deteriorate any further, Canada’s higher education could just collapse. And a byproduct of that would be that the housing and real estate sector in the newly developing areas of Canada would be hit hard since Indian students bring close to 15 billion dollars to the Canadian economy each year. A big chunk of this money spent by students goes into renting houses which helps homeowners pay up bank loans.

In all, the contribution to these Indian students who participate in the Canadian gig economy far exceeds the income they earn while doing these jobs. These students help the Canadian government keep the minimum wage at $15-16 an hour. Canada’s Sikh population mostly from Punjab has also more than doubled in the last two decades, a big contributory factor to Canada’s human resources.

What Next?

To normalise the relations between India and Canada, the presence of a neutral force is important. So far the US, who may have wanted to side with their North American cousins haven’t done so and that means that the US can help ease the tension.

In all probability, Biden will help pull Trudeau out of this diplomatic slush. And from there on, Trudeau has to tread with caution. But he made it tough for himself by sticking his neck way-out by saying that they have nailed the Hardeep Singh Nijjar case and its “potential link” to the Indian diplomat.

In the coming days, if this statement is not backed by the evidence, he would have done much harm to the Liberal Party that would wish to return to office in the 2025 Canadian federal polls.

On the Indian side though, the same may not be true about Modi, whose domestic politics hinges on diametrically different issues and India-Canada relations mean not much beyond the borders of Punjab, a state anyway out of bounds for the BJP.

Shamsher Chandel is an independent journalist based out of Chandigarh. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.