The genesis of Canada’s troubled relations with India

Tensions which have now marred relations between New Delhi and Ottawa were waiting to happen.

The following episode offers a vital clue to how India got to the present state of affairs in its relationship with Canada.

In the 2004 Canadian federal election, when incumbent prime minister Justin Trudeau’s last Liberal Party predecessor Paul Martin retained office, I was witness to a bizarre campaign event in the Greater Toronto area. Martin did not have time to go to every riding (constituency) in the second largest country on earth in area and drum up support for his Liberal Party candidates. So, he assembled half a dozen of them at a single campaign event in Mississauga, which looks like a town in Punjab. Sikhs are everywhere and all things in Mississauga are Punjabi. Only one of those six Liberals, whom the prime minister was stumping for, was white. Everyone else was of Punjabi origin — either Hindu or Sikh.

The sole white Liberal candidate, a woman who stood out in a sea of South Asian faces in the audience, was ill at ease although Carolyn Bennett was a minister in Martin’s cabinet. She is still immensely popular in her mid-town Toronto riding of St Paul’s. Bennett has consistently won the seat since 1997 and was a minister in Trudeau’s cabinet until July this year. When her turn came to speak at the campaign meeting 19 years ago, Bennett told the audience that she must have been Indian in her previous birth. That was her way of integrating into the many mini-Indias that dot Canada’s more populous provinces, Ontario and British Columbia.

Immigrant Population 

With an Asian population of 35.1 percent according to Canada’s census in 2021, tensions of the kind which have now  marred relations between New Delhi and Ottawa  were waiting to happen. Alongside this staggering statistic of 35.1 percent in a country that is supposedly white in racial identity, South Asians make up a vocal and volatile minority of 7.1 percent. In numbers, South Asians account for 2.5 million among Canadians. Nearly 30 percent of them are Sikhs and another 30 percent are Hindus. This is a substantial number, considering that despite the country’s huge size, Canada has a population of just 40 million people. The United States of America is somewhat similar to Canada in land area, but has eight times Canada’s population. The Indian presence in the US is not dissimilar to Canada’s: these comparisons are emblematic of the huge influence that South Asians have on Canadian life in every way and is at the root of the present bilateral diplomatic crisis.

Unlike in the US, where being “American” subsumes other identities significantly, Canada has unsuccessfully aped its neighbour in creating the concept of its self-professed “Canadianness” (sic!). Little Singapore with its racial and ethnic diversity is more homogenous and “Singaporean” than Canada is “Canadian.” The population of Canada rose in the years after Operation Bluestar in Amritsar’s Golden Temple. In some years, the increase was 1.6 percent a year, higher than in other comparably rich, developed countries of the Group of Seven (G7). When the momentum of Sikh migrants slowed, Canada’s population rise was sustained by arrivals from Hong Kong, after the territory was handed back to China by the United Kingdom in 1997. The civil war in Sri Lanka brought in a wave of Tamils fleeing violence. Canada, worried about its vast lands being underpopulated, similarly welcomed Arabs, who escaped Lebanon’s frequent civil strife and turmoil elsewhere in the Arab world.

Until it introduced a merit-based “Comprehensive Ranking System” in 2015 for screening potential immigrants, it is not an exaggeration to say that most riff-raff could get into Canada. That is, as long as they had a sob story to tell at a border post that they were being tortured by the state or by armed militias in Punjab, Jaffna, Beirut or Hong Kong, and therefore, they were seeking asylum in a contiguous extension of the “land of the free.” Scrutiny was poor and political interference by lobbies to let in relatives of relatives who were constituents in a riding was high. Inevitably, Punjabis brought with them their Khalistan baggage, Hong Kongers brought in the dreaded criminal organisation of Triad, Sri Lankan refugees came with their Tamil Tigers and Arabs imported fragments of the Hezbollah, the Shiite Islamist militia. None of these ethnic groups have integrated into Canada, nor do they share the idea of being “Canadian” except to obtain permanent residence or citizenship.

Criminal Activities

During the long years that I have reported from Canada, numerous instances of extortion by supporters of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been narrated to me by hapless and unprotected traders and small businessmen in the Greater Toronto area. In Vancouver, gun-runners and professional criminal gangs from Punjab have frequently struck up alliances of convenience with the Triad to carve up territories and preserve their near-autonomous areas of influence for blackmail and other shakedowns. Harinder Takhar, the first Indo-Canadian to be appointed to Ontario province’s cabinet, told me in 2006, when he was minister of transportation, that there were 3,500 Canadian truck drivers of Punjabi origin in US jails, accused of ferrying consignments of illegal drugs across the border to Michigan and New York hidden in their cargo.

None of this is unknown to Trudeau as he makes allegations against India in the ongoing stand-off. From time to time, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has produced voluminous reports of such criminality in Canada. India is right in the choice of words in its Wednesday advisory to Indian nationals in Canada. Hate crimes and criminal violence in Canada have been “politically condoned” for many decades. Only when such political protection ends for anti-India activities will relations between New Delhi and Ottawa improve.

KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.