Three Indian nationals appeared in a B.C. court on Tuesday on first-degree murder charges linked to the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot in Surrey, B.C., last June. Police arrested the suspects last week in Edmonton.
In September 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged the Indian government may be linked to Nijjar’s murder, rocking diplomatic relations. The RCMP confirmed that it is investigating these supposed links.
India has handled the Nijjar case differently than a foiled murder-for-hire plot on U.S. soil. New Delhi pledged to co-operate with the U.S. and even launched an investigation, which ultimately blamed the plot on “rogue operatives.” The RCMP, meanwhile, has characterized collaboration with Indian law enforcement as “difficult.”
Following the arrests in Edmonton, India’s external affairs minister insisted that India’s “biggest problem right now,” referencing Sikh separatism, “is in Canada,” rather than in the U.K. or the U.S., which also have large Sikh diaspora communities.
On Tuesday, India’s high commissioner to Canada said that Ottawa lacks an understanding of India’s concerns, but he emphasized that, considering the overall relationship, the positives outweigh the negatives.
Foreign interference occurred, but electoral system is ‘sound’: Hogue
On Friday, Canada’s Foreign Interference Commission released its interim report, concluding that foreign interference occurred in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, but that it didn’t have “any impact” on which party formed government.
Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue stated in the report that China is the main perpetrator of foreign interference in Canada, and that CSIS views China as the biggest threat to Canadian elections by a wide margin.
Hogue, a Quebec justice, concluded that New Delhi also conducts foreign interference in Canada and that it views “anyone aligned with Khalistani separatism as a seditious threat to India.”
The commission will now examine how information about foreign interference should be communicated to the government and the public, the challenges of responding to misinformation and disinformation during elections, and the rules governing political parties’ nomination contests, which are "particularly vulnerable to foreign interference.”
