Juno News - September 20, 2023


Has Trudeau politicized Canada’s relationship with India？ (Ft. Abhijit Iyer-Mitra)

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Rupa Subramanya
Mentioned
Justin Trudeau Sikh Kalistani Hardeep Singh Nijjar Daniel Reisner Melanie Jolie Tara Singh Gurpat Pan Singh Panu Abhijit Ayur Mitra Christine Blasey Ford Pierre Trudeau Indira Gandhi Cameron McKay Biyant Singh True North Xi Jinping Litvinenko Sajjan Tamil Thais Rubra and 1 more
Grassroots group pushes back against Liberal energy policies Trudeau tries to sell his carbon tax at the UN

Episode Stats


Length

38 minutes

Words per minute

150.5

Word count

5,744

Sentence count

376

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the wake of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijar, India has accused Canada of colluding with the Sikh extremist group Khalistani to carry out the attack. India has expelled a senior Canadian diplomat, and Canada has warned its citizens not to travel to India. To make sense of all of this, my friend Abhijit Ayur Mitra, a security and foreign policy expert based in New Delhi, and a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, joins me to talk about the ongoing diplomatic saga between India and Canada.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hi there, everyone, and welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show.
00:00:22.120 I'm Rupa Subramanya.
00:00:23.960 Today, I'm here to bring you the latest developments in a rapidly unfolding diplomatic saga that
00:00:29.680 has sent shockwaves through the international community.
00:00:34.280 It all began with the killing of Khalistani Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijar, a case
00:00:40.180 that has ignited tensions between the world's largest democracy, India, and Canada.
00:00:45.640 Nijar was a prominent Sikh Khalistani activist.
00:00:48.400 He was gunned down by massed assailants on a bike in Surrey, British Columbia, back in
00:00:53.360 June.
00:00:54.200 Now, Khalistan, for those of you who don't know what Khalistan means, it refers to a
00:00:58.340 homeland for the Sikhs in the state of Punjab in India.
00:01:01.920 They would like this homeland to separate from India. 1.00
00:01:05.040 There was an active terrorist insurgency in the 1970s and 80s in India, which culminated
00:01:10.700 in the assassination of then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her Sikh bodyguards
00:01:15.960 in 1984.
00:01:17.400 The following year, an Air India jet was blown up in midair by a bomb planted by Khalistani 1.00
00:01:22.640 extremists based in Canada.
00:01:24.300 Everyone on board perished.
00:01:26.560 Most of the victims were Canadians.
00:01:28.960 It remains the worst act of terrorism in Canadian history.
00:01:32.320 Now, on Monday, just a few days ago, on the opening day of Parliament, Prime Minister Justin
00:01:37.060 Trudeau makes an explosive speech in which he alleges that agents working for the Indian
00:01:43.260 government were responsible for the killing of Nijar.
00:01:46.420 Shortly afterwards, Foreign Minister Melanie Jolie expelled a senior Indian diplomat.
00:01:51.300 Now, the Justin Trudeau government is yet to provide any proof or evidence to back up these
00:01:56.800 serious allegations.
00:01:58.300 India's reaction has been very swift and uncompromising.
00:02:01.680 In retaliation, the Indian government expelled a senior Canadian diplomat and dismissed the
00:02:06.040 allegations as being absurd and motivated.
00:02:09.220 On Tuesday, Canada's Department of Global Affairs issued a travel advisory to Canadians not
00:02:14.980 to travel in India.
00:02:15.840 On Wednesday, India retaliated with its own travel advisory, warning Indian students and
00:02:21.460 visitors that their safety may be at risk in Canada.
00:02:24.840 The Canada-India bilateral relationship, which I've been tracking for many years, was already
00:02:29.480 on the brink, especially under the Trudeau government.
00:02:33.220 It is now spiraling downward, ever downward, in a way never seen before.
00:02:38.180 Now, at the time of recording this, my sources in India suggest that India's Ministry of External
00:02:42.900 Affairs is getting ready to cancel the visas and overseas citizenship cards of Indo-Canadians
00:02:48.960 whom they believe are linked to the Khalistan movement.
00:02:52.080 If that happens, we can probably expect some retaliation from Canada, making it harder for
00:02:57.620 Indians to study, work, or visit Canada.
00:03:01.000 To make sense of all of this is my friend, Abhijit Ayur Mitra.
00:03:05.460 He is a security and foreign policy expert based in New Delhi and a senior fellow at the Institute
00:03:11.800 of Peace and Conflict Studies, also based in New Delhi.
00:03:15.040 He has commented quite extensively on this ongoing diplomatic saga between India and Canada,
00:03:22.200 and it's my great pleasure to welcome to the Rupa Subramanir show.
00:03:26.640 Thanks, Rupa.
00:03:27.400 It's always great to catch up with you and finally get to see your face after years.
00:03:32.940 Yeah, no, no, no.
00:03:33.860 It's a real pleasure.
00:03:34.600 You look just as handsome as ever.
00:03:37.560 Thank you.
00:03:39.060 So let's get into the discussion, Abhi.
00:03:42.940 So what did you make of Justin Trudeau's explosive speech in Parliament in the House of Commons
00:03:49.500 on the opening day of the fall session, accusing agents of India as being responsible for the
00:03:56.340 targeted killing of Khalistani activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar?
00:04:00.320 Look, it just smacked off politics from day one, because this is not how friends behave
00:04:07.560 with each other.
00:04:08.060 We need to remember when I say Khalistani, I'm just talking about the sort of elite subsection 0.99
00:04:13.100 of the community, which have this almost vice-like feudal grip through terror of the community.
00:04:20.900 I myself have suffered from this in Melbourne when I lived there.
00:04:24.360 You know, being a Tamilian, I had to hide my Tamil identity in the last phases of the
00:04:28.720 Sri Lankan civil war because, you know, there was a whole sort of elite capture of the Tamil
00:04:35.160 diaspora out there, which used to extort money from the community.
00:04:38.240 So what's happened is I think Justin's given into that, and I'll tell you why.
00:04:43.440 See, in a normal first world country, as I understand it, a country with the rule of law,
00:04:50.160 the way things proceed is you have an investigation, you get to where the leads no longer are traceable
00:04:57.820 within Canada, and then you approach.
00:05:00.520 With proof, you approach through intelligence sharing your friends and the country where you
00:05:08.360 think the crime trail leads to.
00:05:11.100 Usually, the country where the crime trail leads to then collaborates with you, failing which
00:05:16.340 you ask your friends to pressurize that country.
00:05:19.080 In this case, it was the five eyes, you know, New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and the US.
00:05:26.260 Now, it turns out that he has gone and spoken to the other five eyes, they have agreed to
00:05:34.240 intervene, which is, you know, basically, act as a courier, nothing more, and say, you know,
00:05:40.540 New Delhi, intervene.
00:05:41.900 Now, as I understand from my sources in New Delhi, they're like, intervene on what?
00:05:47.440 Give us the leads.
00:05:49.000 You don't have any hard intel to give us.
00:05:52.160 You've given us no leads except to say, oh, you might be involved in it.
00:05:55.700 Tell us who came, who are you accusing, which flight did he come with, and we'll trace him
00:06:02.600 for you.
00:06:03.820 None of that.
00:06:05.380 Apparently, his entire tirade with Modi at the sidelines of the G20 summit was all generics,
00:06:11.280 zero specifics.
00:06:12.760 There was no intel sharing.
00:06:14.160 There was nothing.
00:06:14.720 Now, assume India and Canada do not have the level of strategic trust for intel sharing.
00:06:19.920 We both have extremely robust intel sharing with the Americans, which is meant to be utilized
00:06:25.640 precisely at a time like this when there is no mutual trust, but there is mutual trust
00:06:30.280 with America to do that intel sharing for that intel to have been given.
00:06:35.560 But none has been shared.
00:06:37.080 Every single thing I've heard in Delhi was it was generic requests to help, which India 0.99
00:06:44.800 was not predisposed to do because India has anyway given very specific inputs about terrorism
00:06:52.020 and terrorist activities being carried out.
00:06:54.900 Now, I mentioned this very carefully because you have to interrogate me about this later when
00:06:59.700 I say terrorist.
00:07:00.600 I'm using the Indian government lingo.
00:07:02.860 It's gotten drilled into my brain.
00:07:05.500 It is actually incorrect.
00:07:07.540 It is a whole load of criminal activity which the Indian government describes as terrorism
00:07:12.360 because remember, there is no Khalistan movement at the moment.
00:07:15.240 There is a whole lot of organized crime happening in Punjab in the name of Khalistan, but there
00:07:20.320 is no Khalistani terrorism or secession happening at the moment.
00:07:23.000 The, you know, the Khalistan bit, the secession, the creation of a state is all kind of post facto
00:07:31.180 hitched onto it to make crime seem respectable, right?
00:07:37.840 And that's my reading of the situation that Justin Trudeau and his intelligence operatives
00:07:45.820 probably understand this very well.
00:07:47.980 They specifically did not want to share or even possibly have specifics to share with India.
00:07:55.180 They did not want the reciprocal agreement of exporting crime gangs, which is what you
00:08:01.880 see has happened with the so-called Khalistan movement in Canada, essentially a criminal
00:08:06.380 enterprise, back to India in spite of very specific requests.
00:08:11.940 And he thought that America, UK, Australia will all go along with it, which they did not.
00:08:18.360 They just conveyed the message and that was it.
00:08:20.680 Yeah.
00:08:21.060 So, I mean, you make an interesting distinction between terrorism and criminal related activities.
00:08:27.980 I was under the impression that Hardeeb Singh Nijjar was actually wanted on terror related
00:08:32.300 charges back in India.
00:08:33.720 So is that still accurate?
00:08:37.260 Absolutely, it is.
00:08:38.180 So Nijjar, we need to separate the Khalistan movement from Nijjar, because remember, what 0.99
00:08:44.380 happens is, you tell me one terror movement, I think True North and you study this a lot
00:08:49.520 in Canada, you could tell me maybe if it's different in Canada, but there isn't a single
00:08:55.000 terror movement we know that does not have intrinsic and deep links with organized crime, because
00:09:02.160 you know, the fundraising for these movements has to be through extortion, drugs, basically
00:09:07.700 systemic corruption or corrosion of the system, where, you know, systemic inefficiencies are
00:09:14.580 employed to generate the profits, right?
00:09:18.040 Now, mostly that's what it is, because remember, if you're generating funds out there, where exactly
00:09:24.480 is it going in India?
00:09:25.380 Because you haven't seen a big bomb blast in Punjab, or a major killing in Punjab in the
00:09:30.820 last few years for terror related activities.
00:09:33.720 It goes in to settling criminal scores.
00:09:38.320 So you even look at the bomb blast that Nijjar is wanted for. 0.98
00:09:45.100 Nijjar is wanted for something very specific.
00:09:46.960 That's a pure terror activity, but he's also wanted for a lot of criminal, associated criminal
00:09:52.960 activity.
00:09:53.980 The terror activity is something he went in 2013 and 14, I think, to Pakistan to meet this
00:10:02.020 guy called Tara something.
00:10:05.100 And the same Tara guy then he is wanted for, because he's openly admitted to being behind
00:10:12.460 the bomb blast that killed the Punjab chief minister, Bayant Singh, the last Congress chief
00:10:17.620 minister, the last to last Congress chief minister of Punjab in 1996.
00:10:22.440 He lived in Pakistan.
00:10:23.980 Nijjar has gone to meet him.
00:10:26.480 This Tara fellow has traveled to Thailand, which has an extradition treaty with India. 1.00
00:10:30.860 Dirty old man. 0.90
00:10:31.620 God knows what he got up to out there. 0.99
00:10:33.540 And the Thais obviously caught him and extradited him to India.
00:10:38.360 And from that point on, it seems this Nijjar guy has taken over. 1.00
00:10:44.360 Now, you have, I think, if you've been on Twitter today, you've seen this video of this
00:10:49.120 man wielding and firing AK-47s.
00:10:52.340 Now, anybody who fires an AK-47 knows that this is not a precision rifle.
00:10:56.980 This isn't for hunting caribou in the great Canadian wild.
00:11:00.180 This is an extremely inaccurate weapon that fires lots of high velocity bullets.
00:11:05.320 That's meant to lay down cover fire while Russian snipers then take out specific targets. 0.87
00:11:11.620 This is a terror weapon.
00:11:13.920 It is not a hunting weapon.
00:11:17.160 And yet that is what he's seen firing.
00:11:19.880 His whole range of ammunition that he's seen firing and training people on are much more
00:11:24.940 suited to terror activities than they are even remotely linked to hunting in any form
00:11:29.480 of way.
00:11:29.820 So, you have videos showing him training up people at guns.
00:11:34.800 You have him with a clear, and by the way, this Tara Singh fellow is serving a life sentence 1.00
00:11:39.820 at the moment for the killing of the Punjab chief minister.
00:11:45.560 How do you not, under what part of Canadian criminal law is this fellow not a criminal or at least
00:11:55.280 a person of interest to be interrogated, given his own record of consistently lying, subverting
00:12:04.040 the Canadian system, breaking law after law after law in Canada, and then being given citizenship
00:12:12.060 on an unknown basis in 2015?
00:12:15.080 How is he even given that citizenship?
00:12:16.460 Well, this is a question that I've asked myself on X or Twitter, whatever we're calling it
00:12:23.980 today.
00:12:24.580 But, no, absolutely, Abhi.
00:12:27.360 I mean, I'm, you know, an immigrant here myself, and I've had to work very hard to be
00:12:32.660 here legally, unlike Mr. Hardeep Singh Nijer.
00:12:37.820 And it is quite extraordinary.
00:12:40.400 I mean, it certainly raises a lot of questions.
00:12:42.640 He came to Canada under false pretext under, you know, and then applied for a legal residency,
00:12:51.380 but he was denied because they didn't believe his story.
00:12:54.200 He alleged that he claimed that he was in a prison in India, and he was tortured by Indian
00:13:01.040 police.
00:13:01.420 And the immigration panel was like, no, I think this whole story sounds fabricated, and
00:13:05.900 we're denying your application.
00:13:07.020 And then he marries a woman in British Columbia, and then they reject his application yet again,
00:13:13.020 saying this is a marriage of convenience.
00:13:15.200 And then I don't know what happened between then to the time that he got his citizenship
00:13:19.280 in 2015.
00:13:20.360 So it certainly raises a lot of questions.
00:13:23.280 But, you know, going back to this, this is, even if India, you know, was behind this, 0.65
00:13:30.340 or, you know, let's just assume that India was behind this.
00:13:34.060 There's a way of dealing with this sort of thing with an ally, you know, through lots
00:13:40.660 of talks, back channel talks, intelligence sharing, whatever.
00:13:45.460 The dramatic way in which Justin Trudeau went about doing this by, by making these allegations
00:13:50.920 in the House of Commons.
00:13:53.380 So he's protected by parliamentary privilege.
00:13:57.000 Right?
00:13:57.820 Yeah.
00:13:57.940 Not just parliamentary privilege.
00:14:01.760 He's also, you know, in a sense, absolved of responsibility, if things turn out to be
00:14:10.480 incorrect later on.
00:14:12.520 Because you can't sue as far as I, I think it's the same system in Canada as it is in India,
00:14:18.180 where you can't be sued for anything you see on the floor of the House.
00:14:20.720 So, you know, there's no perjury, contempt, or whatever that applies on the floor of the
00:14:26.260 House.
00:14:27.780 See, the problem here is, when Israel carries out targeted killings, which they do quite
00:14:34.740 often, these things are handled in private.
00:14:38.180 I think we all are old enough to remember what happened in the Dubai killings about seven,
00:14:44.200 eight years back, where, you know, the Israelis botched a killing, or rather they left a trail.
00:14:50.320 The Dubai guys came after the Israelis, but they'd all fled.
00:14:54.180 And these agents had fled to Poland and Germany because they were in Polish and German passports.
00:14:58.880 They were arrested on smaller charges, and they were extradited to back to Israel, knowing
00:15:03.940 full well that they would not get extradited ever to Dubai.
00:15:08.120 Today, Dubai would probably even collaborate with Israel in these kinds of things.
00:15:12.760 Now, let's be clear, this, assuming the Indian government did this, this would not be an
00:15:18.260 extrajudicial execution.
00:15:20.120 It would be a quasi-judicial execution, which is something Canada agrees to and has legally
00:15:27.440 endorsed.
00:15:28.060 If you go to my timeline, I've tweeted out Justin Trudeau's tweet, when the US carried
00:15:34.760 out a targeted killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al-Qaeda number two, I think by that time
00:15:39.460 it'd become the number one.
00:15:40.660 I don't know what it was.
00:15:42.700 What is a targeted killing?
00:15:44.540 It's a very specific taking out.
00:15:46.560 Now, if you go to the jurisprudence of targeted killing, which was, you know, the accepted
00:15:53.280 jurisprudence is by Dr. Daniel Reisner, who was the, you know, he was the legal head of
00:16:00.260 the Israel Defense Forces.
00:16:03.460 He's also a professor at the ICT, the ICT college in Herzliya.
00:16:09.460 I think he was there at one of the conferences that we did, you and I, in Israel.
00:16:13.560 He laid down five, six criteria for what made it legal.
00:16:19.100 The first was repeated use, which Canada has endorsed with America and its alliance participation
00:16:24.480 in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and all of this.
00:16:27.860 So Canada has agreed by repeated use.
00:16:30.800 The second is public endorsement, which Justin Trudeau himself has over the killing of Ayman
00:16:35.960 al-Zawahiri.
00:16:36.540 The third has been, if you are in a territory where there is no reasonable way of being able
00:16:45.820 to extradite you, which Canada has proven over and over again, that in spite of credible
00:16:51.480 intelligence with proof provided to Canadian authorities, they refuse to extradite these
00:16:57.840 people.
00:16:58.140 And by the way, Justin Trudeau's father also did the same thing.
00:17:02.840 That guy who was responsible for the bombing of Air India 182, Pierre Trudeau refused to
00:17:09.980 extradite him, citing, do you know what was the excuse used, Rupa?
00:17:14.520 No.
00:17:15.300 Please tell us.
00:17:16.000 It was, you don't accept the queen as head of government, as head of state. 0.99
00:17:23.920 So you may be in the Commonwealth and we may have an extradition pact with you, but we will
00:17:28.900 not because the queen is not your head of government.
00:17:31.540 She's merely the head of the Commonwealth for you.
00:17:33.380 Therefore, we're not going to extradite.
00:17:34.880 And a year later, that fellow went on to bomb AI 182.
00:17:38.300 So what Canada does historically has been, they will cite, they accept the fact that everybody
00:17:49.120 that India wants is actually required for crime or terror or something like that. 0.62
00:17:54.480 Even yesterday, there was a political assassination.
00:17:58.080 Again, it was a political crime, drugs-based assassination that happened of a Congress leader
00:18:04.180 in Punjab, where a fellow sitting somewhere in Toronto has claimed responsibility for it
00:18:09.480 because he's a big ganglord in Punjab while sitting in, well, somewhere in Ontario, not
00:18:14.500 in Toronto.
00:18:15.940 And there will be no extradition for it.
00:18:18.640 Because what happens is every time it comes to the extradition phase, the Canadian government
00:18:23.220 then cites their political opposition.
00:18:26.080 So what happens here is you have this well-rehearsed routine where you carry out criminal drug-related
00:18:32.980 shootings, you pass it off as political, then you make political statements against India
00:18:39.700 and Canada, and you use the political shield to claim that this is a political extradition 0.99
00:18:44.960 as opposed to a criminal extradition, and Canada always falls for these suckers. 0.98
00:18:51.260 Right. 0.99
00:18:51.800 Now, understand, I don't think the Canadian system is dumb. 0.94
00:18:56.180 I think everybody knows exactly what's going on. 0.75
00:18:58.960 But we all know that Justin Trudeau kind of uses this kind of identity politics and especially
00:19:04.460 extremely radical, violent identity politics practitioners on the ground to extend his control
00:19:13.540 over a certain system.
00:19:15.220 So this is what happened.
00:19:16.680 And this is what you see happening even today, where all Indian extradition requests are denied,
00:19:22.900 citing political refusal or political dissidence as defense against actual physical crimes.
00:19:31.700 Interesting.
00:19:32.680 So anyway, sorry, I lost my train of thought.
00:19:36.340 Daniel Reisner.
00:19:37.460 The fourth criteria was it must not be used as punishment for a past crime.
00:19:43.060 It has to be preventive, not preventive, it has to be preemptive.
00:19:50.360 There's a very subtle legal difference in legal concepts of war out there. 0.98
00:19:55.680 Preemptive is, you know, this guy is going to kill me, therefore I kill him today. 0.97
00:19:59.180 No, there has to be imminence. 0.99
00:20:01.200 You need to know the gun is in the hand and he's coming to kill you and then it becomes
00:20:04.960 preemption.
00:20:05.840 There's a very clear legal definition.
00:20:07.160 So it has to be preempting an ongoing crime, et cetera, et cetera.
00:20:12.460 So Daniel Reisner laid out these criteria.
00:20:15.620 Canada accepts these criteria.
00:20:18.160 They've been going with the flow.
00:20:20.180 They've acquiesced in British and especially lots of American targeted killings.
00:20:25.540 So I really don't know when he talks about sovereignty, what he's talking about exactly.
00:20:32.140 I mean, how does he explain, how does he contrast his explanation with that tweet that he put
00:20:38.080 out regarding Ayman al-Zawai?
00:20:40.260 Yeah.
00:20:40.640 Well, speaking of contradictions, so less than 24 hours after he makes these extraordinary
00:20:45.920 allegations, there's a bit of a climb down.
00:20:50.280 And I think you've commented on it as well.
00:20:52.560 He said he didn't want to escalate things with India.
00:20:55.340 He didn't want to antagonize India.
00:20:57.260 It all sounds rather bizarre.
00:20:59.160 What was your reading of it?
00:21:01.520 What are your sources on the ground in India saying about his climb down less than 24 hours
00:21:10.760 later?
00:21:12.940 Apparently, it had a lot to do, if you noticed, how your high commissioner to Delhi, Cameron
00:21:20.100 McKay, left the foreign ministry just within four minutes of entering it in an extremely nasty
00:21:25.240 mood.
00:21:25.580 He virtually assaulted the ANI reporter on his way out.
00:21:29.040 So what ends up happening is it turns out that the Indians told him in no uncertain way that
00:21:36.520 they have lots of juice on Liberal Party leaders, Liberal Party Sikh leaders, especially your former 0.99
00:21:47.260 defense minister, Sajjan, having lots of dealings with criminal gangs in Punjab.
00:21:53.280 Because you see, this is a very toxic environment.
00:21:57.120 Crime is fungible.
00:21:59.060 Punjab is one of the most backward states because, you know, in 1991, when we had our big 1.00
00:22:04.220 moment of leap to industrialization and liberalization, Punjab was still in the throes of an insurgency
00:22:12.160 and it never modernized.
00:22:13.460 It's still been an extremely feudal agrarian state where 20 percent of the population essentially
00:22:19.260 controls all the politics, all the land, everything.
00:22:22.640 And a lot of these people who become so-called, quote unquote, community leaders in Canada belong
00:22:28.580 to that ruling class.
00:22:30.020 And they have deep, deep, deep fingers in organized crime back in Punjab. 0.94
00:22:35.720 In many ways, it's like the, you know, the Pakistani army diaspora.
00:22:39.600 Pakistanis are fundamentally good, decent people, but the army that controls the system is the 1.00
00:22:44.920 sort of nexus of industrialists, landowners, the big landowners and the army.
00:22:50.580 All their kids don't fight in Kashmir.
00:22:54.900 It's only the poor people's kids who die in Kashmir. 0.99
00:22:57.520 All the rich ones are sitting somewhere in Toronto or Washington, D.C.
00:23:01.760 or Boston or London, living the high life, using Pakistan to extort wealth. 1.00
00:23:07.440 And that's what goes on out here.
00:23:09.600 And apparently they have lots, lots of juice on lots of liberal leaders,
00:23:15.640 essentially involved in crime in Punjab.
00:23:22.460 So let's talk about the reaction of Canada's allies to these allegations.
00:23:29.580 As you and I have noted on X, that the response has been very tepid.
00:23:35.820 It's been lukewarm.
00:23:37.820 There was one report in the Washington Post which said that the Americans didn't even want
00:23:41.460 to get involved in this.
00:23:43.120 What do you make of this?
00:23:44.920 You know, for me, the question I keep coming back to is, why on earth would you make these
00:23:50.060 allegations?
00:23:51.720 You know, what were you hoping to accomplish by this?
00:23:54.380 Did you actually think that the very same, your allies would just pick your side over
00:24:00.800 India, given that India is a rising economic giant and an important counterweight to China
00:24:07.360 as far as the Indo-Pacific is concerned?
00:24:10.720 I honestly don't know what this man was thinking because, I mean, you tell me, Rupa.
00:24:15.440 We all know you never go and do a public presentation till you have all your facts in hand and you
00:24:22.760 know exactly what's coming at you.
00:24:24.720 You know, before your PhD or your thesis defense, you always do several mock defenses before your
00:24:32.940 friends and try to make it as brutal as possible.
00:24:36.240 This guy neither does his homework properly, as we've discussed before.
00:24:42.180 He also didn't do his groundwork.
00:24:44.080 He's gone to all the allies.
00:24:46.760 The allies have all given him lukewarm responses.
00:24:50.220 Why did he need to go make it public, knowing full well that the allies aren't going to
00:24:54.980 stand by him?
00:24:55.800 None of the Five Eyes have stood by him. 1.00
00:24:58.580 You compare this with, say, what the Five Eyes did for, you know, the Kremlin's poisoning 0.59
00:25:04.180 of Litvinenko, the FSB defector who then got poisoned by Polonium-210.
00:25:11.320 They all stood by and they coordinated the expulsion of Russian diplomats, etc., etc.
00:25:18.440 None of them are standing by Canada and Trudeau.
00:25:22.640 And it looks very bad for the Five Eyes agreement for an ally to be left out in the cold like
00:25:28.220 that.
00:25:29.400 But then what does it tell you that Trudeau has gravely misread what the allies told him?
00:25:37.440 I think this comes down to Melanie Jolie because she's clearly not been doing her job.
00:25:42.540 I don't know what she has conveyed to these people and what those people or has she misinterpreted
00:25:48.480 it and misconveyed it back to Trudeau because none of them have stood.
00:25:53.380 What have they said?
00:25:54.460 They've said it's very serious.
00:25:56.120 Any murder anywhere is an extremely serious crime.
00:25:59.340 They have said we have conveyed Canadian concerns to Delhi, which is what you do.
00:26:03.180 The real intervention comes when people take sides and condemn.
00:26:07.740 Have you seen anything remotely close to a condemnation or taking sides other than saying,
00:26:12.900 yeah, we received messages.
00:26:14.200 It's serious.
00:26:14.960 We pass the messages.
00:26:17.680 No, I haven't.
00:26:18.900 It's all been just diplomatic speak and rather muted, actually.
00:26:24.260 I shared a Department of Defense.
00:26:26.400 And the UK was the worst.
00:26:28.480 The UK was the worst because when they were asked about this, they said, oh, we're not
00:26:33.080 halting a trade deal with India.
00:26:34.400 They weren't even asked about the trade deal and they immediately switched to the trade
00:26:37.060 deal with India.
00:26:37.660 No.
00:26:38.140 And I just shared a tweet from the Department of Defense this morning.
00:26:42.120 It's almost like they were trying to send a message.
00:26:44.740 They were saying our priority is to strengthen ties with India because it's a key ally in our
00:26:51.720 Indo-Pacific strategy.
00:26:52.740 So, you know, you look at the contrast, right, between Canada.
00:26:57.060 Now, Canada has alienated both India and China.
00:27:00.960 What is that?
00:27:01.740 Two-fifths of humanity?
00:27:03.440 Three right there.
00:27:05.760 And China, we know it's a totalitarian state.
00:27:09.940 There are reasons to be very suspicious of China given its role in the pandemic and that
00:27:16.180 sort of thing.
00:27:17.520 But India, I mean, you know, a fellow democracy, it's not a tin pot dictatorship.
00:27:22.880 Sure, it's flawed.
00:27:24.140 As you know, I've been a critic of the current Indian government.
00:27:29.360 And so, you know, it has its issues.
00:27:33.160 But, you know, just to do this in this manner, just, you know, it's just mind boggling.
00:27:38.660 But I want to ask you about things that have happened in the last couple of days.
00:27:44.140 You know, events have moved super fast in the last few days.
00:27:47.920 There have been tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions and travel advisories.
00:27:52.840 Now, what are your sources saying in India?
00:27:55.560 Like, I saw you sharing a tweet saying that there could be a possibility that the India's
00:28:00.920 Ministry of External Affairs, which is the Canadian version of global affairs, is now,
00:28:08.040 is like Canada's global affairs.
00:28:10.120 India's seriously considering cancelling visas and overseas citizenship cards of Indo-Canadians.
00:28:19.140 Is it all Indo-Canadians or Indo-Canadians with ties to the Khalistan movement?
00:28:25.720 Or they suspect these individuals of having ties to the Khalistan movement?
00:28:30.620 Can you clarify?
00:28:31.900 Look, my sources are telling me, and this, mind you, my sources are intelligent sources.
00:28:39.320 Ultimately, there's a political decision that needs to be made.
00:28:42.540 And the political masters will, I don't have sources out there right now.
00:28:47.080 I've burned all my bridges out there.
00:28:48.540 But the list right now is they've gone through all the videos of a world Sikh organization and
00:28:58.600 other related Khalistani organization protests and things like that.
00:29:03.680 They've also made up very specifically, they've called out a list within that of Sikh liberal
00:29:10.520 party members who they suspect, whose social media accounts have been scanning for
00:29:17.580 Khalistani literature or pro-terrorism as they view it, pro-terrorism, whatever.
00:29:25.920 But most importantly, was something that went under the radar, which I have tweeted, is a
00:29:31.920 list of about 24 Indian criminals, known murderers, extortionists and rapists who are hiding out
00:29:41.460 in Canada at the moment, which Canada, we don't know how they got into Canada.
00:29:46.280 We know they're in Canada and we don't know why the police in Canada isn't taking action
00:29:50.180 against them.
00:29:51.540 So that's been one part.
00:29:52.680 The other part's been very specifically targeting liberal party members who are close to Sikh
00:30:01.340 separatist politics.
00:30:03.300 And the third has been anybody who appears on these WSO protest videos or any of these
00:30:10.260 Khalistani protests.
00:30:12.160 It is going to be called down, I presume, because, you know, different interest groups will come
00:30:16.800 into play when the political decision is taken.
00:30:20.600 But yes, you are going to apparently see quite a few cancellations of these sort of long term
00:30:26.740 visas.
00:30:27.400 It's not exactly dual nationality, as you well know, but it's basically all the rights except 1.00
00:30:33.780 the right to vote.
00:30:35.160 Okay.
00:30:35.880 Yeah, no, absolutely.
00:30:37.680 So final question for you, Abib.
00:30:39.500 What happens next?
00:30:41.260 Where do we go from here?
00:30:42.860 Do you think we've hit rock bottom or is there worse to come in the worsening bilateral relationship?
00:30:54.740 Do you think there's a serious possibility that this relationship can be repaired as long
00:31:01.600 as Justin Trudeau is still prime minister of Canada?
00:31:04.200 Look, Rupa, I can tell you this very honestly.
00:31:08.640 I've been speaking to a lot of people in government without exception.
00:31:12.000 And, you know, India is a third world country where no minister or bureaucrat ever agrees.
00:31:18.260 You know, if you've got 10 ministers in the room, you've got 24 opinions.
00:31:22.100 This is one of the things they're very clear about, that this relationship is unsalvageable
00:31:26.400 under Justin Trudeau.
00:31:27.740 Justin Trudeau has to go.
00:31:28.780 They are going to do everything to make life miserable for him from here.
00:31:34.000 And, you know, there are many ways of doing this.
00:31:36.600 There isn't a single big Canadian Sikh businessman who does not have business interests back in
00:31:43.300 Canada, especially a lot in the Liberal Party.
00:31:46.520 They're looking at lots of options.
00:31:49.880 And Trudeau, as far as they're concerned, is persona non grata.
00:31:53.540 Everything is fair game as far as he's concerned.
00:31:56.840 And they are going to be very measured.
00:32:01.320 You know, India is not one of those countries that goes berserk like China and starts using
00:32:06.180 foul language and, you know, crude threats.
00:32:09.960 It's very measured, which is why I found the statement this morning, the travel advisories.
00:32:15.020 And let's face it, nobody really, I mean, how many Canadians do you know modify their
00:32:19.260 advice while traveling abroad based on a travel advisory?
00:32:23.280 Does anybody take a travel advisory seriously?
00:32:25.560 No, they don't.
00:32:26.060 It's it's the people who are have had their seventh booster shot and who are masked.
00:32:34.580 Those those guys pay attention to these things more than anything.
00:32:38.560 But they're a small French minority.
00:32:41.400 Yeah, we call them vankers in India.
00:32:43.100 I don't know what you call them in Canada.
00:32:44.840 In India, I think the French for it is le vanker.
00:32:48.940 But I don't know, I think I'm just guessing that's what it is.
00:32:52.700 We should conform with bilingual laws.
00:32:54.900 So what happens is nobody takes these advisories seriously.
00:32:59.620 And yet you look at the language in the advisories.
00:33:02.160 Advisories are used for political signaling, short of action.
00:33:06.560 You don't want to take action, but you're signaling something.
00:33:09.960 It says very clearly politically condoned violence and hate speech.
00:33:17.100 Which means India is putting the blame for all the political action that's been happening against India out here.
00:33:27.400 The displays of the putative, the desire to carry out terrorist activities or like that Gurpatran Singh Panu, whatever he is saying, asking all Hindus to clear out from Canada.
00:33:40.700 It has been laid at the door of Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Friedland, and Melanie Jolie.
00:33:49.560 It is unmistakably a laying of command responsibility.
00:33:54.420 And you know and I know exactly what command responsibility means in criminal terms.
00:33:59.380 It is laying the foundation for a future criminal prosecution of Canada's current leadership when they're out of power.
00:34:06.720 I think that is the logical place where that particular statement leads to.
00:34:13.000 It is, we've still not reached the bottom.
00:34:16.300 The bottom is many, many months to go.
00:34:18.960 I think it will continue to, the whole will continue, keep getting deeper as long as Justin Trudeau is in power.
00:34:25.620 And you know, Justin's kind of brought this on himself.
00:34:27.520 If you saw his interaction with Xi Jinping, you know, he's just pointlessly passive aggressive.
00:34:35.460 You can be honest, you can be straightforward with somebody, and you can have a perfectly, you can convey perfectly nasty messages with being perfectly polite without acting too smart by half.
00:34:49.280 If you see, if you just go through that thing with Trudeau, he loves jargon.
00:34:55.480 He loves hiding behind jargon and language, and he thinks this is peak diplomacy.
00:35:00.240 It is not.
00:35:01.480 It never has been.
00:35:03.240 He's done this to himself.
00:35:04.660 He's got nobody to blame.
00:35:07.040 He thinks it's going to yield him a Hail Mary in the elections.
00:35:11.360 Best of luck to him.
00:35:12.500 But the Indian government's also made a mistake.
00:35:14.920 You see, the Indian government, the big mistake we've made, is going on calling this terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.
00:35:21.500 We've been playing to Trudeau's narrative, claiming that this is political crimes,
00:35:27.240 as opposed to what it actually is, which is a political patina on a druggy gun culture extortion criminal underworld that operates across Punjab.
00:35:42.700 Because, you know, Punjab has the highest drug addiction rate of any state in India.
00:35:46.100 It's a chronic problem.
00:35:47.640 I would urge your viewers to go watch a lot of these Punjabi language movies on Netflix, translated into English and French,
00:35:56.800 which show you the extent of the problem out there.
00:35:59.580 India should be harping on the criminal aspects of this, because there is not one chap who is associated with Khalistan,
00:36:08.480 who is not in one way or another associated with the drug running, gun running.
00:36:12.540 Or extortion gang somewhere, or land extortion gang somewhere in Punjab.
00:36:18.440 Yeah, I know I said that was going to be my last question, but this question has been really bugging me,
00:36:23.380 and this will be my last question, and I know you have to run into it, run to another meeting.
00:36:28.400 You know, so at the height of the, you know, the two Michaels, as you're aware of the two Michaels,
00:36:37.320 two Canadians who were imprisoned in a Chinese prison and were accused of being spies or whatnot,
00:36:47.480 they languished in this prison cell for two years or more.
00:36:51.560 And there was no tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats, as far as I'm aware.
00:36:56.720 And, you know, why is it that Justin Trudeau went after India in this way, but not after China?
00:37:02.880 A very good question. I really don't know.
00:37:05.780 I guess it's to do with personal interest, that the Sikh members of his cabinet have business interests in India,
00:37:16.200 but he doesn't. Most of his business interests would be kind of Klaus Schwab and WTO linked
00:37:23.840 and mostly tied into China and manufacturing.
00:37:26.680 I don't know.
00:37:27.760 Just the sheer levels of conflict of interest that this man has.
00:37:31.860 You know, that the island somewhere in the Bahamas or Caribbean or what have you.
00:37:37.680 The amount of conflict of interest you see in this man is so enormous.
00:37:42.920 Do I think they have compromise on him? No.
00:37:45.720 But do I think that they have some kind of financial hold on him in terms of business interests?
00:37:52.140 Yes, I think quite emphatically, yeah.
00:37:53.780 Well, on that note, I'm going to have to leave it there, Abhi,
00:37:57.860 but it was a real pleasure having you on my show.
00:38:01.240 And thank you for sharing your insights with us.
00:38:04.160 And I really hope to have you back soon.
00:38:07.140 Thank you so much, Rubra.
00:38:08.200 It's always a pleasure talking to you.
00:38:09.920 Thank you.