In order to deflect attention from his own lapses, Trudeau has sought to pin the blame on India for a gangland murder of the sort that has become common in his country, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
There was a time when Canada was among the most desirable countries to be a resident of. The observance by citizens of law and order was the norm, and violence was rare. Not anymore.
It is astonishing to witness the casual, almost careless, manner in which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is governing a country that borders the United States and is in terms of territory among the largest in the world. To ensure a majority in the Canadian parliament, Trudeau has had to pander to a radical political party that is headed by an individual who is in close communication with groups engaged in the propagation of violence against select democracies.
The head of the party has been transparent about his backing for individuals who openly call for violence. Not merely that, they collect funds to be sent to the planners and perpetrators of such violence. All this is condoned by Trudeau in the name of “freedom of expression”. Osama bin Laden chose the wrong country to retire to, for Pakistan has long been honeycombed by security agents of the US, the victim of the 9/11 attacks. In Trudeau’s Canada, he would have been much safer, as indeed several individuals in that country are actively seeking to harm US interests on behalf of a superpower on the other side of the Pacific.
To most individuals, the taking out of Bin Laden in Abbottabad was a matter for celebration, but in Pakistan, the doctor who led the US to the location of the principal perpetrator of 9/11 was jailed. It is a measure of the depths of ingratitude of the US state for those who have done it service. That the man was not rewarded for his courageous and principled action but was sent to prison by the Pakistani authorities, without any visible protest from Washington.
Where gross injustices are concerned, it is a shame that none of the speakers used the rostrum provided by the UNGA to point to the manner in which the very Kurdish formations that broke the back of ISIS detachments have been under attack by President Erdogan as a consequence of the selling out of their territory and safety by President Trump. Or the way in which the people of Afghanistan were surrendered to the Taliban by President Biden in the name of ending a “forever war”. That mistake will cost the US dear, but by the time this becomes clear, Biden will have retired to Delaware to begin work on his memoirs.
“Use and throw” seems to have long been the watchword where US policymakers are concerned, so it comes as no surprise that several countries are beginning to look elsewhere in order to improve the security situation facing them.
However, when it comes to actions that seem tailor made to harm the national interest of the countries where they are being implemented, few would be able to beat the record of Justin Trudeau, under whose rule the quality of life in Canada has plummeted even as taxes have risen. A growing number of locations in 2020s Canada are beginning to resemble New York in the 1920s, the period when Mafiosi bloomed. Of course, rather than blame himself for the rise in violence, Prime Minister Trudeau is pointing to an imaginary “foreign hand”, in this case India. Scraps of planted and slanted news items placed in a few media outlets are all that the Canadian PM is able to offer as “proof” of his absurd claim.
It is impossible to believe that Trudeau has been kept unaware of the usually efficient security system in place in Canada of the way in which even a member of his own Cabinet has been known to be soliciting funds on behalf of his contacts for the express purpose of creating mayhem and committing murder in India. There was a time when, owing to the influence of a regional party in the state of Punjab, several Canadian citizens identified as hostile to India were given visas to enter India and seek to create mayhem in the world’s most populous democracy.
Fortunately, this is no longer the case, and Indian visas are these days being denied to those Canadian citizens connected to groups promoting violence and terror. Punjab in the 1980s went through hell as a consequence of the activities of the very elements who are (under the umbrella of state inaction being provided by Trudeau) seeking to bring back that hell in Punjab. Fortunately for Indo-Canadian relations, voters in Canada seem to be on track to ensure that the dynast with an obvious sense of entitlement who is now the country’s Prime Minister loses his present job.
However, so long as Trudeau remains in office, India needs to be on guard, given that his government depends for its survival on a few MPs that are close to a particular High Commission and to a particular embassy in Ottawa that are neighbours of India and are both fixated on jointly working to destabilize India. Judging by his behaviour, it is clear that Prime Minister Trudeau is ready to sacrifice his conscience at the altar of the high office he presently holds. Within the records maintained by the Canadian government, there exists voluminous evidence of the way in which a few citizens have been seeking to enrich themselves by fastening themselves to the cause of weakening India, aware that such an approach would lead to handouts from wealthy donors intent on the same objective.
Although it is unlikely that Trudeau would wish such information to become public knowledge, there may be whistleblowers in Ottawa who in the interests of transparency ensure that information on the activities of the proponents of violence and murder who are being backed by Trudeau become known to the Canadian public. The killings that are taking place in parts of Canada are the result of a falling out within the gangster community as a consequence of disputes over the distribution of the moneys earned through their activities. The deterioration in the degree of safety and security enjoyed by n citizens is the direct consequence of the inaction on the part of Trudeau to deal with the proliferation of criminal gangs that are operating in Canada.
In order to deflect attention from his own lapses, Trudeau has sought to pin the blame on India for a gangland murder of the sort that has become common in his country. Falsely accusing India of such a crime will, of course, earn Prime Minister Trudeau brownie points in the Peoples Republic of China, a country with which his family has long had a close association. Even better from Xi Jinping’s point of view, Justin Trudeau is seeking to decouple the Atlantic Alliance from India, a country that has become an essential partner in the common task of ensuring a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific. He has been trying to get the US, the UK and Australia in particular to join him in condemning India. The bad news for him is that the relationship that has developed between India and the US in particular is far too strong for the exertions of Trudeau to shake.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been reported as having invited US President Joe Biden to be the Chief Guest at the 2024 Republic Day parade in New Delhi. Other reports are that the other Quad partners (Japan and Australia) are also being invited. Given the evidence pointing to gang rivalry as having been behind the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, it would be interesting to know why, months after that event, Trudeau felt compelled to go before the Canadian parliament and make the (wholly unsubstantiated) charge that the Government of India was behind the killing of Nijjar. It is not in Canada’s interest to have bad relations with India. The question arises as to why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau judged it to be in his interest to make such a false charge against the world’s most populous democracy, in the process pleasing the rulers of the world’s biggest authoritarian state.
