Canadian PM Justin Trudeau shaking hands with Indian PM Narendra Modi. Image credit: Hindustan Times.

Written by: Morrigan Johnson

Someone has to be lying

On September 22, CTV News published a report revealing new allegations against India for the assassination of an Indian political dissident in Canada. In this report, it became known that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was informed of the connection through the Five Eyes partners, as US Ambassador to Canada David Cohen confirmed. Led by the USA, the Five Eyes intelligence alliance also includes Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia.

On September 19, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had informed the House of Commons that Canadian intelligence agencies were investigating “credible allegations" against the Indian government. The allegation: That in June 2023, agents of the Indian government were involved with assassinating prominent Canadian Sikh leader and Khalistan separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia.

The referenced CTV News report highlights that the intelligence did not come from Canada alone, but from an unspecified source within the Five Eyes information sharing capacity. US Ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, concluded by saying “If they prove to be true, it is a potentially very serious breach of the rules-based international order in which we like to function”.

The diplomatic breakdown as a result of the serious allegations against India are bewildering to say the least. India announced a suspension to visa processing in Canada, and a tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats. The government of India also issued a travel advisory for Indian citizens to exercise ‘extreme caution’ in Canada. India has called the allegations absurd, and makes the case that ‘harbouring extremism’ is in no country's interest including Canada’s.

Prior to these revelations Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was in India for the G20 Summit. The trip was riddled with strange irregularities which made headlines. Firstly, the Prime Minister’s delegation refused the presidential suite, and opted for a regular room in the same hotel. The decision was made by Justin Trudeau’s security team, which raised an eyebrow with Indian intelligence agencies. The suite at the Lalit in Central Delhi is a secure room with bullet proof glass, designed against sniper attacks. In another report, Indian press mentioned that the strange behavior was about the “cost considerations”, which Indian security agencies have said there is no information they were aware of as to why Trudeau actually opted for a regular room.

The strange visit became more irregular when the Prime Minister’s special aircraft malfunctioned. India had offered the use of ‘Air India One’ to the Canadian delegation, but the delegation refused India’s offer and chose to wait until a replacement craft arrived, departing India on September 12 before the diplomatic debacle began. The visit to India prior to the diplomatic spat might be described as paranoid.

History of neorealism and scandal

Canada’s spy agency CSIS has been a hot topic in Canada, following the explosive reports of alleged foreign interference in Canada’s elections, whereby China supposedly disfavored Canada’s Conservative Party due to their harsh criticism of China, and therefore allegedly meddled in the election.

Discussions about a Canadian foreign influence registry have been going on for years, but were truly sparked to life by the CSIS-directed Chinagate campaign. In March, Public Safety Canada released a paper outlining the government’s potential approach. Canada’s registry, if implemented, would take inspiration from countries like the USA, the UK, Israel, and Australia, who implemented a similar system.

Chinagate itself seems similar to what the United States accused Russia of. Alleged foreign interference which aimed to help Trump win against Hilary Clinton. This baseless scandal has since been referred to as Russiagate.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, it is actually more likely that the Pentagon intervened in its own nation’s affairs, not Russia. Canada’s Chinagate scandal has been thoroughly debunked as baseless in many of the same ways.

The effect this has had on governance is the permanent fraying between evidence and intelligence in which decision making power bases its decisions. Intelligence does not need to be evidence-based to be taken as absolute. In Canada, evidence has been replaced by the narrative that China is bad.

Questions around CSIS’ actions
To consider the scale of the grave abuses of spying, military, and state power one only needs to ask what has been produced? In Canada, the CSIS-led Chinagate has resulted in expansion of power for the spy agency, while being a massive PR boon for the agency, reshaping its image from violator of Canadian laws, to do-gooder limited by government.

The Canadian spy agency is riddled with a long history of abuse of power, since it’s founding in 1984, which include spying on indigenous movements, dissidents, rendition, torture, breaking the law, undermining democracy, Islamophobia, being anti-worker, collaborating with fascists, and most notably it’s role in the Air India bombing in 1985 which was seen as being carried out by Sikh extremists.

What surfaced in Canada's intelligence history with India, however, was the role of CSIS in the Air India bombing, knowing of the plot, and failing to act amounting to a coverup. One of the bombing suspects was revealed to be a CSIS agent. CSIS never faced serious consequences for its actions towards the Air India bombing plot, facing public shame that while embarrassing, didn’t prevent it from slowly expanding its powers and influence.

Canada joined the Five Eyes alliance in secret which led to the integration of the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM), Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) into the US intelligence community. Prior to the Five Eyes alliance (FVEY) as it is currently known, Canada cooperated with the USA and UK intelligence as a secondary partner through the highly secretive UKUSA Agreement which was established in 1945, which replaced the BRUSA agreement between the USA and UK.

In 2020, CSIS increasingly expanded its espionage and foreign influence operations, and in 2021 expanded its Cyber Threat capacity, emphasizing cybersecurity.

Considering the national narratives of the diplomatic breakdown between Canada and India, they appear political on the surface, however there is more depth to unpack. The assassination of Nijjar comes during a critical period of further national security policy expansion, and serves as further pretext for those changes.

The strategic level

In August, after the slaying of the Sikh leader Nijjar, the Canadian South Asian diaspora rallied against Hindutva, demanding human rights in India, and to resist Hindu supremacy in Canada.

A petition put to the House of Commons had set out to define Hinduphobia in Canada, and to fund educational and training initiatives to oppose Hinduphobia in Canadian institutions. Criticisms of Hindu nationalism are not new, even for Canada. In a joint letter to the Prime Minister the diaspora in Canada cited a Human Rights Watch report detailing India's human rights abuses and ethnic conflicts.

Following the diplomatic breakdown, dissidents in the Indian diaspora utilized civil society groups to rally a base of social justice sentiment against India.

Canada has since revealed that it has been monitoring Indian diplomatic signal communications, but India’s perspective is that Canada is sheltering Sikh extremism. This comes in front of the backdrop of India’s ethnically divisive Hindu nationalist government. When examined, Canada’s spy agency CSIS has a questionable history with India and Sikh separatists, which warrant a high level of skepticism either way.

It is important to recognize the level of analysis needed is not just political, in fact there cannot be any organic politics at all when rug is being pulled from beneath. Real political issues exist in each country, they do, but there is an overwhelming precedent to consider at the geostrategic level. It must be asked, who rationally benefits? India, for example, is caught off guard.

“Why such pusillanimity? It only creates misperceptions. One would like to believe that India, with high values in global governance and deep respect for national sovereignty — apart from being the flag carrier of the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam (‘The World is One Family’) — would never descend to such a heinous level as to practice murder in its statecraft.

The US typically uses such tendentious issues to frighten and blackmail feeble-minded interlocutors in the “Third World.” That is why, Jaishankar shouldn’t have downgraded India’s representation at the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting. These are extraordinary times when if India didn’t have a BRICS membership, there is need for one.” – M.K. Bhadrakumar.

Former Indian diplomat, M.K. Bhadrakumar, calls it the “grapes of wrath”, where the Modi government once had impunity in the eyes of the West, it was useful to the West, but that utility has now come to an end. India might need BRICS now, more than ever, as the prospects of a Tripolar World Order is in the ether. The facts of India’s development do not hold a candle to China’s however, despite India’s proxy value against China for the US/NATO’s new cold war.

For India, hypothetically killing Nijjar within Canada would have virtually no logical benefit besides being part of “Modi carrying out ethnic conflict abroad with obvious consequences”. Yet, we can’t count out the possibility that Nijjar was indeed murdered by India, as Indian geopolitical analyst S.L. Kanthan has argued.

The frightening realism we confront is that the world has entered extraordinary times. America is nearing an election, India is nearing an election, and Canada is in the midst of a new McCarthyism.

The FBI has spooked the Diaspora in the US, and Canadian intelligence has very openly stated that it spies on the signal communications of the Indian government.

Despite the real Indian national defense necessity to deter Western spying and information operations in order to remain sovereign, India is working against its own interests by banning platforms relating to China such as Tik Tok or WeChat. But the Western platforms are the ones who certainly have backdoors to the only remaining platforms available to Indian markets making Western intelligence against India far easier than against Russia, China, or Iran who are moving away from Western platforms or censoring them altogether.

For India, competition with a superpower like the USA (through its partners such as Canada) who will now never see it as an equal, will see blowback in retrospect to these escalations. It may be forced to increase cooperation with China for the simple reality of survival.

Canada on the other hand has given itself a black eye, and is running to Uncle Sam for support.

Canadian national security isn’t a priority, expanding Mccarthyite spy powers is

Following the diplomatic spat over Canadian national security allegations against India, the door has been opened for the development of two strategic escalations. The foreign influence registry and further integration into the Five Eyes intelligence community which can be seen by current policy agendas and well coordinated lobbying efforts.

During the COVID pandemic, Canada essentially tested its Emergencies Act which allowed the vast militarization of policing powers to counter the Freedom Convoy, which the military had already been using information operations to shift public opinion on COVID from as early as 2021. Information operations targeting its own nation are very knowable at times despite the failure of laws to limit such power. The ends justify the means. But the endgame certainly isn’t national security.

Canadian security policy would burn anyone’s eyes if they looked critically at how safe anything can possibly be amid major institutions demonstrating that their roles are overridden, harboring no love of law or civil society. The character of these institutions remain just as disconcerting as ever.

In fact, when it comes to the passerbyers from hot spots around the world, Canada is happy to let anyone cross over so long as they are useful to the US foreign policy narrative.

Historically during the US incursions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and later Syria, and Libya, the extremists funded and trained by the USA would run into trouble when trying to enter Western countries such as the US itself. This is because their crimes, once they were publically knowable, would still trigger domestic security agencies into alert, bouncing them out. That was then, today is a different story, from former ISIS members, the MEK, Banderite Ukrainians, to Zionist war criminals, and so on.

Canadians aren’t safe from getting swept up into the market-relations of foreign wars and conflicts either. Canadians who go abroad as mercenaries for Ukraine, to die end up confused as misguided heroes, with no concern by the government over the risks, nor the propaganda as preparation for war that enlists civilians to their demise.

Canada’s national security is overridden completely today by US foreign policy interests, whereby defectors and terrorists are prioritized. Most recently, the MEK have had Liberal MPs speaking at the events of a once banned terrorist organization. And during Zelensky’s visit in September to the Canadian parliament, standing ovations were given to a man, the mainstream media claim, fought against the Russians in WW2. Logically, an actual Nazi of the Waffen SS, a legacy of Canada’s constant importation of anti-communists.

The apparition of national security can be brought into reveal if we consider what Parliament thinks is a necessity – pushing a Foreign Influence Registry to counter ‘Malign Foreign Influence’.
The conservatives in the senate had tabled the bill to establish a Foreign Influence Registry along with a Criminal Code amendment in 2021. The second reading of Bill S-237 is still in progress following the consultation period this Spring, with all parties now backing the creation of such a registry. Results of the consultation have not yet been released. It cannot be overstated that the drastic escalation in Mccarthyism is taking place during a key legislative, consultative, and lobbying phase for the government.

Furthermore, the Five Eyes intelligence cartel has a stake in ramping up integration as well. Such sweeping expansion of powers would bear no relationship to actual national security, but we can see a well coordinated lobbying effort taking place. There is almost no publicly transparent or knowable response by the government to expand the Five Eyes integration. The intelligence alliance has a history of secret agreements dating back to its original foundings. The spy agencies have been criticized for asking each other to spy on each other’s behalf, giving deniability for the laws of its own respective country, and otherwise known as ‘extraordinary rendition’.

In April, the New York Times published an article titled “Far-Left Canadians Susceptible to Russian Influence too”, which strung together the policy recommendations that the Canadian parliament were going to deliberate before tabling the registry by the end of 2023. The NYT report cites a 24-page think tank study by the University of Regina’s Centre for Artificial Intelligence Data and Conflict. The funding for the study to lobby parliament ironically originated from the same government lobbying itself, Canada, alongside the USA.

The study “Enemy of my Enemy Russian Weaponization of Canada’s Far Right and Far Left To Undermine Support To Ukraine”, lays out in detail the methodology of the information operations needed to inform spy agencies and other mechanisms such as the incoming registry. One such method is social media analysis, which involves mapping social media networks and weighing risks of those who disagree with the government by source, who shares it, and how much attention it gets. The recommendations in layman's terms are:

Strengthen government systems of oversight and information sharing

Brief elected officials by way of official information
Establish an All-Party committee for defending democracy
Form a national council for democracy that would monitor threats and narratives
Ensure greater intergovernmental coordination and collaboration between government agencies

Increase international coordination and collaboration
Increase support to schools, civil society, and research organizations

Support civil society institutions to expose foreign information
Promote social and digital media literacy to inoculate against–whatever is foreign.

Social media companies should provide researchers with greater access to data
Stay ahead of Pro-Russian networks through real-time monitoring and learning.

Furthermore, the Liberal government’s slow movement on the registry can be seen by the lack of a timeline for implementing it. This being further shown by neocons asking in the Toronto Sun last week, where is it? What is happening behind the curtain is probably worse, however, as the Trudeau cabinet is shifting its focus from legislative responses, to military.

In July, the Prime Minister announced the creation of a National Security Council amid a cabinet shuffle. The new council would serve the role of a specialized cabinet committee in charge of overseeing the strategic direction for emerging challenges Canada is “increasingly facing.”

A defense minister, foreign affairs minister and the role of a Prime Minister’s cabinet, who normally delegate the government’s respective portfolios would be expanded to an entire committee who would deliberate the militarization of Canada. Former minister of defence Anita Anand has been replaced by Liberal member of parliament, Bill Blair.

The members of this newly created National Security Council within cabinet are as follows: Chair: Justin Trudeau, Bill Blair, Francois-Phillipe Champagne, Chrystia Freeland, Melanie Joly, Dominic LeBlanc, Harjit S. Sajjan, and Arif Virani.

It is worth noting that this new specialized cabinet will be the architects of whatever military, intelligence, and security changes come next. The power of such a committee would inform the legislative agenda, but also the executive branch through the Prime Minister.

Following the most recent spat with India, Canadians are being bombarded with New Cold War messaging from every direction. The pretexts for expanding the sweeping powers of state are an open door, with non-partisan support from the warmongering parliament. Canada could expand its national security powers to expand in any number of directions. They now have everything they need in terms of manufacturing the narratives to enshrine whatever they wish without question.

Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country's only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We've provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Morrigan Johnson is an anti-imperialist writer. He has published on geopolitics, war and peace, international economy, and international governance.

Morrigan is the organizer of the Calgary Peace Council and is an editorial board member of the International Manifesto Group.

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