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Justin Trudeau said India made a "horrific mistake" by allegedly interfering in Canada's sovereignty as bilateral relations degraded to their lowest point in decades.
The Canadian prime minister made the comment just two days after Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats and New Delhi followed suit as the fallout from the investigation into the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar continued to damage ties between the two countries.
The Canadian government has claimed that India’s high commissioner and other top diplomats were directly involved in the killing of Nijjar. India has denied the allegation as "preposterous". New Delhi reacted furiously when Ottawa first made the allegation last year by briefly suspending visas for Canadians.
Nijjar, 45, a Sikh activist and plumber, was shot dead by masked gunmen in Surrey, outside Vancouver, in June 2023. He was a face of the Khalistan movement, which seeks to carve out an independent Sikh homeland in western India. New Delhi had long accused Nijjar, a Canadian citizen born in India, of being involved in terrorism, an allegation he denied.
“The Indian government made a horrific mistake in thinking that they could interfere as aggressively as they did in the safety and sovereignty of Canada," Mr Trudeau told an independent panel looking into suspected external interference in Canadian politics on Wednesday.
He said Canada had to take violations of its sovereignty and of international law seriously.
The Indian foreign ministry responded that Mr Trudeau’s deposition confirmed its position that Canada had provided "no evidence whatsoever" to support its allegations against Indian diplomats. ”The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with prime minister Trudeau alone," foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
Mr Trudeau said he was briefed about Nijjar’s murder in the summer of 2023. He received intelligence from Canadian authorities and "possibly from Five Eyes allies", he added, which made it "incredibly clear that India was involved" in the killing of a "Canadian on Canadian soil".
The Five Eyes is a global intelligence network of the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
Canadian police have charged four Indian nationals living in the North American country with Niijar’s killing. They are all awaiting trial.
Mr Trudeau said his government could have gone public with this information when Indian prime minister Narendra Modi hosted the G20 Summit in September 2023, but chose not to. He met with Mr Modi and expressed concerns privately then.
"At that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof. So we said, let us work together and look into your security services," Mr Trudeau told the inquiry.
"We chose to continue to work with India behind the scenes to try and get India to cooperate with us.”
Mr Trudeau said he had hoped to handle the matter “in a responsible way" that didn’t hurt the bilateral relationship but New Delhi rejected Ottawa’s request for assistance.
"It was clear that the Indian government's approach was to criticise us and the integrity of our democracy," he said.
The prime minister said he went public because of worries about public safety which Canadian authorities say have only worsened since.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Mike Duheme alleged on Monday that they have evidence tying Indian government agents to other homicides and violent acts in the country. He declined to give details, citing ongoing investigations, but said there had been over a dozen credible and imminent threats resulting in police warning members of the South Asian community, notably the pro-Khalistan movement.
Canada’s top envoy to India, Stewart Wheeler, who New Delhi has ordered to leave by Saturday night, told AFP that Ottawa had provided “credible, irrefutable evidence of ties between agents of the Government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen”.
The British government said on Wednesday that India should cooperate with the Canadian investigation into accusations that its agents were involved in an escalating number of violent crimes in Canada.
In a statement, the British Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office said India's cooperation with Canada’s legal process “is the right next step”.
A US State Department spokesman said Washington had long been asking India to cooperate with Canadian authorities.
