Foreign affairs minister says remaining Indian diplomats are ‘on notice’
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After her government expelled a group of Indian diplomats following the RCMP’s shocking public statement tying India’s government to violent crimes in Canada, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly is warning more than a dozen Indian diplomats still in the country to respect Canadian law.
“They’re clearly on notice,” Joly said. “Six of them have been expelled, including the high commissioner in Ottawa. Others were mainly from Toronto and Vancouver.
“Clearly, we won’t tolerate any diplomats that are in contravention of the Vienna Convention.”
Joly’s comments aimed at the remaining 15 Indian diplomats come days after the head of the RCMP accused India’s government, its agents and diplomats of links to widespread criminal activity in Canada, including coercion, extortion and killings.
The RCMP said there have been more than a dozen credible and imminent threats to members of the South Asian community, in particular Sikh members of the pro-Khalistan movement.
The RCMP also said it has evidence that India’s diplomats and consular officials in Canada engaged in clandestine activities, including gathering intelligence for its government.
On Thursday, India’s government denied working with criminals in Canada to target Sikh separatists.
Joly said the threat was real.
“There was definitely a threat and that’s exactly why the RCMP decided to take the extraordinary measure of making public the fact that Canadians were being intimidated, [were] victims of extortion or even [received] death threats because agents and diplomats from India were linked to these criminal actions,” Joly told a press conference in Montreal.
Asked whether more Indian diplomats could be expelled from Canada, Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly says the government won’t tolerate any diplomats who contravene the Vienna Convention or put the lives of Canadians at risk. The government announced the expulsion of six Indian diplomats and consular officials on Monday.
Joly said that while Russia has targeted Germany and the United Kingdom with this kind of transnational repression, it’s never been seen before in Canada at this scale and the government “needed to stand firm on this issue.”
“We’ve never seen that in our history,” said Joly. “That level of transnational repression cannot happen on Canadian soil.”
Cameron MacKay was Canada’s most recent high commissioner to India; he left the country in August. He said it’s a “fiasco on the part of the Indian government” to think that agents of the Indian government could arrange violent crimes across Canada and the U.S. and get away with it.
Canada’s most recent High Commissioner to India Cameron MacKay discusses how Canadian and U.S. accusations linking Indian officials to violent crimes in Canada have caused “real damage” to India’s reputation, and what a continued relationship with India could look like.
“Some very serious red lines have been crossed and it’s for that reason that Canada has taken the strong diplomatic and law enforcement action that it has up to now,” he told David Cochrane, host of CBC’s Power and Politics .
“The Indian government position up until now has to be to deny and vilify Canada and to distract its domestic audience from the real facts of what’s been happening here. They do that by attacking Canada.”
Repairing diplomatic relations with Canada is “not high” on India’s agenda right now, MacKay said, adding it will take a “good long while” before relations return to anything like normal. He said over the long run, Canada “does want a better relationship with India. There’s a lot we can and should be doing together.”
But MacKay said some people in New Delhi made some “very serious fundamental errors in their decision-making over the last couple of years, and we need to see some accountability for that before things get normal again.”
Testifying at the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attacked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre over his refusal to get the security clearance required to be briefed. Trudeau also said he has the names of Conservative parliamentarians involved in foreign interference and offered more details about India’s alleged involvement in targeting Canadians.
During a moment of unity at an emergency meeting on Friday, MPs from all parties on a parliamentary committee agreed to study the issue.
NDP MP Alistair MacGregor put forward the motion calling on the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) to investigate allegations of electoral interference and violent criminal activities carried out by agents of India’s government.
The MPs agreed to at least six meetings and to invite multiple ministers, the RCMP commissioner, the national security adviser and national security experts to testify, along with members of the South Asian community.
The motion also called on Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown and other candidates from the 2022 Conservative Party leadership race — including current leader Pierre Poilievre — to testify. The Conservatives also asked for the study to be expanded to include testimony from two deputy ministers and the new director of CSIS.
A high-profile report by a group of parliamentarians from all parties with security clearances reported that India allegedly interfered in a single Conservative Party leadership race.
The Conservative Party responded in June by saying that was the first time they’d heard that allegation and that Poilievre’s campaign has “no awareness of what is referenced.”
Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong accuses the prime minister of smearing his party by claiming some members are subject to foreign interference, while Justin Trudeau continues to slam Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre for not getting the security clearance required to see briefings on foreign interference.
The committee meeting on Friday turned into a debate over whether Poilievre should get the security clearance that would allow him to read the unredacted NSICOP report about the allegations.
MacGregor put forward a motion asking the committee to call on all federal party leaders to apply for their security clearances in the next 30 days.
Conservative MPs fired back with an amendment calling on the government to publicly release the names of all current and former parliamentarians allegedly engaged in or at high risk of foreign interference.
At a hearing of the public inquiry into foreign interference this week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified that he had seen a list of the names of Conservative parliamentarians, former parliamentarians and/or candidates who are “engaged, or at high risk of, or for whom there is clear intelligence around foreign interference.”
He later said there are Liberals and members of other parties on that list as well.
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