Trudeau’s pathetic posturing without proof is showing

With his government already reduced to a lame-duck minority ahead of general elections next year, knives are out within his party as they see him as a liability.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.(Photo | AP)
Updated on
2 min read

By framing the Hardeep Singh Nijjar murder last year as an infringement on national sovereignty by Indian state actors - without proper contextualization - and making bilateral diplomatic ties hostage to its resolution, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau appears to have sunk further in the quicksand of perception.

With his government already reduced to a lame-duck minority ahead of general elections next year, knives are out within his party as they see him as a liability.

Though Khalistani radical Nijjar had a long criminal record and was wanted in many terror cases in India, Canada let him function freely using the fig leaf of free speech.

Opposition leader Maxime Bernier called Trudeau out by dispelling the myth that Nijjar was Canadian. He said he was essentially a foreign terrorist who used fraudulent documents for asylum several times and was somehow granted citizenship in 2007.

When Trudeau first brought it up before PM Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Delhi, he had no proof, just intelligence inputs. India sought evidence but wasn’t provided any.

If there has been any forward movement in building a legally tenable case, it has neither been disclosed to India nor the Canadian opposition. Neither is the trial court aware of it.

Five adjournments sought from the court by the prosecution since May 15 suggest a lack of confidence in the case passing judicial muster.

Contrast this with the clinical approach of US law enforcement in dealing with an alleged murder-for-hire attempt to eliminate another Khalistani radical Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil. It pieced together evidence and got reciprocal cooperation. Since the US had the wisdom to compartmentalise the matter, bilateral relations are blossoming.

Matters came to a head last week after Canada sought the questioning of diplomats at the Indian mission there after accusing them of collecting clandestine information about radicals on its soil and harming them through gangs like those run by jailed Lawrence Bishnoi.

With the furious Indian foreign office telling its counterparts to take a hike, both sides expelled six diplomats each. India went to unusual lengths of attributing it to Trudeau’s myopic vote bank politics. Lowlifes get a lifeline when two mature democracies bicker. Trudeau can reflect on it if and when Canadians call time on his unpopular reign.

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