The leader of Canada’s official opposition Conservative Party has called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to provide “proof” to substantiate his allegations that Indian agents were potentially linked to the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
India on Monday rejected Trudeau’s claim of a “potential link” between Indian government agents and the killing of Nijjar in June. The allegation has triggered a diplomatic row between the two countries with each expelling a diplomat in a tit-for-tat expulsion move.
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre had risen in support of the government when Trudeau made his statement but a day later, on Tuesday, he asked for more information to back those incendiary claims.
“The Prime Minister needs to come clean with all the facts. We need to know all the evidence possible so that Canadians can make judgments on that,” he told the media in Ottawa.
Asked what the consequences could be if the allegations were either untrue or not credible, he responded with a single word: “Real.”
Poilievre stressed that Trudeau’s briefing to opposition leaders on Monday only included his remarks in the House of Commons. “We need to see more facts. The Prime Minister has not provided any facts. He provided a statement. I will emphasise he didn’t tell me any more in private than he told Canadians in public so we want to see more information,” he said.
He compared the Trudeau government’s lack of action for years over allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian federal elections to the alacrity with which it had approached Nijjar’s killing on June 18.
“I find it interesting that he knew about the vast foreign interference by Beijing for many years; at the same time Beijing kept two Canadian citizens hostage and he said nothing and he did nothing,” he pointed out.
Chinese interference was only addressed by the government after a series of exposes appeared earlier this year in the news outlets the Globe & Mail and Global News.
In an editorial on the allegation, the daily National Post said, “If it turns out that Trudeau dropped this metaphorical bomb without having all his ducks in order, it will be a huge scandal, with massive domestic and geopolitical ramifications. It’s imperative that Canadians get to see his full hand.”
It also compared Trudeau’s current allegations with the description of intelligence about Chinese interference as “unreliable”.
Speaking before the House of Commons on Monday, Trudeau said, “Over the past number of weeks, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.”
Trudeau said he communicated Ottawa’s “deep concern” over the killing of Nijjar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi “in no uncertain terms” when they meet for a pull aside on the margins of the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi earlier this month.
Nijjar was gunned down in the parking lot of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara that he headed in the town of Surrey in the province of British Columbia. Nijjar was the principal figure of the secessionist outfit Sikhs for Justice or SFJ in the province. SFJ had accused India of being behind his assassination and in fact, has bene conducting a poster campaign in this connection.
