What to learn from the diplomatic dustup over Hardeep Singh Nijjar's murder?

The sad reality is that none of this had to happen

It is often said that you can’t run a government like a business, so don’t even try.

And yet, I yearn for Ottawa to have the level of curiosity, accountability and future-proofing that guides successful business people. Why can’t those same traits pervade the public sphere, whether officials are elected or otherwise? I know this is already starting to sound like an announcement post (see “Canada needs a tech leader in Parliament” by Matt Roberts, May 1-23), but it’s not.

While the Nation’s Capital was quite rightly seized overnight with a 98 year-old member of the Waffen SS, I’m very much stuck on the interplay between two other recent Canadian news stories. The first one being Canada’s accusation that there are “allegations” of “links” between the killing of Mr. Nijjar in 2022 and “agents” of the government of India, which signals a new strain in the already-frosty relationship between two Commonwealth Leaders. It’s one thing to be at odds with the Chinese Communist Party over matters of principle; but you have to be dead certain about your intelligence findings to risk sinking a pending trade deal with the world’s most-populous democracy.

Obviously, none of us would sanction another nation providing tangible support that led to the execution of a Canadian citizen on our soil. According to media reports, India had accused Mr. Nijjar of several crimes between 2014 and 2016, including “a bomb plot, a bomb blast in a cinema, and that he trained militants at a range in Mission, B.C.” These same reports advise that “Interpol arrest warrants” were also issued for Mr. Nijjar’s arrest, although it’s unclear if the RCMP took them to heart — despite that being the agreement when you sign up to join Interpol, as Canada has done. It is possible, one has to assume, that the neither the current Liberal government nor the federal police force put stock in any generic Indian claim of “Terrorist” if the only evidence against the accused is that they support the creation of “Khalistan as a separate Sikh nation.” Perhaps India will share their evidence with the RCMP as part of the murder investigation.

Mr. Trudeau has made it clear that free speech is something his government supports when it comes to Canadians agitating for political change abroad (ed. note: just don’t block Wellington Street in Ottawa). If there ever was a time to be reminded about Prime Minister Trudeau’s “A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” mantra, this could be that situation. Let me take you back to 2015, and the hot-button issue of that September:

Days after the Conservative government revoked the citizenship of the mastermind of a notorious terrorist plot in Canada, the party has released an audio of rival Liberal leader explaining why he opposes stripping citizenship from terrorists.

Justin Trudeau told a town hall meeting in Winnipeg in July that a "Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian."

"And I'll give you the quote so that you guys can jot it down and put it in an attack ad somewhere, that the Liberal Party believes that terrorists should get to keep their Canadian citizenship," said Trudeau, in an audio recording first reported by CTV News. "Because I do. And I'm willing to take on anyone who disagrees with that. Because the question is, as soon as you make citizenship for some Canadians conditional on good behavior, you devalue citizenship for everyone."

Trudeau said he's "envious" of new Canadians because they "got to choose Canada".

From what I’ve read, Indian-born Mr. Nijjar didn’t have an easy time becoming a naturalized Canadian. When he first arrived in our country, he did so using a fake name and passport. For folks fleeing a country under threat of death, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. There are plenty of nations the world over that wouldn’t let certain types or groups of people escape their grasp. Although the details are sparse, the media reporting is clear: Canadian Immigration officials didn’t accept first Mr. Nijjar’s refugee claim in 1997, nor the one in 1998.

Eleven days after his refugee application had been denied, the late Mr. Nijjar married a B.C. woman — which would normally have been a path to citizenship. Immigration officials said it was a “marriage of convenience,” and refused to grant him citizenship on that basis.

In 2001, his Court appeal failed.

That should have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t. Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller “confirmed” this week that Mr. Nijjar acquired Canadian nationality on May 25, 2007. How that happened hasn’t been explained. What we do know is that Canada never deported him prior to 2007 in the wake of his multiple failed attempts at making a refugee claim.

What has been made public, perhaps via old Court records, is that “adjudicators cited inconsistencies in his story and thought a doctor’s note from India was bogus because of its poor English, including misspelling testicles as ‘intesticlals’ when describing his torture injuries.” It appears that they had concluded that the man with a forged passport had also faked a Doctor’s note describing the “torture” he experienced at the hands of Indian police.

It may come as news to all of you that entering Canada using forged documents isn’t a sufficiently egregious crime to get you deported, even after a Canadian Court has determined that your case doesn’t warrant Refugee status under the UN Treaty. If there was new information that led officials to ultimately grant Mr. Nijjar such status, leading to his receipt of Canadian citizenship in 2007, it has yet come to light. I truly hope that it does, for the sake of the credibility of our system.

Hanging around in Canada, with no status whatsoever — having tried to game our generous Land with both an “inconsistent” refugee story, a “bogus” doctor’s note describing the torture you suffered as well as a sham marriage — shouldn’t be sufficient reason to be given citizenship.

That doesn’t give India licence to take his life, of course, if that’s what the RCMP ultimately conclude. U.S. Ambassador David Cohen’s statement to CTV News on Saturday that “There was shared intelligence among ‘Five Eyes’ partners that helped lead Canada to (make) the statements that the prime minister made [about India],” sounds ominous.

Without casting aspersions towards Mr. Nijjar, who may well have been innocent of any true criminal activity involving the creation of a separate Sikh state, it is difficult to not link the ultimate handling of his Immigration file to a very troubling August report in The Globe and Mail. According to the piece, “Federal authorities have active arrest warrants for 300 foreign criminals deemed a danger to the public and facing deportation from Canada, including sex offenders and people convicted of violent crimes, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.”

If 300 “foreign criminals” sounds like a big number, there’s far, far more going on behind our backs. CBSA is also “trying to track down more than 37,000 foreigners who may pose a flight risk, may not voluntarily agree to be questioned or attend an immigration hearing, or who may pose a danger to the public.”

I don’t want to alarm you, but it sounds as though there are 37,000 people in Canada who we’d collectively like to leave the country. Now.

These are described as “Foreigners,” not Canadians, so Mr. Trudeau’s view that “terrorists should get to keep their Canadian citizenship” isn’t going to factor. And I’m assuming this pool of people has nothing to do with our legitimate Refugee process; that distinct group of people has every reason to make their presence known to officials so that they can access our free health care and welfare systems while they wait for adjudication. It’s unclear if the government knows where these 37,000 people are, or what they’ve been doing while CBSA “has been trying to track them down.” I’m not sure why we care that a foreigner is a “flight risk,” unless they’re facing criminal charges and we’d like to jail them first, before deporting them (sounds expensive, but perhaps necessary). Scary stuff, for a country currently battling illegal handgun smuggling and gang-led car theft rings across urban Canada.

The unusual chain of events that led to Mr. Nijjar’s Canadian citizenship and ultimate death might be unique, and perhaps there are no dramatic ticking time bombs within that pool of 37,000 missing foreigners who, according to the government, “may pose a danger to the public.”

But for every law-abiding Canadian citizen who fills out their customs declaration form with great precision, one can only shake your head. The government should be more outwardly curious about how Mr. Nijjar eventually achieved his citizenship, despite being repeatedly turned down — even on Appeal. Someone, or perhaps an agency as a whole, should be held accountable for the 37,000 “missing Foreigners” of interest. And our government needs to at least try to future-proof our borders, improve our ability to find individuals who pose a danger to the public, and demonstrate to the world that we don’t knowingly harbour — even if we can’t find them — criminals.

That’s not to speak ill of the memory of Mr. Nijjar, nor those who peacefully advocate for political change abroad. As someone of Scottish heritage, I’m cognizant of the “Free Scotland” movement and the potential for another referendum on the matter. But, despite centuries of being under the boot of England back in the day, none of the millions of “Scots” in Canada has placed bombs on a British Airways flight in the hopes of creating a separate nation within the United Kingdom.

329 people died aboard Air India Flight 182 in 1985, which was the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history. Individuals associated with a Khalistani separatist group were implicated in the attack. In 2006, then-Prime Minister Harper appointed former Supreme Court Judge John Major to conduct an inquiry into the RCMP and CSIS handling of the investigation, prior to that terrorist attack. Justice Major concluded in 2010 that a "cascading series of errors had allowed the terrorist attack to take place.”

With 37,000 folks seemingly on the loose, you be forgiven if you wondered just how seriously we take our nation’s security, if we’ve learned anything from the Air India tragedy, and just how much value we place on our granting of Citizenship.

MRM

(this post, like all blogs, is an Opinion Piece)

(Photo credit: Charwomen, London, 1950, by Irving Penn)