Canada taking India’s security concerns seriously, acting on Khalistan concerns: Envoy

Washington: Canada has started taking India’s security concerns seriously and is now acting against extremist and criminal networks linked to pro-Khalistan elements, India’s High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh K Patnaik, said in an interview with IANS.

Patnaik said cooperation between Indian and Canadian security agencies had improved significantly in recent months, marking a sharp turnaround in bilateral ties that had deteriorated over the Nijjar controversy.

“There is closed cooperation in every sector especially the security issues,” Patnaik told IANS in an interview.

“Earlier, we were refusing to talk to each other. Right now we have a regular dialogue. The national security advisors had come and gone. They have had discussions. The agencies are talking to each other. The police forces are talking, the investigating agencies are talking.”

He said the two countries were now exchanging information and conducting joint operations.

“Everybody is talking to each other, exchanging information, doing joint operations together trying to make sure that both countries are safe for each other, that Canada is safe for India, and India is safe for Canada,” he said.

Patnaik acknowledged that extremist groups still existed in Canada but said Ottawa no longer viewed the issue only through the prism of India’s concerns.

“There is, of course, a small section in Canada, which is still mentally trying to put things down,” he said.

“But what we have managed in the last six months or seven months to do, and thanks to the close assistance of the Canadian side, especially Prime Minister Carney, is to again put them on the fringe, marginalise them.”

The envoy alleged that many such networks were now driven more by organised crime than ideology.

“They’re making money out of it. It became a thing, which is more of an economic activity than an ideological activity,” he said, citing “gun running, drug smuggling, people trafficking, extortion” and other criminal activities.

Patnaik said India had also gained a better understanding of Canada’s legal and political constraints, particularly regarding free speech protections.

“The Indian side has an understanding that the Canadians were not actually systematically or institutionally supporting the Khalistan movement,” he said.

“There was this feeling in India that maybe the establishment was supporting. But I think we have come to understand that it is not about supporting. They’re unable to put a stop to it because their freedom of expression, freedom of laws are so strong.”

He said India had consistently urged Canada to distinguish between peaceful protest and violent extremism.

“What we’ve been telling them is we are not worried about the protest as much as the violence they’re unleashing, the hate they’re bringing to the streets, the propaganda that they’re doing,” he said.

He also accused such groups of “running terrorist operations in India” and involvement in “extortion criminal activities”.

Despite the past tensions, Patnaik said bilateral ties were now “in a good space”.

“The problems of the past between the governments are not there anymore,” he said.

The envoy’s remarks come ahead of Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal’s visit to Canada from May 25–27, accompanied by one of the largest Indian business delegations ever to visit the country.

IANS