There was "shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners" that informed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's public allegation of a potential link between the government of India and the murder of a Canadian citizen, United States Ambassador to Canada David Cohen.
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In an exclusive interview on CTV's Question Period with Vassy Kapelos airing on Sunday, Cohen confirmed "there was shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners that helped lead Canada to making the statements that the Prime Minister made."
On Monday, Trudeau informed the House of Commons in a rare statement on a matter of national security that Canadian intelligence agencies were investigating "credible allegations" that agents of the Indian government were involved in the June death of prominent Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in B.C.
In the days since, as diplomatic tensions continue to ratchet up — from Canada reassessing its staffing in India, to India suspending visa services for Canadians — there have been swirling questions about what intelligence is at the centre of this story, who was aware of it, and when.
While Cohen would not comment on whether the intelligence informing the Canadian government's investigation was both human and surveillance-based, or whether it included signals intelligence of Indian diplomats, the United States envoy to Canada said "there was shared intelligence among Five Eyes partners that helped lead Canada to making the statements that the Prime Minister made."
Amid reports from CBC and The Associated Press that the intelligence Trudeau was speaking of did not come from Canada alone, and that additional information was provided by an unspecified member of the intelligence-sharing alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, Cohen told Kapelos that there was "a lot of communication" between Ottawa and D.C.
He made this comment while denying a Washington Post report alleging that weeks before Trudeau's bombshell declaration, Ottawa asked its closest allies, including the U.S. to publicly condemn the murder and that overture was rebuffed.
"Very bluntly, I will say that — and you know me well enough — that I'm not in the habit of commenting on private diplomatic conversations," Cohen said.
"Look, I will say this was a matter of shared intelligence information," he added. "There was a lot of communication between Canada and the United States about this, and I think that's as far as I'm comfortable going."
Earlier this week, Trudeau told reporters that officials had been working closely with intelligence agencies since the summer to "make sure that we had solid grounding in understanding what was going on."
And, after raising the matter directly with allies and India on the sidelines of the G20, Trudeau said he felt that Canadians had the "right to know."
Speaking more broadly about how the U.S. interprets what has unfolded, and whether there is any hesitancy on the part of U.S. President Joe Biden's government to jump to Canada's defence. Cohen said that the U.S. "takes very seriously these allegations."
"And, you know, if they prove to be true, it is a potentially very serious breach of the rules-based international order in which we like to function," he said.
Officials in Washington have said that Biden's concern over the allegations has been expressed to India, and the U.S. has asked India to co-operate in Canada's investigation, according to the ambassador.
"We think it's very important to get to the bottom of it," Cohen said.
It’s sounding like the Indian government hasn’t actually denied involvement when it was raised behind closed doors. They mostly seem to be suggesting that making a stink about it is politically...
It’s sounding like the Indian government hasn’t actually denied involvement when it was raised behind closed doors. They mostly seem to be suggesting that making a stink about it is politically motivated and it’s actually fair play as a counter-terror operation.
So that really just leaves open the question of what do we mean by “involved” exactly? Did they actually send guys out to off the guy? Did they stoke tensions between existing factions to put them up to it? Did they just provide intel or offer some kind of logistical support to go through with it? Those all provide an “out” for the countries to save face and salvage the bilateral relationship. There will just be a pound of flesh extracted and everyone will move on.
"And, you know, if they prove to be true, it is a potentially very serious breach of the rules-based international order in which we like to function," he said.
Yeah it’s kind of funny to hear American intelligence say this. Maybe India should perform a drone strike next time just to follow our moral example.
I'll note that he didn't bring ethics or morality into it - simply that this is "against the rules". That ruleset is what has been established by the US (and its allies, to some degree) and boils...
I'll note that he didn't bring ethics or morality into it - simply that this is "against the rules".
That ruleset is what has been established by the US (and its allies, to some degree) and boils down to "we can do whatever we want, but don't even think about retaliation or trying the same tactics, especially if it hurts our interests".
The current "rules-based international order" isn't particularly ethical or moral, certainly by design, possibly by necessity.
I’d say by necessity. The US gets broad leeway to fudge the rules based largely on its claims to having moral authority over the system as the international hegemon. For the most part I’d say this...
I’d say by necessity. The US gets broad leeway to fudge the rules based largely on its claims to having moral authority over the system as the international hegemon. For the most part I’d say this isn’t entirely unjustified. If I had to select a single country to exercise that prerogative I’d pick the US over the other major candidates, including the other developed democracies like UK, France, or Germany (thought that’s partly bias as a United Statesan talking).
But at the same time, other countries have strategic and domestic national security interests too, and if the Western powers don’t want to help protect them what are they supposed to do? Just sit there and take it? And there is also an extremely influential “soft power” component to how the US maintains its moral authority, and that’s this sort of vast consent manufacturing ecosystem around the press, academia, and civil society orgs/NGOs. They don’t fully operate in cahoots with each other, but they tend to recruit staff from the same social milieu and educational pedigree so there are strong structural biases there. Not least among them being that the global south exists to be acted upon, not as an actor on the global stage with its own agency. I don’t think that culture is going to be able to cope well with the pluralistic global order that’s coming where more countries maintain independence from the US military/strategic umbrella while still participating in international institutions.
Today it’s just India that has a sort of neutral posture without being actively competitive (like China and Russia are). The other big and fairly independent country, Iran, has been maneuvered into being something of a pariah state and more or less thrust into the arms of China and Russia. But more and more countries are going to start asserting their strategic interests as they get more integrated into global trade and migration and the Western press is gonna have to learn to develop more nuanced understandings of their cultures and political dynamics if they want to actually understand what’s going on without boiling it into simplistic hero and villain narratives.
For me, the rules are simple and selfish: powerful nations are no-touchy. To protect and assert our interests, India should be strongly reprimanded for this, and their reliability as our future...
For me, the rules are simple and selfish: powerful nations are no-touchy. To protect and assert our interests, India should be strongly reprimanded for this, and their reliability as our future partner and ally should be questioned.
The competence of the government is also questionable, since the assassination along with their political trajectory will make them seen as a necessary evil, not a partner to be embraced, by the west for the foreseeable future. India has been enjoying a shifting of manufacturing from China to India — and the possibility of pursuing a manufacturing-driven development trajectory like China had.
But its recent actions invite the question of whether or not trade and investment could turn it into an anti-western power like China.
India hasn’t shown any inclination to interfere in the politics of Western countries. This was specifically aimed at addressing Canada-based actors trying to influence Indian domestic politics....
India hasn’t shown any inclination to interfere in the politics of Western countries. This was specifically aimed at addressing Canada-based actors trying to influence Indian domestic politics. There was nothing anti-Western about it.
I don’t actually think it’s entirely out of line either. If Canadian nationals are going to try to exercise an outsized role in Indian politics and policy it seems unreasonable to say that the Indian state should have no say in the manner of their involvement. Especially if that “involvement” includes funneling drugs, guns, and money to hostile militias.
If Indian nationals were trying to do this to the US or Canada you can bet the Western world would very quickly concoct a justification to intervene ranging from sanctions to cutting off India or Indian companies from capital or financing until they’re forced to comply with extradition requests and cooperate with investigations. It seems unreasonable to suggest that being Canadian or American gives you license to actively stoke a civil war or insurgency in your country of origin. Clearly targeted killing of those groups are problematic, but Canada needs to have been taking this stuff more seriously to start with. That they haven’t speaks to a certain sense of impunity as to what Canada ought to be permitted to do.
The US has a record of allowing this stuff as long as your arm too. Irish expats here stoked the Troubles well after people in Ireland were ready to start reconciling. The gang and violence crisis in El Salvador is attributable almost entirely to American immigration policy, imprisoning immigrants and leaving them open to recruitment into gangs and then deporting them back, with their violent gang socialization and connections, to make trouble in their home country. To make no mention of how much the people of Cuba have been made to suffer on account of Cuban refugees having the good luck of settling in a swing state and thereby preventing America from ever having a rational foreign policy with respect to that country.
If any one of those countries had the leeway to take actions similar to what India did to nip the American based hostile actors in the bud—that America doesn’t see as being important enough to take seriously—I’m sure they’d have loved to (and in some cases probably have). Our policy apparatus simply does not care about the consequences we visit on the political stability of other countries or the welfare of the people in them. The fact that the opposition party in India is standing behind the Modi government rather than taking the opportunity to score political points should be a strong indicator that this is a matter of serious concern within the government there.
You don’t think it’s entirely out of line for the Indian government to send a hit squad to kill people in Canada? What? This was a state sponsored terrorist attack on a supposedly friendly and...
You don’t think it’s entirely out of line for the Indian government to send a hit squad to kill people in Canada? What?
This was a state sponsored terrorist attack on a supposedly friendly and democratic nation. That’s wildly “out of line”.
The US has set a pretty strong precedent for putting hits out on known terrorists wherever they are, friendly or not. Pakistan’s entire Western border has been destabilized, in part, because of...
The US has set a pretty strong precedent for putting hits out on known terrorists wherever they are, friendly or not. Pakistan’s entire Western border has been destabilized, in part, because of it.
You don’t think it’s entirely out of line for the Indian government to send a hit squad to kill people in Canada? What?
If their choice is to do that or allow Canada to harbor transnational terrorist organizations funneling guns and money to India it’s not so cut and dried. The US, again, sets a precedent here with its interventions through Latin America under the rationale of stopping the illegal drug trade. The only substantive difference is that it’s happened in a place it’s not “supposed to” based on rules the Anglo powers made up.
Is it nice? Certainly not. But is it a pretty normal thing for a state to do in their national security interests? Yeah.
What evidence is there that this was a terrorist who was being harboured by Canada? Canada is a functioning democracy with strong laws, not a failed state — there are perfectly viable legal...
What evidence is there that this was a terrorist who was being harboured by Canada? Canada is a functioning democracy with strong laws, not a failed state — there are perfectly viable legal channels that don’t involve terrorist attacks on Canadian soil.
India put in a request to extradite which Canada didn’t follow through on after questioning him. But he is high up in an organization that GoI has designated to be a terrorist org and was wanted...
India put in a request to extradite which Canada didn’t follow through on after questioning him. But he is high up in an organization that GoI has designated to be a terrorist org and was wanted for his role in a conspiracy to assassinate a priest. India clearly feels Canada doesn’t take its concerns seriously in this area and they feel this is largely a domestic political calculation on the part of the Canadian government, so they do not see the legal channels as being fair or viable.
Of course, Canada gets to just be unfair and not worry about the threats being generated domestically impact another country. In the same way the US can just enable Mexican cartels to run wild throughout Mexico because of our inability to control our own appetite for the drugs they sell. I don’t know if I’d fault Mexico if they decided they needed to extend their reach and nip the American side of the drug trade if they felt like US authorities weren’t interested in facilitating a resolution tk the problem. But they don’t because that’s just the logic of state power. There’s no impartial entity to decide whose playing fair.
Rachel Aiello
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It’s sounding like the Indian government hasn’t actually denied involvement when it was raised behind closed doors. They mostly seem to be suggesting that making a stink about it is politically motivated and it’s actually fair play as a counter-terror operation.
So that really just leaves open the question of what do we mean by “involved” exactly? Did they actually send guys out to off the guy? Did they stoke tensions between existing factions to put them up to it? Did they just provide intel or offer some kind of logistical support to go through with it? Those all provide an “out” for the countries to save face and salvage the bilateral relationship. There will just be a pound of flesh extracted and everyone will move on.
Yeah it’s kind of funny to hear American intelligence say this. Maybe India should perform a drone strike next time just to follow our moral example.
I'll note that he didn't bring ethics or morality into it - simply that this is "against the rules".
That ruleset is what has been established by the US (and its allies, to some degree) and boils down to "we can do whatever we want, but don't even think about retaliation or trying the same tactics, especially if it hurts our interests".
The current "rules-based international order" isn't particularly ethical or moral, certainly by design, possibly by necessity.
I’d say by necessity. The US gets broad leeway to fudge the rules based largely on its claims to having moral authority over the system as the international hegemon. For the most part I’d say this isn’t entirely unjustified. If I had to select a single country to exercise that prerogative I’d pick the US over the other major candidates, including the other developed democracies like UK, France, or Germany (thought that’s partly bias as a United Statesan talking).
But at the same time, other countries have strategic and domestic national security interests too, and if the Western powers don’t want to help protect them what are they supposed to do? Just sit there and take it? And there is also an extremely influential “soft power” component to how the US maintains its moral authority, and that’s this sort of vast consent manufacturing ecosystem around the press, academia, and civil society orgs/NGOs. They don’t fully operate in cahoots with each other, but they tend to recruit staff from the same social milieu and educational pedigree so there are strong structural biases there. Not least among them being that the global south exists to be acted upon, not as an actor on the global stage with its own agency. I don’t think that culture is going to be able to cope well with the pluralistic global order that’s coming where more countries maintain independence from the US military/strategic umbrella while still participating in international institutions.
Today it’s just India that has a sort of neutral posture without being actively competitive (like China and Russia are). The other big and fairly independent country, Iran, has been maneuvered into being something of a pariah state and more or less thrust into the arms of China and Russia. But more and more countries are going to start asserting their strategic interests as they get more integrated into global trade and migration and the Western press is gonna have to learn to develop more nuanced understandings of their cultures and political dynamics if they want to actually understand what’s going on without boiling it into simplistic hero and villain narratives.
For me, the rules are simple and selfish: powerful nations are no-touchy. To protect and assert our interests, India should be strongly reprimanded for this, and their reliability as our future partner and ally should be questioned.
The competence of the government is also questionable, since the assassination along with their political trajectory will make them seen as a necessary evil, not a partner to be embraced, by the west for the foreseeable future. India has been enjoying a shifting of manufacturing from China to India — and the possibility of pursuing a manufacturing-driven development trajectory like China had.
But its recent actions invite the question of whether or not trade and investment could turn it into an anti-western power like China.
India hasn’t shown any inclination to interfere in the politics of Western countries. This was specifically aimed at addressing Canada-based actors trying to influence Indian domestic politics. There was nothing anti-Western about it.
I don’t actually think it’s entirely out of line either. If Canadian nationals are going to try to exercise an outsized role in Indian politics and policy it seems unreasonable to say that the Indian state should have no say in the manner of their involvement. Especially if that “involvement” includes funneling drugs, guns, and money to hostile militias.
If Indian nationals were trying to do this to the US or Canada you can bet the Western world would very quickly concoct a justification to intervene ranging from sanctions to cutting off India or Indian companies from capital or financing until they’re forced to comply with extradition requests and cooperate with investigations. It seems unreasonable to suggest that being Canadian or American gives you license to actively stoke a civil war or insurgency in your country of origin. Clearly targeted killing of those groups are problematic, but Canada needs to have been taking this stuff more seriously to start with. That they haven’t speaks to a certain sense of impunity as to what Canada ought to be permitted to do.
The US has a record of allowing this stuff as long as your arm too. Irish expats here stoked the Troubles well after people in Ireland were ready to start reconciling. The gang and violence crisis in El Salvador is attributable almost entirely to American immigration policy, imprisoning immigrants and leaving them open to recruitment into gangs and then deporting them back, with their violent gang socialization and connections, to make trouble in their home country. To make no mention of how much the people of Cuba have been made to suffer on account of Cuban refugees having the good luck of settling in a swing state and thereby preventing America from ever having a rational foreign policy with respect to that country.
If any one of those countries had the leeway to take actions similar to what India did to nip the American based hostile actors in the bud—that America doesn’t see as being important enough to take seriously—I’m sure they’d have loved to (and in some cases probably have). Our policy apparatus simply does not care about the consequences we visit on the political stability of other countries or the welfare of the people in them. The fact that the opposition party in India is standing behind the Modi government rather than taking the opportunity to score political points should be a strong indicator that this is a matter of serious concern within the government there.
You don’t think it’s entirely out of line for the Indian government to send a hit squad to kill people in Canada? What?
This was a state sponsored terrorist attack on a supposedly friendly and democratic nation. That’s wildly “out of line”.
The US has set a pretty strong precedent for putting hits out on known terrorists wherever they are, friendly or not. Pakistan’s entire Western border has been destabilized, in part, because of it.
If their choice is to do that or allow Canada to harbor transnational terrorist organizations funneling guns and money to India it’s not so cut and dried. The US, again, sets a precedent here with its interventions through Latin America under the rationale of stopping the illegal drug trade. The only substantive difference is that it’s happened in a place it’s not “supposed to” based on rules the Anglo powers made up.
Is it nice? Certainly not. But is it a pretty normal thing for a state to do in their national security interests? Yeah.
What evidence is there that this was a terrorist who was being harboured by Canada? Canada is a functioning democracy with strong laws, not a failed state — there are perfectly viable legal channels that don’t involve terrorist attacks on Canadian soil.
India put in a request to extradite which Canada didn’t follow through on after questioning him. But he is high up in an organization that GoI has designated to be a terrorist org and was wanted for his role in a conspiracy to assassinate a priest. India clearly feels Canada doesn’t take its concerns seriously in this area and they feel this is largely a domestic political calculation on the part of the Canadian government, so they do not see the legal channels as being fair or viable.
Of course, Canada gets to just be unfair and not worry about the threats being generated domestically impact another country. In the same way the US can just enable Mexican cartels to run wild throughout Mexico because of our inability to control our own appetite for the drugs they sell. I don’t know if I’d fault Mexico if they decided they needed to extend their reach and nip the American side of the drug trade if they felt like US authorities weren’t interested in facilitating a resolution tk the problem. But they don’t because that’s just the logic of state power. There’s no impartial entity to decide whose playing fair.