What we're seeing are concocted charges. India is an outlier in the fact that putting up a poster or graffiti outside of your own home, in fact, is now being cracked down on. For example, people have been arrested for writing “Khalistan” on the walls of their own homes. Having said that, these individuals aren't necessarily charged with [Technical difficulty—Editor]. There are concocted charges—“support of terrorism” or “funding of terrorism”—and that's what we're seeing here. Activists who are talking about Khalistan or human rights abuses in India are being accused of funding terrorism.
The fact is that Canada's system does not allow for an in-depth examination of that evidence. Often just the accusation itself and the superficial summary of that so-called evidence would be enough to allow for an extradition if the minister wanted to do so. Given that India is saying that closer ties are dependent on Canada's cracking down on Sikh activists, it makes us very nervous.
The last time Canada granted visas to human rights abusers—Punjab police officers who were accused of human rights abuses and were long-denied visas—was right before Prime Minister Trudeau's 2018 trip to India. Four of them were granted visas at that time. That was clearly a political decision. What scares us is that a political decision could happen in the future to extradite Sikh activists, and there would be nothing we could do about it.