Evidence of meeting #127 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was india.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Thank you.
I'm going to give the rest of my time to Mr. Gaheer.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
Great. Thank you.
My questions are for Dr. Wark.
Dr. Wark, India proclaims itself as the world's largest democracy. Is it normal for a democracy to have a foreign intelligence service that operates within its executive, within its PMO, that is practically answerable only to the Prime Minister in a direct line in the chain of command and that does not face parliamentary oversight, public oversight or any judicial oversight? Is it normal for a democracy to have that kind of a service?
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual
It's an excellent question, sir. The answer, as I suspect you know, is that it's absolutely anomalous among democracies. I think democracies have learned a lesson over the last many decades that it is important for their intelligence services to be accountable publicly to their Parliaments, not just accountable to their executives. Mechanisms have been set up in this country and others, of course, to achieve that, whether it's review bodies or parliamentary committees and so on.
To have an intelligence service that reports secretly and operates secretly as the arm of a prime minister is, frankly, an authoritarian model.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
Thank you.
You mentioned that India is now potentially seen for what it is, a flawed democracy, and that it's not the perfect counterbalance to China, which is what the west was hoping it would be. I'd like to hear your views on that.
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual
I don't regard myself as an expert on Canadian-Indian diplomatic relations. I think it was very clear in the Indo-Pacific strategy that Global Affairs produced that there was a lot of hope invested in being able to develop closer ties between Canada and India, both on the economic front and on the security front, and hope that India would serve as a counterweight to China. I think economic hopes remain, and understandably so, so that we can continue to be a strong economic trading partner with India.
I think hopes around India being willing to perform, if you like, in the western camp in terms of geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific region are diminishing rapidly, and I think the idea that a country like Canada can engage in national security co-operation on various fronts with a country like India has been exploded entirely.
Liberal
Iqwinder Gaheer Liberal Mississauga—Malton, ON
Okay, I have another question.
You mentioned that, as this investigation comes out, obviously the U.S. has an indictment system where more information, more evidence, has been presented already, and we see a fuller picture of the activities that India engages in internationally, especially against the Sikh diaspora. Domestically, though, within India, I'm seeing certain reports that they favour a strongman-type prime minister to rule, so this domestically plays well for Modi.
Do you have any comments on that?
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual
Yes, it does, clearly, and I think we saw some of this in terms of the recent election of Mr. Modi, although that election, as you know, didn't go quite the way that he expected in terms of achieving an overwhelming majority. However, he enjoys considerable domestic support, clearly, within India in terms of the way in which he has positioned India as a more forceful global partner and has distanced himself, in a way, from the west. That's my reading of it.
These policies seem to be popular, and it must also be said that, in the Indian context, my view of this is that, increasingly, the Indian media is being captured by the government, and the number of independent Indian media sources is ever diminishing, which creates complexity in the political environment in terms of any effort to hold and promulgate alternative views.
Liberal
Bloc
Kristina Michaud Bloc Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us.
Mr. Wark, you're certainly becoming a regular at this committee.
Mr. Granger, thank you for accepting the committee's invitation to testify. In an article in La Presse in September 2023, when asked by journalist Vincent Larin about why India would have a grudge against Canada, you replied that “India therefore blames Canada ‘for being a bit soft’ in the face of this resurgence of the Sikh separatist movement in the country.” You also said that “India criticizes Canada for not protecting its diplomats from intimidation by Sikh separatists” and that this has been “a recurring accusation since the 1980s”. You pointed out that “recent events somewhat justify these fears, including referenda in Canada on Khalistan independence, in which past acts of violence were allegedly celebrated”.
I'm wondering about Canada's attitude. In my view, Canada's responsibility is to protect its citizens first and foremost, and they should come before foreign diplomats, for instance.
Do you think Canada should have taken a tougher stance on India or on what India thinks of Canada?
What are your thoughts on that?
Director School of Applied Politics, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
India believes that Canada isn't doing enough. In this whole debate, we must also remember that Canada has the distinction of being the country with the largest Sikh community outside India, a community that India cannot control.
India's frustration with Canadian politicians travelling to India should also be noted. This obsession could be explained by what could be called electoral solicitation aimed at getting closer to the Sikh community in order to obtain votes at home. That's a problem.
A second problem that must also be taken into account is that there are concerns outside India. Of course, I fully understand the concerns of the Sikh community, but it could also be said that tensions and political violence are growing within the Indian community. It's not going away. This is also what the Indian government is worried about. It's seeing its national unity at risk in Canada.
That's why I'm proposing that you take certain measures. A harsher response can always be taken with India, and our Canadian laws on extortion can always be strengthened, but will that really stop the Indian government's actions in Canada? I doubt it.
To calm interdiasporic tensions, I believe that criminalizing hate speech in religious processions and religious festivals would be a way to lower these diasporic tensions, which are often generated by an outside government.
Among other things, there was the proposal to ban Shiv Sena in Canada. The Shiv Sena is an ultranationalist Hindu group. It could very well also, in turn, create religious festivals or religious ceremonies and allow hate speech towards the Sikh community to erupt.
Before passing laws, which are of course necessary to toughen the diplomatic response and increase penalties for extortion, we also need to calm things down here in Canada, because as long as this tension remains very high, India will want to intervene.
You could say that we are practically inviting India to interfere in our country, given that there is polarization within the Indian diaspora.
Bloc
Kristina Michaud Bloc Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC
Thank you very much for addressing the bill introduced by the Bloc Québécois to end the religious exemption for hate speech. It is intended, in fact, to reduce tensions. There have been some rather disturbing events in Canada, particularly when Adil Charkaoui made some very hateful comments under the guise of religion. It was allowed to let slide. I don't think that allowing such rhetoric slide helps to soften the current climate, whether it's India or other foreign states that are interfering.
On a radio program on October 15, you said that it was a bit surprising to see India resorting to targeted assassinations today. In your opinion, this type of action abroad is not in its nature, traditionally.
What do you think explains this situation?
Is the Modi government impatient? Is there a resurgence of aggression towards Canada?
Director School of Applied Politics, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
We have to be careful not to personalize the problem. I remind you that it was during Indira Gandhi's term that the massacre in Amritsar took place, during Operation Blue Star.
Linking a reality to a political party in India could distort the reality. The fundamental debate for Indians is about national unity and the challenges of national unity. Why is Canada being targeted? Actually, it's very surprising that India is doing such things now. What happened in Pakistan in the past wasn't surprising. We could also talk about other neighbouring regions where India has taken such action. However, it's surprising that this is being done outside South Asia, particularly in Canada.
Why, then, is Canada a target? It's because it's the epicentre of the Khalistani movement. So it should come as no surprise that India is attacking Canada. Elsewhere, whether in the United States, the United Kingdom or Australia, the Khalistani movement is much less strong than in Canada. India is attacking the epicentre of this so-called separatist movement that is threatening Indian national unity.
That said, I was surprised to see India committing murders in Canada, but that is a rhetoric of political violence that has existed for a very long time in India. The current government, led by the Bharatiya Janata party, as well as the Shiv Sena and other groups, use political violence—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
I'm sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Granger. We'll have to stop here.
Thank you, Ms. Michaud.
Mr. MacGregor, you have six minutes.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to both witnesses for being here today.
Professor Wark, I'll start with you.
I read the iPolitics article of October 18. You were interviewed extensively about your feelings on political party leaders at the federal level getting the necessary security clearance so that they could be properly briefed. You've made it very clear what your position is on that. I will note that in other articles in The Hill Times, that position is supported by former CSIS executives. It is supported by a former CSIS director, Ward Elcock. In private conversations that I've had with current CSIS executives, that is their position as well.
At Tuesday's meeting, we had the new CSIS director, Mr. Daniel Rogers. I'll quote from his testimony: “From our perspective, the more knowledgeable party leaders are about the threat of foreign interference and some of the specifics that we've seen through our intelligence, the more they can be aware and the more they may be able to take appropriate actions within their own parties.” I think the conversation about whether or not party leaders can speak freely is a red herring, because the part I really zeroed in on from the current CSIS director is “appropriate actions” that a party leader can take. I think that's very important for Canadians to understand.
Professor Wark, could you inform the committee what actions you believe a federal party leader who has gotten the clearance and received the necessary briefings can take, in partnership with an organization like CSIS, that can lend themselves to protecting our democratic processes and giving Canadians a little bit more confidence that in the next election we're taking our choice of candidates very seriously?
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.
I would begin by saying a couple of things. I have had, in the past, over a number of years, a top secret code word clearance. I appreciate the obligations that go with that. I also appreciate the benefit of it in terms of access to kinds of information and assessments that you would not otherwise have. I can underline, just on the basis of my own experience of holding a top secret clearance, how valuable it can be. I would underline the value of it in two ways.
One is that it is, in my view, important for any leader of a party in the House of Commons to have a top secret clearance in order to better appreciate the range of national security threats that Canada faces. That range is very broad these days, and it goes far beyond foreign interference. I do want to make that point. There's a broader purpose to having access and briefings from national security officials to understand the threat environment. This may be an unfamiliar arena for political party leaders before they come into their positions of leadership, and there may be a steep learning curve. A top secret clearance is the way to climb that learning curve.
The second thing—and I think you've heard from people better able to speak to this than I am—is that the general understanding is that if you have a top secret clearance, you have the ability to have a clearer picture of the potential impacts of things like foreign interference or even related activities, like espionage targeting some members of your caucus. You're able to manage those problems more effectively than if you didn't have that awareness, whether it's appointments to committees, appointments to shadow cabinet positions, nomination contests and accrediting them and so on.
There is a range of activities that you can undertake, but I would just step back and say that, from my perspective, the most important reason for having a top secret clearance is that ability to have a wider understanding of the national security threat environment.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you for that.
I want to turn to your opening comments on India's research and analysis wing.
The RCMP and CSIS have a spotlight on India's activities right now in a way I don't think was there before. From October 14 onwards, there's been a new conversation in Canada that we're having about India's activities here. From India's perspective, do you think they're now regarding this as a failed operation? They can't see this increased attention on their activities as a success.
What do you think they are going to do from this point forward, now that there's all of this attention? Are they susceptible to international embarrassment? Do you feel that Canada's allies have sufficiently backed us up in our claims?
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual
Mr. MacGregor, thank you for that question. I think it's a very important one.
I would say—and this may be tinged with a degree of optimism—that the Indian government and RAW are learning some lessons from their attempted operations in countries like the United States and Canada. Unfortunately, they were successful in one case in Canada, with the murder of Mr. Nijjar.
What they're learning is that it's one thing to conduct covert operations in Pakistan, where the Pakistani government has a relatively weak security and intelligence capacity, but that it's quite a different thing to conduct these kinds of operations farther afield, in countries like the United States, western European countries, the U.K. and Germany, which have very strong security and intelligence systems, particularly the United States, and that also goes for Canada.
I think the Indians are now having second thoughts about the cost-benefit analysis of conducting these kinds of operations and whether they can really pull them off. They weren't able to pull off the U.S. operation, and that looks like a huge embarrassment for any intelligence organization. I think they're going to have to rethink these kinds of operations, targeting countries that are not in their near abroad.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.
We'll start our second round. We're running out of time, so we're going to shorten the time slots in this round to four minutes for the first two parties and two minutes for the others.
Mr. Caputo, please go ahead for four minutes.
Conservative
Frank Caputo Conservative Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC
Thank you, Professor Granger and Dr. Wark. I appreciate having you both here and benefiting from your expertise.
Dr. Wark, I was really interested in your opening comments. I have so many questions to ask, and maybe I'll get to ask them another time or after this.
I gather your expertise is wide-ranging when it comes to foreign interference, and we're obviously talking about interference from India here. I'm wondering, when we talk about what one country does.... You've alluded to this, perhaps obliquely, maybe more directly at other times, about how countries like India, when they engage in foreign interference, look at the treatment of other countries. In other words, they look at how Canada responds to foreign interference from other countries.
It's quite clear that Beijing has interfered in prior elections. What message, in your view, is sent based on how Canada has dealt with foreign interference from Beijing, in relation to how India is now attempting to carry out violence, murders or extortion? I hope I'm being clear in my question.
Senior Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation, As an Individual
Thank you, sir. It's a good question, and I would approach it in this way.
When a foreign country, an authoritarian state like China, Russia and increasingly India, engages in foreign interference, they do so by attempting to understand their target on two different levels. On a political level, how well can they operate politically in that country in terms of engaging with target audiences within that country? What is the state of their diaspora in that country? To what extent can they encourage them to form and to hold opinions that are favourable to their official policy? There's that political level.
There's a different level in terms of foreign states like those countries trying to understand what kind of resistance they are going to meet from security and intelligence agencies in those foreign countries that they're targeting. They may be able to come to a picture of that political environment that they're operating in.
I would suggest to you, sir, that one of the challenges for many authoritarian states, no matter what the size of their intelligence arms might be, is really understanding the operating environment abroad. What are they going to hit when they try to conduct operations in Canada, in the U.S., in the U.K., in Europe and so on? They will often engage in those operations with a degree of ignorance about their opposition and about what they're going to face, and with a degree of overconfidence about what they can achieve.
It's because we're in the secret world now and knowing how to understand the success of foreign interference operations.... I think one of the blind spots of many authoritarian states is that they come at foreign interference with a picture of the politics of a foreign target that may not be very accurate. They often come at intelligence and security operations related to foreign interference without a full understanding of what they're going to meet in terms of security push-back.
I appreciate that this has been a contested issue, including throughout the public inquiry into foreign interference. On the view that Canada should be seen as some kind of playground for foreign interference, my own view, personally, is that it's an exaggerated position. Again, I would separate it into what foreign states think about Canada as a playground politically and what they think about Canada as a playground in terms of security and intelligence capabilities. I think there are two different calculations there. We're perhaps an easier target politically, but we're a harder target in terms of operations on the ground.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ron McKinnon
Thank you, Mr. Caputo.
We'll go now to Ms. O'Connell for four minutes, please.
October 31st, 2024 / 5:50 p.m.
Liberal
Jennifer O'Connell Liberal Pickering—Uxbridge, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here.
I have to say how dismayed I am once again on our second day of testimony here. We just had really powerful testimony from two members of the community in the last hour, speaking about personal threats to themselves. Mr. Moninder Singh spoke about some of the last words spoken by Mr. Nijjar, and the Conservatives asked, in their first round, whether Canada is getting brushed off by India in meetings.
Do you think the Sikh community experiencing threats against their lives care that Canada and the Modi government brushed off some of those meetings? Perhaps if we cowed to that pressure...like Stephen Harper, who condemned Canadians' right to free speech and promoted Sikh separatism. He got those meetings. Andrew Scheer got those meetings. Do you think that Canadians care about the brushing off of meetings over the safety of community members' lives? Let's seriously think about this. Mr. Caputo, in his round of questions on a study about foreign interference by India, asked about China. I wonder how the Sikh community feels after that powerful testimony, not even an hour ago, about threats to life in our country and Mr. Caputo asking about China. Ms. Dancho asked about brushing off of meetings. Perhaps we should be asking about how the Indian government has used agents to threaten the lives of Canadian citizens. Perhaps that should be a priority in the limited time that we have in these meetings.
To our two witnesses, do you think that it provides Canadians with a sense of safety and security whether or not the Modi government likes us enough to have those meetings, or is it better for Canada to initiate Canadian policy and take a Canadian stance that protects our citizens?