Canada PM Trudeau to Address Serious National Security Issues with India

Ottawa, Canada, June 19, :
The re-election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to a third straight term has provided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada with an opportunity to engage with India on "some very serious" matters of national security, according to Trudeau. On Monday, just before the anniversary of the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Trudeau gave an interview to CBC News, saying, "Now that he's through his election, I think there is an opportunity for us to engage, including on some very serious issues around national security and keeping Canadians safe and the rule of law."

At the G7 Summit in Italy, when India was invited as an Outreach country, Trudeau met with Prime Minister Modi, who made the statements that followed. Prime Minister Modi tweeted a photo of himself shaking hands with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Following their meeting in Italy, Trudeau spoke with the Canadian media outlet Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) and said that the two nations must collaborate on a number of "important but sensitive" subjects. Little information about the meeting between the two leaders was divulged by him.

On Monday, Trudeau was quoted as saying, "I think one of the really good things about summits is you get an opportunity to engage directly with a huge range of different leaders with whom there are various issues,"  "And certainly with India, there are massive people-to-people ties, there are really important economic ties, there's alignment on a number of big issues that we need to work on as democracies, as a global community," added the president.

Relations between the two nations deteriorated after Trudeau raised "credible allegations" in the House of Commons last year regarding a possible connection between Indian operatives and the murder of Khalistani terrorist Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, in June 2023. A counterargument from India has called the charges "absurd" and "motivated."

The National Investigation Agency of India identified Nijjar as a terrorist in 2020. Last June, at a Gurdwara in Surrey, he was shot and died. The one-year anniversary of Nijjar's passing is Tuesday. Reports appeared in March this year claiming to have footage of Nijjar's murder showing armed men shooting him. At the same time, Trudeau and PM Modi last met face-to-face in September 2017 at the G20 leaders' conference in New Delhi.