Discussing Canada-India Tensions with Judy Aldous on CBC Alberta at Noon

The following is a transcript of an interview/call-in show -CBC Alberta at Noon with Judy Aldous -on October 4, 2023

Judy Aldous: Rising tensions with India. What does this mean to you? This is Alberta at Noon. I’m Judy Aldous. Well, the anti-Canada rhetoric has surged in the Indian media.
Palki Sharma: Clearly the Canadian Prime Minister is out of his depths.
Arnab Goswami: And ladies and gentlemen, he is facing a huge backlash from the press back home.
Palki Sharma: It seems that the Canadian leader needs a lesson in international relations.
Arnab Goswami: And Justin Trudeau is appeasing the terrorist groups by backing Khalistani terrorists openly and trying to take on India.
Judy Aldous: Well, it has been two and a half weeks since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of being behind the murder of a Canadian. Diplomats have been recalled. Some visas aren’t being processed. And today on the show, we want to know what impact this is all having on you.
Seven minutes after 12. Well, the most recent move is that India has told Canada to remove 41 of its 62 diplomats. That’s according to a report from the Financial Times. India has also suspended visa services for Canadians, so maybe you’ve been affected by that. Canada has not retaliated for that though Liberal MP Randeep Sarai says it may have to.
Randeep Sarai M…: I think time will tell. Let’s see if this is a temporary measure, if this is a long-term measure. Perhaps if it is long-term, maybe Canada will have to do further actions.
Judy Aldous: Well, this all escalated after Justin Trudeau stood up in the House of Commons about two and a half weeks ago now to say it has evidence to show the Indian government was behind the killing of a Canadian who was a Sikh separatist leader living in British Columbia. Now, Salimah Shivji is CBC’s South Asia correspondent. And so I want to play you a little bit here of her describing the media coverage so far in India.
Salimah Shivji: The main headline repeated over and over is that Canada is acting like a rogue state. There’s no sense of diplomacy. The media is saying in terms of how Canada came up with these allegations and how they presented them publicly. The sense that Canada is a safe haven for “dreaded gangsters”, that they’re not doing anything to police the separatist. Khalistani movement has come up a lot here. Movement, of course, is banned here in India.
I saw one paper referring to Gangland Canada and that gangster idea has come up a lot. The attacks on Justin Trudeau are really quite violent. There have been headlines where they talk about Canadastan, a play on the word Khalistan of course. But another television segment that I saw spoke of, Trudeau in particular, really leaning into that gangster theme, calling him a guardian of gangsters. They talked about his cozy ties with what they called radicals, basically dismissing this as a ploy from Trudeau for political gain.
And that view is pretty consistent, I would say across most Indian media outlets. Those attacks on the Canadian Prime Minister, they’ve been harsh, they’ve been really personal and quite outlandish in some instances from what should be reputable sources.
Judy Aldous: Again, that’s Salimah Shivji. She’s the CBC’s South Asia correspondent. And so today, given all of this, we want to know the impact that these rising tensions have on your life. Maybe you have family in India that wants to visit, to immigrate here, or you want to go to India. It’s wedding season in India soon. What impact has this had on your life? Here’s the phone number, 1-866-468-4422, 1-866-468-4422. You might have questions as well. Our guests can help answer those. Email address to reach us is albertaatnoon@cbc.ca.
Our guest on the show today is immigration lawyer Raj Sharma. He was also once an immigration officer and he joins us via Zoom for the show. Raj, hello. Welcome to the program.
Raj Sharma: Thanks for having me on.
Judy Aldous: Let’s start with the media coverage in India. What have you made of what you’ve been seeing?
Raj Sharma: The media coverage in India is entirely without exception, one-sided. It would be laughable or farcical if it wasn’t tragic because what we’re dealing with is a very serious issue, which is a rapidly deteriorating relationship between two formerly friendly democratic country. So we have a cacophony of bombastic and hysterical accusations. I’m not sure. I don’t feel like repeating some of them, but there are personal attacks against the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, and of course aspersions against the handling of what India feels is unfounded allegations. And obviously from our side, very serious allegations if India is targeting the diaspora here and perhaps extra judicial, extra territorial assassination.
Judy Aldous: Just to stick with the media for just one more second, have you been involved? Have you done interviews? I know you speak many different languages. I’m just wondering what your experience has been.
Raj Sharma: I’ve been asked to appear on certain India media channels. However, I don’t feel that it’s… It’s not really a forum where you’re going to share information or people are trying to glean further details or information. It’s a forum, it’s an echo chamber, and by and large, you simply have people shouting at one another trying to outdo one another in their disparagement of Justin Trudeau.
Judy Aldous: Yeah. The clips I picked were, although very bombastic in what they were saying, were quite calm because it was very difficult to find that. You’re right. The amount of fighting that was going on, on Indian television was quite something. Okay. All right. Raj Sharma, he’s an immigration lawyer, our guest for the show today. If you want to give us a call to either ask Raj a question, you can as well, but let’s keep it to what we’re talking about today, right now, not just all immigration related concerns, but also we just want to hear from you personally. If you have connections to India, how have this sort of rising tensions affected you personally?
Perhaps you wanted to travel back, if India is your home country, back to India or have you been able to? What’s that been like? 1, 8, 6, 6, 4, 6, 8, 4, 4, 2, 2. That’s our toll-free number 1-866-468-4422. Raj, let’s talk a little bit about the response from India so far. Two main issues. First of all, decided to stop processing visitor visas in Canada and then reportedly telling 41 Canadian diplomats to leave India. Are you surprised by that response?
Raj Sharma: A little bit, Judy. I’m often asked to prognosticate or predict. In this case I was wrong. When this first embroiled, this spat has quickly developed into a crisis. My first thought was that India would suspend e-Visas or visas upon a arrival, something that they’ve done in the past to signal their discontent with certain actions or inactions by the Canadian government. I did not anticipate that they would suspend visa services for all Canadians.
I want to make something clear here. The Indians indicate that they’ve suspended visa processing for Canadians in Canada because from their point of view, a security issue that their diplomats… That they’re not safe, that they’re facing threats in Canada. Now, that would be interesting. However, I wanted to point out that even if you’re a Canadian in the UK working in the UK for five or 10 years, you can’t get a visa from the Indian High Commission in London. It’s that Canadian passport. And it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, the Canadian does not have access to visa services from the Indians.
Judy Aldous: Is that level of response that’s surprising to you?
Raj Sharma: Yes.
Judy Aldous: Okay. Let’s walk our way through what all this means. So first of all, who is most affected by the moves that the Indian government has taken recently?
Raj Sharma: This will affect the 1 million plus Indo-Canadians and of course the many, many Canadians that are of Indian descent such as myself. So in essence, anyone that has ties to India that holds a Canadian passport, that does not have an existing visa or an OCI, Overseas Citizen of India card. So this will impact… And we know that the Indian diaspora maintains deep ties to India. That means perhaps land back home, that means family and extended family back home. That means attending marriages or going to get married. That means as my uncles did when my grandmother passed away in December, going to India for the funeral or final rites.
So this impacts anyone hoping to travel to Canada that holds a Canadian passport. So tourism, and obviously business, and manifold consequences to this action.
Judy Aldous: And as we mentioned off the top of the program, it’s called wedding season coming up soon in India. So what would that typically mean for people of Indian descent in Canada?
Raj Sharma: Well, wedding season means that you don’t want to get married when it’s 45 degrees Celsius. And so the wedding season is typically October to March.
Judy Aldous: And this would typically be what a lot of people would travel back to India to attend weddings and they can’t right now. If they were hoping to get a visa to go do that, they can’t?
Raj Sharma: Right. And then their children, of course, there’s some school breaks as well. So this is a very, very popular time to go back to India.
Okay. What about in terms of business, business travel, all of that, how could that be affected by what’s happening?
Well, that could be next. If we’re looking at escalation, we now, of course, the suspension of visa processes or services has now been followed by the apparent expulsion of 41 Canadian diplomats in India. In terms of trade, Canada’s about number 10 in terms of the top 10 trading partners for India. Out of our trade to India, Saskatchewan makes up about a quarter or a third of the total trade and India buys pulses and lentils, what we would call Dal from Saskatchewan. This is of course going to be of great concern to Saskatchewan farmers and producers.
Judy Aldous: But so far that has not been disrupted. Am I right? You’re just sort of thinking down the line of what may happen. Is that fair?
Raj Sharma: Well, the next natural question of course is that what happens after you expel 41 diplomats or two thirds of diplomats from a country that a trade issue normally follows. But yes, that would be speculation on my part.
Judy Aldous: Okay. Raj Sharma an immigration lawyer. He used to work as an immigration officer as well. He’s our guest today on the program. As we talk to you about what rising tensions with India mean for you, you can share the story of how you personally are impacted and also just your thoughts on the way in which Canada has responded to all of this. The prime minister got up in the House of Commons of course two and a half weeks ago, announcing that it had evidence to show that India was behind the killing of a Canadian in BC, but then has not really provided much more details on that evidence and the Canadian government has said repeatedly that it doesn’t want to provoke India any further. So if you want to weigh in on the response that Canada has had in all of this, let us know. 186-468-4422 is the number for you to call. 186-468-4422. So there is a visa processing center in Canada that India has suspended services for. Describe to us the size of that processing center.
Raj Sharma: These services are provided by way of the consulate general of India, so the CGI or the consulate general of India. There’s two of those, Vancouver and then there is Ottawa or Toronto. And so in essence, prior to this embroilment with a Canadian passport, you could apply online for something called an e-Visa, which was processed very, very quickly often within two or three days. Once you have the E visa, you can board a plane and get to India. Once you arrive, they then authorized your entry for 30 days. That was in play prior to this suspension. There’s another way you can send your passport to the Indians and request this visa, which would then be issued for a period of six months and then they would send you your passport back.
So those are the two ways of getting a visa. Individuals that were born in India or their parents were born in India can apply for something called an OCI, Overseas Citizen of India. It’s not really citizenship. India doesn’t recognize dual citizenship. That card allows you… With that card, you can travel to India practically whenever you want and allows you further services as well.
There is some indication by the Indians on India media, so take it perhaps with a grain of salt that India is considering revoking, OCI of perhaps outspoken or activist members of the Indian diaspora in Canada. That would be largely Punjabis and Sikh activists.
Judy Aldous: Okay. And talk to me some more about these OCIs. These are Overseas Citizens of India. Do you know how many of these would exist in Canada? How common it is? How many people use them to sort of travel back and forth?
Raj Sharma: It is quite common. It’s something I discussed with my father-in-law just on I think Saturday or Sunday. So large numbers of the diaspora have the OCI. This would be primarily individuals that either their business or other interests such as land would require. So instead of getting a visa on a regular basis, you just get one of this OCI. And again, it allows you further services there as well. India promoted this heavily among the diaspora. Something I think I’m eligible for given my father was born there, something I’ve never applied for, but it’s something that was relatively common, something that a lot of individuals in Canada took advantage of.
Judy Aldous: Right. And so now so far those with OCIs are not affected. There’s just been murmurs on Indian media, and as you say, take that as you will that India might revoke those. Interesting. What about international students? India being the number one source country for international students to Canada. What impact could all of this have on them?
Raj Sharma: What we’ve seen in the last 10 days, let’s say, these decisions that are being made will have primary, secondary, tertiary consequences. It’s difficult to predict the future. In this case, it’s fairly easy to see that either you had… Prior to the announcement by the Indians yesterday, prior to that, you had rumors that the Canadians were doing a drawdown of diplomatic staff due to security issues in India. At that time I said, “Well this will impact processing.” So this will delay processing of individuals in India that are hoping to visit, study, work, or reunite with family or come here as permanent residents that would naturally impact those decisions or processing.
We did not realize the scope. The scope here is, again, the Indians have indicated that they want parity in terms of diplomatic presence. There’s only 20 Indian diplomats, 20, 21 Indian diplomats in Canada. We had about 60 or 61 in India. The reason for that disparity is that far more Indians come to Canada than Canadians go to India. As you said, India is number one source country of foreign students, international students. Vast numbers of visitors, workers, and of course permanent resident applicants whether to rejoin their family here, sponsor in the family class, husbands, wives, partners, children, parents, grandparents or individuals that are highly skilled that are coming here as permanent residents, skilled or investors.
So a parity will naturally, two third elimination of Canadian diplomat positions will naturally impact processing capacity. Delhi was the largest visa office outside of Canada.
Judy Aldous: So what will that mean for people? This will mean that students who want to come, people who want to try and immigrate, it’s just going to slow it down. The system will just be slowed down even more than it already is. Is that fair?
Raj Sharma: Right. I mean we would have backlogs, but I mean, again, you may have to distribute those applications to other visa offices. So that will impact perhaps, Manila, Singapore, Sri Lanka. All of a sudden you’re going to take the applications from one place and you’re going to distribute it to other places which may not have the capacity to deal with it. That’s one consequence.
But bear in mind, there was a school, Laurentian College that essentially went into bankruptcy once the Saudis pulled their international students a couple of years ago. And so if there’s a delay in international students, a lot of these colleges, these DLIs, especially in Ontario, especially Northern Ontario colleges, if these students don’t come, they’ll be wanting refunds of their tuition fees. And the business model for hundreds of colleges in Canada rely on the Indian students.
They’ve put all of their eggs in the Indian basket. If those students don’t come, they may not have the funds to continue. That could be a secondary consequence of this drawdown or expulsion.
Judy Aldous: Interesting. All right. Immigration lawyer, Raj Sharma, our guest today on the program. We’re asking you about these rising tensions with India, what you make of them and what they mean to you, the impact they have on your life. 186-468-4422. That’s the number that Ajay has called from Strathmore. And Ajay is on the phone with us now. Hello.
Caller -Ajay: Hi, how are you today?
Judy Aldous: I’m well, thank you. What would you like to see happen here?
Caller -Ajay: First of all, I think this argument and a fight or whatever you call is between a kid in the class who gets an A plus and a kid who gets minus C in a democracy way. Canadian democracy is I think triple plus A and the democratic systems in India is… Everybody knows what happens over there. This is all about elections, elections. Mr. Modi will do anything to get elected again. This is his one agenda to start, make the Sikh community bad name and have a 80% out of that, “See what I did? I went in their home. I killed that guy.” The guy who never even killed a fly in his life. He was named as a terrorist. I think this argument between Canada and India will not over until United States and England just all get together. Give India a good final warning, “Don’t do it again.”
Judy Aldous: Ajay, you would like to see other western countries, western democracies come to Canada’s side?
Caller -Ajay: Yeah.
Judy Aldous: Right? Okay. And stand up to India.
Caller -Ajay: Stand up to India and give them a warning and finish this getting… Diplomat getting out from country and finish this thing with the warning, final warning. Don’t do it again. All three or four countries come together and the story should be finished. Otherwise this will keep on going. This will damage more people’s life like normal people. I think it’ll go until 2024, until Modi will be elected or not elected. After that, this will calm down.
Judy Aldous: Interesting. All right. Ajay, thanks for your phone call. I hope you’ll keep listening.
Right. Thank you. Raj Sharma, what do you make of what he’s saying, especially this idea that… And I wonder if a lot of people in Canada have wondered where countries like the UK and the United States are in all of this. What are your thoughts on that?
Raj Sharma: I take Ajay’s point regarding the upcoming elections in India. The election is up for April of next year. That’s just a few months away from going through the media and going through various sort of statements by figures there, including former ambassadors and diplomatic staff. Modi has put himself in a sort of win-win sort of point of view. So from Modi’s point of view, especially with this amped up electorate and amped up media on this issue, their perspective is this. “If India did it, we were right to do it. And if we didn’t do it, then Trudeau is wrong.”
So as you can see from their point of view, this is a very powerful sort of perspective. If you’re telling the Indian populace and electorate that we killed a terrorist in Canada, that’s their perspective, not mine. Then the majority of Indian electorate would support that because, again, the Modi government is far different than prior governments. It is a far different vision of India that we’ve seen and perhaps the prime minister and other countries have viewed India through this colonial or post-colonial lens where Mahatma Gandhi’s concepts of non-violence and methodology defines it.
Well, Gandhi is long dead and Modi embodies the BJP, RSS Hindutva concept of India being a Hindu state. And obviously when you start saying things like this, what happens to minority groups? So what happens to the 200 million plus Muslims that are in India? What happens to obviously the other minorities including the Sikh population? In terms of getting other countries involved, obviously that may or may not happen in terms of, let’s see where this downward spiral continues to and the US or the UK may well have to broker some kind of approach move.
But India also knows that it’s needed. Its geopolitical position is very, very important and sensitive at this time. They need India as a counterweight to China. The UK needs a free trade agreement with India after their divorce from the European Union from Brexit. They need a free trade agreement. The prime minister of the UK right now of Indian descent married to an Indian national. I believe her father’s infosys perhaps net worth is $800 million plus.
So I’m not sure whether we’re going to see that type of brokering, and perhaps as you know this, he perhaps does, Jagtar Singh Johal was a Scottish citizen, a UK national, went to India for his wedding. He had a website about Never Forget 1984, about the atrocities that followed the attack on the Golden Temple, Operation Bluestar and the assassination of Indira Gandhi and the programs that took place after that. That person was essentially taken into custody. He is now 2,000 days in India without trial in custody. So there’s at least three or four UK prime ministers that have not been able to move the needle on his incarceration.
Judy Aldous: And they’re not about to then come to Canada’s aid perhaps. Right, yeah. Okay, Raj, I’m-
Raj Sharma: Taking the words out of my mouth.
Judy Aldous: Okay. All right. Raj, I’m going to have to jump in just because we’ve got to take our break to get our update from the newsroom. If you are on hold, I’m thinking of Sam in Okotoks. You have a great point that we want to get to. So just stay with us, Sam. We’ll get to your call as soon as we can, but it is 12:32 and Ken Dawson joins us from the newsroom today. Ken, hello.

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Caller -Sam: How are you today?
Judy Aldous: I’m all right, Sam. What are you thinking of all this?
Caller -Sam: Well, I guess the concern for me is I’m just blown away in today’s day and age how it got to this, number one. And you take a look at the large Indian population right across Canada, and if you’re someone that has to go back because maybe a parent is sick or someone passed away or you need to go back there for an urgent family matter or whatever, this shouldn’t be happening. Right? And our federal government and their governments, they have to come together with either through some mediation. But this is mind-blowing that it got to this.
Judy Aldous: I think a lot of people are feeling that way as well. We sort of got some information from our guest and our caller in the previous half hour, a little bit about kind of the why relations with India are so important for so many other countries, which might explain why other countries have been sort of unwilling to come to Canada’s side so far. Does that sort of resonate with you?
Caller -Sam: Well, I think it’s beyond that. Well, not beyond that, but I think it’s the two countries like our prime minister has to step up in terms of his leadership and address this head on. The longer it goes, I just think of some poor person living in a part of Canada that they need to go back for an urgent matter or something, they can’t. The level of stress that causes for people. But I really feel is unnecessary because let’s get a solution here.
Judy Aldous: Sam, thank you for that. It was great of you to call.
Caller -Sam: Thank you.
Judy Aldous: All right. The number for you to call to join us 1-866-468-4422. As we mentioned in the first half hour of the program, according to a report from the Financial Times, India has just told 41 Canadian diplomats to leave. A couple of weeks ago, India stopped processing visas from Canada. Canada has not retaliated on that front. And all of this of course because our prime minister said there’s evidence the Indian government was involved in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He was a leader in the Sikh community in BC and a well-known advocate for the Sikh separatist movement in India.
Now, the media coverage in India has been very critical, very one-sided of Canada. Many unsubstantiated claims being made. And I did want to play again another part of an interview with CBC’s South Asia correspondent, Salimah Shivji here. She is speaking on the CBC podcast Front Burner.
Salimah Shivji: The attacks on Justin Trudeau are really quite violent. There have been headlines where they talk about Canadastan, a play on the word Khalistan of course, but another television segment that I saw spoke of Trudeau in particular really leaning into that gangster theme, calling him a guardian of gangsters. They talked about his cozy ties with what they called radicals, basically dismissing this as a ploy from Trudeau for political gain. And that view is pretty consistent I would say across most Indian media outlets, those attacks on the Canadian Prime Minister. They’ve been harsh, they’ve been really personal and quite outlandish in some instances from what should be reputable sources.
Speaker: There was one in particular kind of on the other extreme of gangsterism is we were calling him, what was it, a milk drinking baby or something like that?
Salimah Shivji: Yeah. This came from a former Indian ambassador who actually claimed that Trudeau when he was in Delhi for the, as we’ve reported, very tense G20 meeting in early September that Trudeau had a stash of cocaine on his plane and that’s why this former diplomat said that the delegation was delayed flying back to Canada. So that ambassador, his name is Deepak Bora, he really laid into Trudeau and as you said, he called him a childish milk-drinking baby.
Speaker 11: [foreign language 00:31:53]
Salimah Shivji: He said, “What does he know of international relations?” This is from a former ambassador on television with no pushback. And what’s interesting is those kind of baseless and strange cocaine claims that came out of nowhere were picked up by many other media outlets. So that really gives you a sense of how this is playing out.
Judy Aldous: Again, that’s Salimah Shivji is the CBC’s South Asia correspondent. This is Alberta at Noon. I’m Judy Aldous. And Ahmed joins us now. Ahmed is in High Prairie and he’s on the phone. Hello, Ahmed.
Caller -Ahmed: Hi, there. Can you hear me, Judy?
Judy Aldous: I sure can. Yeah, you’re with us here on the show. What are your thoughts?
Caller -Ahmed: Yeah. My thought is I agree with a couple of guests there that this has all to do with the upcoming elections in 2024 where Prime Minister Modi is seeking a reelection and I think the situation is going to get worse before it gets better in 2024. The other thing I would like to tell is as much as the western countries need India to push back China, India also needs the Western countries. We need to realize that China has laid territorial claims on large swaths of Indian territory. At the entire state of our natural [inaudible 00:33:14] it’s a huge chunk of land and huge natural resources. That is being claimed by China. Now they have included them in China’s map, the state, and there are other parts neighboring Pakistan, which China wants to claim that and wants to integrate into annex into China.
So as much as we need India, India also needs the Western countries. So in that sense some sort of compromise has to be done, but not at the cost of the justice system in Canada. What happened recently, the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil by foreign government, that is unacceptable.
Judy Aldous: Okay. So a few thoughts that stand out from what you’ve said, Ahmed. You said first of all that you think things might get worse before they get better. And you’re not the first person to say that so far, but that also as a Canadian, you stand by the response that the Canadian government has had so far. Is that fair?
Caller -Ahmed: Absolutely, yes. I’m a person of Indian origin, but as a Canadian living in Canada, I think what Trudeau has done, what the rest of the political parties have done to support Trudeau and the current government’s position, I think that’s fair enough.
Judy Aldous: All right, Ahmed, thanks for your phone call.
Caller -Ahmed: You’re welcome. Thanks.
Judy Aldous: Our guest today for the program, Raj Sharma, immigration lawyer in Calgary. He’s on Zoom. He’s been with us since noon. Raj, thanks for staying with us.
Raj Sharma: My pleasure.
Judy Aldous: Let me read an email that’s come to us from a listener and it sort of refers back to some of what we talked about in the first half hour of the program, but maybe you can weigh in on it. This listener says, “I applied for my five-year visa the evening before India suspended visa processing. The visa application was successfully received before the suspension, but my visa remains in flux. What’s at stake? Well, I’m unable to go to my brother-in-law’s wedding this November and my husband and I will once again have to postpone our own wedding blessing celebration. COVID border closures caused us to cancel our own Indian wedding and much of my husband’s family was unable to get visas to attend our Canadian wedding to boot. My parents were going to join us on this trip and now they also have to cancel as well. While this comes at a financial loss, the biggest loss is not making these fundamental memories with my new family as we welcome a new sister into our fold.”
“I’m a few months away from being eligible for a spousal OCI card. I try not to focus on the what ifs. What if I just applied for my visa a couple of days before? What if I could have gotten an OCI card? This OCI is Overseas Citizen of India card. Based on our five years common law, what if this is a big loss? I’m not sure how long it will take to get over this loss. Thank you for covering this today on the program.” And that’s from a listener who goes by T. So thank you for that. And so Raj, that’s exactly what you were referring to earlier in the program, right? That this is a time of year when many Canadians would be returning or going to India for weddings, family celebrations and not able to now.
Raj Sharma: That’s exactly right. I mean, there’s an African proverb when elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers or gets trampled and that’s what we’re seeing right now. It’s ordinary individuals that will bear the brunt of what appears to be unprecedented breakdown in relations between these countries.
Judy Aldous: Someone else has emailed in with a question for you, Raj. “I have a multi-entry e-Visa for a trip to India at the end of November. When I check the e-Visa status on the e-Visa website, it says valid. Will I be allowed entry at the airport in Delhi?” That’s Kim who’s emailed that in.
Raj Sharma: Yes. Well, a couple of things. A visa allows you to knock on the door of any country so you have a valid visa. Any carrier will take you. That is any airline will allow you permission to board. When you arrive in India or any other country, that country will then assess whether you’re eligible for entry on that visa. So all things being equal you should be okay.
Judy Aldous: And that’s just because obviously her application or Kim’s application got in time, right? If it had got in a little bit later, perhaps after this spat, it wouldn’t be valid. These visas wouldn’t be processed, right?
Raj Sharma: That’s right. She has a valid visa and the Indians continue to honor those valid visas as far as we know.
Judy Aldous: Okay. Remind me what an e-Visa is and how that’s different from other visas.
Raj Sharma: An e-Visa just sort of does away from… And again, this is something that we offer to friendly countries. So Canada, we offer this eTA, this electronic travel authorization, which is basically an e-Visa. So someone from the UK or Italy that holds those passports can apply online, pay a nominal fee and get authorization to come to Canada. The Americans don’t need this because obviously we’re basically family with them, I guess.
In terms of India, this really assisted because prior to the e-Visa it was all paper. You would print this long sheet of paper out, fill out all this information about yourself and your parents and what have you, include the fees and your passport and send it to the consulate general of India in Vancouver typically. So the e-Visa was done online and then you would get this sort of barcode or this electronic document and then you would show that that would let you to get onto the plane.
You arrive in India and you show that again and then the Indians would then issue you permission to remain up to 30 days. That was fine for many people. It was very, very convenient. It was very, very quick and a lot of people didn’t want to be in India more than 30 days or 30 days and less. So that was an improvement in terms of speed and flexibility, and ironically enough brought in by the Modi government.
Judy Aldous: Abdul has called us now. Abdul is in Calgary and is on the phone now. Hey Abdul, welcome to the program.
Caller -Abdul: Yes, thank you for letting me in.
Judy Aldous: Yeah. Do you want to jump in with your thoughts on the rising tensions with India?
Caller -Abdul: I’ve been listening to your program since it started and the more I listen to it, the more angrier I get. I think that the Canadian government should take a very hard line approach on the nationalist government of India. We should not allow them to get away with it. We should not allow a foreign government to come here and basically execute a Canadian citizen right before our eyes. And if we allow this to continue, even you guys who work in the press, you are not safe because as soon as you say something against a foreign government, you have a target on your back.
I think we should retaliate against India or individuals within the Indian government. [inaudible 00:40:04] Indian nationals make more money here in Canada than Canadians make in India. You understand? If we look at the economic dichotomies between the two countries, Indians will contribute more to the economy of India in terms of individual incomes than Indians do over here. We should not allow the Indian government… Modi is a nationalist. We should not allow his government to bully Canadians. He should not be allowed to get away with this. The government should not fold its hands and watch a foreign government antagonize Canadians and even commit murder on Canadian soil. It should not be allowed. That is just my point.
Judy Aldous: Okay. Abdul, we had the prime Minister about two and a half weeks ago now, standing up in the House of Commons announcing this and then since then the prime minister been endlessly saying he’s not trying to provoke India, that Canada is not sort of retaliating with any… Canada expelled one diplomat at the beginning, but since then has not really done anything otherwise. So what would you-
Caller -Abdul: I think the prime minister is wrong. I think the prime minister is wrong. He’s very wrong in doing that. What does he mean by he’s not trying to provoke India? Indians are already provoked. When you look at their media, it’s as if they are war with this country. So we cannot sit down and watch and allowing foreign governments to antagonize individual Canadians irrespective of their views. This country respect free speech and if the Indian government thinks that a Canadian citizen have committed a crime against India, there’s rule of law in this country. They can come and go to court. They should not be allowed to be killing people or committing extra judicial stuff in Canada. It should not be allowed.
We should not allow that because if we do allow this to go, you will put all of us at risk, particularly today that we have social media and other media platforms that people comment on. Somebody can take your comments that you made online and you can have a target on your back. The prime minister is wrong. We should not say that we are not going to provoke India because they are already provoked. They are rather provoking Canada because they’re the ones who are committing crimes to Canadian soil.
Judy Aldous: All right. Abdul, you made some really strong interesting points. I’m really glad you were listening and that you called. Thank you.
Caller -Abdul: You are welcome. Thank you very much.
Judy Aldous: All right. Raj, I imagine you want to weigh in on, but before you do, just if you are listening and you want to respond to what you’ve heard from Abdul, the number to call is 1-866-468-4422. Raj, I know you’re an immigration lawyer, not global affairs, but it fits into the work that you do. What do you think of what you heard from Abdul?
Raj Sharma: Well, first of all, thank you Abdul for that eloquent and articulate statement. Here’s my perspective on this. I am a refugee lawyer and I handle refugee claims from Indian nationals all the time. What I’d like to say, and to be fair, the prime minister’s statement in the House of Commons was a qualified statement. It was a highly qualified statement. You’re talking about one sentence that has two important qualifiers in it, that there’s credible allegations. So allegations itself is a qualifier of a potential link. And obviously potential is also a qualifier.
So that is the , quote, unquote, evidence that we have. We haven’t seen evidence. We have statements that there is evidence, but there is no evidence yet. The prime minister himself and Melanie Joly have indicated that they don’t want to escalate the situation or provoke the situation. Melanie Joly stated this morning that she wants to continue this matter via private discussion. Now, that might be a little bit late because we have a very-
Judy Aldous: We announced it in the House of Commons. What about Abdul’s point that it’s a bit rich to suggest that we’re not provoking India when That’s What happened?
Raj Sharma: Here’s the problem, and if I may criticize our prime minister on this matter, you’ve made a public statement that there is evidence that India is linked to this assassination, to this murder. At the same time, they’re indicating that they don’t want to provoke or escalate and they now want to continue discussions privately. That’s going to be a little bit hard for the Indians to swallow. You then have a very strange situation with Prime Minister Trudeau indicates that we apparently need India’s cooperation regarding this investigation. Again, I think that’s a bridge too far. I can’t see how the Indians are going to assist on an investigation given the current circumstances.
Judy Aldous: Yeah, interesting.
Raj Sharma: I just want to be clear… I think Abdul makes very good points. But just to be clear, when we look at extraterritorial assassinations, there is a playbook. Jamal Khashoggi was butchered and killed in the Saudi consulate, in Istanbul, in Turkey. And after the Turkish authorities asked the Saudis, “where is this individual? We don’t know. We don’t know where Khashoggi.” Yet he came and left within 15 minutes. Within 30 days the Turks had put out flight manifests, video recordings and audio recordings of this poor man’s final minutes.
We have a 2,000 [word] open letter article written by Turkish president Erdogan in the Washington Post laying out all of this evidence within 30 days. This happened in the UAE with Israeli Mossad agents using Canadian passports incidentally to poison or kill someone there. Again, the UAE authorities laid out actual evidence before making the allegation. We made the allegation and we do not have the evidence yet. And so that is the million dollar question.
Judy Aldous: Or the evidence hasn’t been made public at least. We’re having a lot of people who are weighing in on the handling of this. Dean in Valleyview said that he wanted to share that he’s been incredibly embarrassed by our prime minister and his antics as Dean put it. He’s never handled India Canada relations well and Dean is not confident that this can be resolved if Trudeau is still prime minister.
And in Edmonton has emailed in to say she heard a discussion on CBC about all the different ways Trudeau could have handled this. “He chose to go full throttle and announce it himself. So I found it ironic now, he’s saying he won’t escalate it. When you start with the head of a government where is there to escalate? One would think that cooler heads at the beginning could have eliminated a lot of what is happening right now.”
I’m wondering, Raj, given the work you do as an immigration lawyer, what’s your office has been like over the last two and a half weeks?
Raj Sharma: It’s always been busy. We represent a lot of Indian nationals. But the reality is that what is it going to be going forward? You have an incredible chilling effect on a diaspora population. Bear in mind, we have more Sikhs as a proportion of our population, 2.1% in Canada. Then Sikhs in India as a proportion of the population 1.7% to 2.1%. So this is deeply concerning to my clients. I represent a lot of my clients are Sikh. A lot of my clients are Punjabi and obviously other Indians as well. So on a going forward basis, this is going to cause serious issues. Again, the backlogs, the delays, this is going to cause more court applications to try to get them here or get processing going, but it’s also going to result in more applications to remain. Individuals may not be comfortable in returning to India and they may well have objectively well-founded concerns about going back to India at this time.
And again, I’m sure your listeners are aware, perhaps this could have been handled differently because India has certain sensitivities around activities in the diaspora in Canada. Remember 1982, there was an extradition request made by Indira Gandhi to Prime Minister Trudeau regarding Talwinder Singh Parmar implicated in the bombing of Air India 182 Kanishka. That extradition request was refused. 1984 was the Operation Bluestar on the attack on the Golden Temple. You have the reprisals against Sikhs after in Indira Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of her Sikh bodyguard.
You then have the downing of Air India 182. India has made numerous extradition requests and very few have been followed through on by the Canadians and that’s fine. As Abdhul said, we have a rule of law system and perhaps the Indians didn’t have the goods there. So you have now these activities by this individual in Canada. And the Indians again raised this during that disastrous Trudeau trip in 2018. And I think it’s quite clear that Modi and other individuals in India did not take him seriously. Then they considered him a policy lightweight or flyweight now. I’m not sure how we can get out of this particular situation.
It remains to be seen how we can… Because again, I see the politicians here the Canadians speak out on both sides of their mouth. They want private discussions, but they’ve made a public allegation. They want India’s cooperation, but I cannot see how the Indians will cooperate given that we basically put them in a corner here.
Judy Aldous: Raj, just the last minute that we have with you here, what will you be watching for next?
Raj Sharma: I’ve been hoping and praying for some steps in terms of deescalation. This is going to cause a lot of grief in the lives of individuals who have nothing to do with nothing. And so I am hoping and praying for some kind of a positive step here. But again, this is a very, very difficult time right now with the expulsion of 41 diplomats. Diplomats were expelled when Russia poisoned someone in England and the number here from one country is proportionately far greater than what happened after the poisoning of that former spy in Essex.
Judy Aldous: Right, yeah.
Raj Sharma: That’s where we’re at.
Judy Aldous: Yeah. The grass under the elephant’s hooves as you use that wonderful expression earlier on the program. All right. Raj, we’re going to have to leave it there just at the end of the program, but thank you very much for all of your knowledge, not just of the immigration side of things and the immigration law side of things, but also just international relations as well. Thank you. It was great having you.
Raj Sharma: My pleasure.
Judy Aldous: That’s Raj Sharma. He’s an immigration lawyer in Calgary and he was once an immigration officer as well.
I think so many of you were sitting at home listening for a long time and in the last 20 minutes thought, “Now I’m going to call.” So apologies to the people we weren’t able to get on the program today. We had a flood of calls late in the show and we weren’t able to get all of you on. So what I hope you heard a bit of your perspective maybe reflected in somebody else’s comments. We had quite a nice wide range today on the show. So we’ll podcast it. If you know anybody interested in India-Canada relations, direct them to the show and they can yell at the radio or yell at the podcast as they’re listening maybe.
And we’ll be back tomorrow. Hope you can join me. We’re going to talk about COVID and other respiratory illnesses on the rise again. And so gather up all your questions around flu, RSV, COVID, vaccines, and then call in tomorrow. I’m Judy Aldous. Have a great afternoon.