It is clear that Trudeau looks after his political constituencies, including minority communities more than he cares about indigenous people of Canada.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to have become a household name in India for his dislike of India, love for Khalistan supporters in Canada and his occasional shedding of crocodile tears for the farmers of Punjab.
His diatribe against the government of India, accusing it of a murder of a terrorist in his home country is based on his claimed evidences that have neither been shared nor made public. Why has he not shared anything with the Indian government? Because India can easily find out the wilfully constructed evidences based on imagination or misinterpretation of facts. Why has he not made it public to his own people? Because, he thinks it would reveal the sources of his information. This is ridiculous because murder charges against a government cannot be made on the basis of his intelligence reports which need to be kept secret.
What the Indian people and the international community need to know is the Janus-faced politics he has been practising for years. Indian people remember how he sought to intervene in domestic Indian politics at the time of farmers’ strike during one of his visits to India. What the Indian attentive public is not adequately aware is about his treatment to the indigenous people in his country, known as the First Nations.
There are more than a million First Nations people organised into 630 communities in Canada. The Trudeau government has done very little to protect those people and has not been providing adequate funds to the concerned police departments, despite his declared intention to give them equal treatment with non-indigenous population.
The Canadian newspapers have reported how the police chiefs presiding over First Nations police forces in Ontario in the recent past launched a human rights complaint against Trudeau government. They alleged that the federal government was responsible for “chronic underfunding and under-resourcing” the police departments in charge of providing safety and security to the First Nations. There was another report in the media last year about representatives of 51 Tribal and First Nations from the United States and Canada complaining to the UN Human Rights Council regarding violation of human rights of Indigenous People by the Trudeau government that supported the Enbridge’s Line 5 crude oil pipeline.
Last year, the Native Women Association of Canada expressed their displeasure at the Trudeau government for not delivering on its commitment to fulfil the recommendations of a national inquiry that found frequent “deaths and disappearances” of indigenous women and girls across the country. Prime Minister Trudeau had reportedly accepted in 2019 the findings of a national inquiry that had said the “crisis amounted to a genocide.”
The world was aghast a few years ago when reports about the remains of 215 children were found on the grounds of a Residential School in British Columbia. There are more than 130 such schools in different parts of Canada and the school survivors and indigenous leaders have been demanding further investigations into “unmarked graves” and the Trudeau government has turned a deaf ear to calls for justice and accountability. The callousness of Prime Minister Trudeau is reflected in his skipping of a formal event on the first “National Day for Truth and reconciliation” by taking a holiday. He later was reported to have apologized.
It is clear that Trudeau looks after his political constituencies, including minority communities more than he cares about indigenous people of Canada. But then, even the people of African descent often complain about “systemic racism”. The forms of discrimination and racism reportedly are “visible in all areas of society but especially in the laws, policies, programmes, decisions and practices of the governments of Quebec (where second largest black population of the country live) and Canada.” Ironically, Trudeau is self-righteous and Canada is a signatory to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
It is also paradoxical that the Biden Administration spokesperson has stated that India is not cooperating with Canada to investigate the Nijjar murder case. It is well known that Prime Minister Trudeau has publicly been accusing the Government of India of complicity in the murder of Nijjar and expecting the accused to cooperate. One wonders what the US spokesperson has to say about a UN report released a few months ago denouncing the Trudeau government’s temporary foreign workers program as “breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.”
The concerned allies of Canada, who have deeper intelligence sharing alliance with it, need to reflect upon reports regarding exploitation of students from the Indian state of Punjab who are sold high hopes to secure employment in Canada by intermediaries and agents, lured to migrate and later “introduced to a network that preys on their vulnerabilities, pushing them into the hands of Khalistani separatists and criminal organizations”. What does the Trudeau government do to protect these young migrants? While acting as a bleeding heart to the killing of Nijjar, Trudeau is not known to have taken any step to protect such young people.
Moreover, Prime Minister Trudeau has little to make public comments on allegations of human rights abuses by Canadian companies abroad. The Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability (CNCA) published several reports on Canadian companies alleged to have links to “killings, torture, forced labour, arbitrary detention and intimidation amongst other abuses” abroad. One among such companies is Torex Gold Resources Inc. One month before this issue was reported, Prime Minister Trudeau met the executives of Torex and had praised its leadership for their “diversity, equity, and inclusion in the mining sector, as well as its responsible business conduct abroad.”
The world community needs to be aware how Janus faced Canadian Prime Minister’s public rantings against India are self-serving and politically motivated.
* Chintamani Mahapatra is Founder Chairperson, Kalinga Institute of Indo-Pacific Studies & Formerly Professor at JNU.