‘India is not a football, it's an ally': Ex-Pentagon official on India-Canada ties

Hindustan Times

a day ago

Former Pentagon official and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Rubin, said that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is showing a more serious and constructive approach than his predecessor Justin Trudeau regarding the future of the India-Canada relationship.
"India is not a football which you kick around. It is an ally to be embraced", Rubin remarked, underscoring the need for Canada to demonstrate sincerity and maturity in rebuilding ties with India.
"Mark Carney is working on repairing the relationship rather than following Justin Trudeau down the rabbit hole already shows that Prime Minister Carney is a much more serious person than the former Prime Minister of Canada...Canada now needs to demonstrate its good faith. India is not a football which you kick around. India is an ally which you strive to embrace," Rubin said.
Commenting further on bilateral ties, Rubin criticised the previous Canadian leadership's posture towards India. "Canada's relationship with India, especially under Justin Trudeau, was not principled. It was all virtue signalling and politics. The fact of the matter is that India is crucial to Canada, and Canada needs to decide whether ultimately it's going to side with the democracies like India and the United States, or whether it's going to posture the way Justin Trudeau did and allow China, which also has significant interests in Canada," he added.
Continuing his sharp critique, Rubin has strongly criticised former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for amplifying what he called exaggerated claims around Hardeep Singh Nijjar and the Khalistan movement. He also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strategic diplomacy and called for firm action against Khalistani extremism.
"The grievances about Hardeep Singh Nijjar and the Khalistan movement were not real": Rubin said, accusing Trudeau of appeasing radical Sikh extremists in Canada and shifting blame to India rather than acknowledging domestic issues.
Touching upon the issue of Khalistani extremism, Rubin stressed the importance of decisive measures from Canada. He said, "It is so essential that India continued to press Canada to address the Khalistan movement head-on to designate the Khalistan movement and extremists as terrorists, to uproot terror finance and to stigmatize forever these groups that really have no popular legitimacy back home in Punjab or for that matter, among the larger peaceful Sikh community in Canada. It's time to stop allowing the loud, extreme voices to win and instead recognise that those same loud, extreme voices oftentimes deserve to be in prison for their involvement in terror, tax fraud and organised crime in Canada, in San Francisco and elsewhere."
Reiterating his criticism of Trudeau, Rubin again dismissed the narrative around Nijjar and the Khalistan movement. He said, "The grievances about Hardeep Singh Nijjar and the Khalistan movement were not real. They were exaggerations that Justin Trudeau amplified...Justin Trudeau may have wanted so much to appease radical Sikh extremists in various constituencies that he was willing to take an organised crime hit between various Sikh groups and mafias and blame an outside power for it, rather than acknowledge the problem and the fault was Canada's alone. That is Justin Trudeau's problem. But now that Justin Trudeau is gone and likely will never return to power, Prime Minister Carney is taking a sober approach and recognising that he is not going to be tied to Justin Trudeau's fictions..."
In this context, Rubin has come out swinging against Khalistanis while praising Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to accept Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's invitation to the G7 Summit (from June 15 to 17) in Canada.
He believes PM Modi's magnanimity in attending the summit shows "India has nothing to hide."
Speaking to ANI on Wednesday, Rubin contrasted former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's approach with that of Carney's, saying Carney "understands the importance of India" and wants to "restore maturity to the relationship."
"Canadian PM Mark Carney originally was a banker. He understands the importance of India. Justin Trudeau was a politician who peddled in image and imagination, and therefore it makes sense that Carney wants to restore maturity to the relationship," Rubin told ANI.
"It makes sense for Prime Minister Modi to show that the problem was not Canada itself, but the immaturity and unprofessionalism of Justin Trudeau," he added.
Further, the American security expert highlighted that the Indian government is "willing to have a serious dialogue, much like they had with the United States."
Rubin added that the problem with "Justin Trudeau is that for his own domestic, political reasons and to assuage radical constituencies, he was shooting from the hip without any factual basis to support his accusations against India."
"What Prime Minister Modi is showing is that India has nothing to hide. If you're going to have a serious law enforcement dialogue, it's got to be two-way. We've got to talk about illegal immigration into Canada, terror finance in Canada, radical Sikh mafias and how the Khalistan movement is tied to organised crime and terrorism," he added.
Rubin also raised concerns about the Khalistanis' movements, stating, "When you give haven to any terror group. Ultimately, your interests are going to be subverted."
"Justin Trudeau and frankly Pierre Trudeau before him, by embracing and tolerating the Khalistan movement in the face of some of the worst terrorist attacks in the 20th century, what they did is ultimately undermine Canada's moral authority and its strategic importance," he added.