Former PM says Canada should move past 'recent disputes' with India amid murder probe
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Former prime minister Stephen Harper called on Canada to renew its ties with India, arguing in a speech on Saturday that the country is an indispensable partner in a volatile world.
He also said Canadian political parties — including the Conservative Party he once led — should cut all ties with activists calling for the creation of a Sikh nation.
In his remarks at an event in Brampton, Ont., Harper did not mention the RCMP linking the government in New Delhi to widespread acts of murder, extortion and coercion across Canada.
"There is no reason why countries like Canada and India cannot be those enlightened voices working together, which we can do and should do by putting our recent disputes behind us," Harper said.
Harper made the comments on Saturday at the IMEC Canada-India Charity Gala, where he accepted an award from a group that focuses on doing business with India.
He called on Canada's parties to "sever" ties with Sikh separatists who have for decades campaigned for a separate country called Khalistan to be carved out of India.
Relations between Ottawa and New Delhi have been in a deep freeze since fall 2023, when then-prime minister Justin Trudeau said his government had seen "credible allegations" linking agents of the Indian government to the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver.
A year later, Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats after the RCMP alleged that New Delhi was behind widespread and violent criminal acts across Canada.
The allegations have not been proven in court. The Canadian Press has asked Harper to explain why he didn't mention the allegations against India in his remarks. Harper has in the past said he can't speak to the details of those cases.
India has said the Khalistan movement threatens its national security. Ottawa has long said that it upholds India's territorial integrity but won't crack down on freedom of expression in Canada.
Harper said Sikh separatists "have a right to their democratic views" but he suggested those views have no place within the Canadian government.
"Those political parties cannot have a strong relationship with India unless they sever relations with those who seek to bring the battles of India's past to Canada, and sever relations with those who seek to divide the great country that is modern India," he said.
WATCH | What is Khalistan?:
What is Khalistan? A look at the movement for an independent Sikh state
2 years ago
Duration 13:38
Some Sikhs have historically been seeking an independent Sikh homeland in northern India called Khalistan. Experts say the history of the movement is complex, emotional and evolving.
Harper also revealed that his government's 2006 decision to open a trade office in Modi's home state of Gujarat in 2009 was made "completely contrary to the advice of Global Affairs Canada."
The Canadian Press has asked Harper's office why this decision went against public sector advice. Modi has been accused of failing to prevent sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims in 2002 during his term as chief minister of Gujarat.
Harper's Saturday comments come as New Delhi and Ottawa signal a desire to repair relations. Modi congratulated Prime Minister Mark Carney shortly after his April election victory.
Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said she had a "productive discussion" with her Indian counterpart on May 25 about "deepening our economic co-operation and advancing shared priorities."
Those comments alarmed Sikh organizations, which accused Ottawa of putting economic concerns ahead of human rights.
The Sikh Federation has called on Ottawa to break with a five-year tradition by not inviting Modi to the G7 summit this month in Kananaskis, Alta.
Vina Nadjibulla, research vice-president for the Asia Pacific Foundation, said Canada can get relations with India back on track by creating a mechanism for law enforcement in both countries to allow them to discuss security concerns without overwhelming the bilateral relationship.
"That needs to be dealt with, but in its own track," she said, proposing "a mechanism to deal with this immediate issue, but also to build trust, and create a platform for dialogue."
Nadjibulla said Canada's failure to seek closer ties with India makes it an outlier among G7 countries, particularly when both countries are reworking their trade flows in response to American tariffs.
She said the election of a new government in Canada and the upcoming G7 summit offer "an opening" for a reset that could involve reinstating high commissioners or relaunching trade talks.
"Since 2019, India has been invited to every G7 in recognition of its growing importance, both as the fourth-largest economy as well as an important voice for the Global South," she said. India will be a crucial player ensuring that the rules-based global order is respected, she argued.
In February, Nadjibulla led an unofficial delegation of Canadian experts to India to look at how Ottawa could get relations with New Delhi back on track.
The resulting analysis, published last month, said India feels Canada mishandled the criminal investigation of the 1985 Air India bombing and hasn't done enough to thwart terrorism by Sikh separatists.
The analysis said India's views, along with Canada's concerns about Indian repression and political interference, could be aired through a working group similar to a mechanism Washington launched after American investigators reported having foiled a murder plot against a Sikh activist in New York City.
"We need to proceed step by step and address the issues that are difficult. And at the heart of that are national security concerns, on both sides," Nadjibulla said.
In February, Harper told a conference in India he didn't "entirely understand" why Canada has such a poor relationship with New Delhi.
At that time, Harper accused the Khalistan movement of "infiltrating" the Liberal Party and praised Modi "for not disrupting those people-to-people ties," even after India dropped diplomatic protection for most Canadian envoys in the country.
The Liberals originally made India a major focus of their Indo-Pacific strategy in late 2022, describing the country as a democratic nation with strong trade potential.
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Attempts to reach Park for comment at her office on three occasions, by mail, and by phone were not successful. Her answering machine stopped taking messages April 16. FITRION'S STORY Fitrion said she went to St. Joe's with spontaneous bleeding about a month shy of her due date. Because of complications with her first pregnancy, the hospital admitted her overnight and induced her. She went to sleep with a foley catheter balloon inserted to mechanically dilate her cervix. Fitrion said she woke up to Park's hand up her hospital gown. 'There was no consent,' Fitrion said. 'Given I have a sexual assault history it was extra challenging for me to deal with that level of neglect.' When Fitrion asked what Park was doing, she said the doctor said she was checking the catheter's placement, and continued to do so, pulling it out of her vagina and breaking Fitrion's water without warning, nor explanation. 'I just went into hysterics,' she said, recalling inconsolable sobbing in a hospital bed. Her husband, Daniel Holloway, had gone home to sleep. 'I should have been there,' he said, regret still ripe in his voice. It's standard practice in medicine to ask a patient for permission before an examination. It's especially necessary when doing the vaginal examination of a sexual assault or domestic abuse survivor, said Dr. Naila Ramji, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Fredericton and assistant professor in obstetrics and gynecology with a cross-appointment in the department of bioethics at Dalhousie University. 'Certainly the patient needs to be conscious and be able to provide consent,' said Ramji, who has no connection to Park, and speaks generally about standards of care in medicine, not about specific allegations. She said spelling out exactly what you're doing and why you're doing it is key to leaving little room for misunderstanding, misinterpretation and re-traumatization for a patient. On May 14, Fitrion filed a CPSO patient complaint. 'It's symbolic,' she said, adding that she just wants the college to know what happened to her. 'I don't want to have to hold on to this story by myself. I want to put it out there and I want to let it go,' Fitrion says. She mimed off-loading a weight from her shoulder that she said felt like a boulder. 'It feels like I've been holding my breath for seven years. And I'm slowly learning to breathe again.' PARK'S PRACTICE The Canadian Press began trying to reach Park in March, after Toronto Public Health sent a letter in February to 2,500 of her patients warning they may have been exposed to blood-borne viruses including HIV, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C. No infections have been confirmed to be attributed to Park's practices, said Dr. Herveen Sachdeva, the city's associate medical officer of health. Sachdeva said the public health unit's investigation is independent of the college, and that it is still active, solely to followup on lab results, of which they had received 563 as of May 29. She said TPH will be carrying out an internal review of the public health unit's response to 'identify lessons learned' and 'apply them to future investigations.' Sachdeva also said the public health unit met with the college early in the investigation, and is engaging with the ministry of health, and other public health units across the province, to 'review and strengthen our collective approach' to managing infection prevention and control lapses in medical settings. TPH said it was notified of a patient complaint in September 2024 and launched an investigation in October. Inspectors found medical instruments were not disassembled before they were cleaned at Park's clinic, and disinfecting solution had been significantly overdiluted. Like the CPSO, Sachdeva said they don't routinely inspect health-care settings unless a complaint is filed. In January, Park sent a notice to patients saying she was retiring and that her practice would close at the end of April. 'I am grateful for the trust you have shown me over the past years and for allowing me to participate in your medical care. With mixed emotions, I am announcing my plans to retire,' Park said in the letter dated Jan. 23, 2025. In March, a sign on the front door of a red brick house on Edna Avenue said: 'Doctor's office closed.' A woman who identified herself as Park's secretary opened the locked door and said she could not provide comment. The Canadian Press left contact information but has not heard back. Inside, plastic chairs lined an empty waiting room that several patients said was at times so crowded that they had to wait outside. The lights were dimmed, the window shutters closed. Contraception brochures in plastic display cases sat on a window ledge. The doctor's office sign was gone by mid-May and a for-lease sign was planted in the lawn. The windowsill was empty of brochures and the shutters were cracked open. That month, The Canadian Press mailed a letter to Park, which was redirected to another address, and left another in her mailbox but did not receive a response. Both Unity Health Toronto and the CPSO said they could not share Park's contact or pass on the request. According to the CPSO's website, Park obtained her medical degree from the University of Toronto in 1993, and specialized in obstetrics and gynecology in 1998. Unity Health said she started working in obstetrics at St. Joe's in 1999 before transitioning to gynecology and surgeries. In 2006, the college authorized her to open her own clinic, its website states. After 25 years of service, Park stopped practising at St. Joe's in July 2024 and resigned in December. Harte, the medical malpractice lawyer, said Unity Health has a responsibility to patients treated in its facilities. 'It's absolutely incumbent upon a hospital to regularly assess the quality of care being provided to the patients at that hospital, including the quality of care provided by the physicians that they grant privileges to,' Harte said. He said quality assurance auditing should indicate if there is a systemic issue with a physician. 'When they're not being transparent, all it does is undermine the confidence of patients in our public health-care system.' A Unity Health spokesperson would not address why Park stopped practising five months before her resignation. They also would not say if the hospital launched its own investigation but said Unity Health has 'rigorous processes' in place to provide 'high quality, compassionate care.' They encouraged anyone with concerns to reach out to their patient experience office. CPSO would not say in March if it was investigating Park's practice at St. Joe's, and suggested patients speak with Ontario's Patient Ombudsman Craig Thompson. Thompson also would not disclose if Park's patients reached out due to privacy considerations. He said his office can get involved if a patient is not satisfied with the hospital's response to a complaint, and they'll try and help the parties reach a resolution, but ultimately the hospital bears the responsibility for the patient's experience. The ombudsman's last annual report noted a particular rise from across the province in the number of obstetrics and gynecology related complaints, including health providers' lack of trauma-informed approaches, poor communication and lack of responsive care for pregnancy complications, miscarriages, difficult births and sexual assaults. Some complaints were about serious incidents in which severe pain was ignored or dismissed, the report says. 'We make sure we report that. We want to make sure people understand what it is we are seeing. What is driving that is really something for the system to try to understand. We report on it and it's really then over to the various organizations and providers to understand how that might manifest itself in their circumstance,' Thompson said. 'COMPLETELY NEGLECTED' It wasn't until Alejandra Sinnett returned home and showered after the birth of her daughter that she understood the severity of incisions made during delivery May 12, 2016. The cuts ran from the top of her vagina to the back of her anus. The size came as a shock, as did the searing pain when she walked and urinated. 'I started bawling,' she said, adding that she was scared to touch her own body. Sinnett said she learned after the delivery that she had an episiotomy. Dr. Glenn Posner, vice chair of education for the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa, said an incision of this nature would be considered an extension of an episiotomy into a fourth degree tear, which he said he's only seen twice in his career of more than 20 years. 'You wouldn't do an episiotomy into the anus on purpose,' said Posner, who has no association to Park. He said painkillers and stool softeners would be given to patients in these cases. After more than 12 hours in labour with her 9.5-pound, late-term baby, Sinnett remembers Park saying, 'I'm just going to cut you a bit, OK?' Sinnett says she said, 'OK,' and her husband, Nickolas Sinnett, who was in the room, adds: 'There was no explanation.' He recalls blood covering the floor, the bed, the doctors, like 'a murder scene in a horror film.' Afterwards, he said his wife spiralled into depression. A handwritten note his wife wrote at the time said, 'I am so much more than what I have been through.' Sinnett said the lack of communication was particularly difficult because it echoes elements of abuse she had suffered in a prior relationship. 'It's the chaos. It's the, when you don't have a choice, as a domestic abuse survivor. When you're in that situation, you don't have a lot of choices. It's whatever the person says, the abuser, the abuser's in control. And it felt very vulnerable. It felt like my choices were being taken away from me just like they were when I was in that situation,' she said. She said she told Park about her history of domestic abuse at prenatal appointments. But in the end, she said, 'I was completely neglected. Like completely neglected.' Sinnett said no one at the hospital came back to check on her stitches or instruct her how to manage them. Weeks later at a postnatal appointment with Park, she learned the incision was infected. She was prescribed antibiotics and told to wear skirts. 'Why weren't we given any of that information coming out of the hospital? We would have done all of those things before,' her husband said. In urgent situations, such as those when an episiotomy is needed to get a baby out quickly, there might not be as much time for a quiet and calm conversation about consent, said Ramji, speaking generally about the procedure. 'But usually you say, 'I need to make a cut for the baby's head to come out more easily.' You kind of do like an abridged version of: 'This is what I need to do. Do I have your permission to do it?'' 'You typically don't just do it.' It's also the law, said Toronto-based lawyer Jordan Assaraf. Sixteen of Park's patients have reached out to him, he says. 'You require patient consent for any medical procedure … a patient who's asleep and then woken up with a doctor inside of her – where's the consent?' He said informed consent includes conveying the full extent of a procedure, and the potential options available to a patient. And he said it's always required, even in emergencies when there may be little time for discussion. Sinnett never filed a patient complaint. 'This goes back to being a domestic abuse survivor. I didn't report that person either,' she said. 'I felt very small in the situation … like I was too small to deal with someone so big.' 'MISTREATED AND VIOLATED' Claudia Gomez went to Park for a Pap test in 2020, less than a year after she moved to Canada from Colombia. She had fibroids, growths in her uterus, and menstrual bleeding so heavy that she couldn't work when she had her period. The test was painful and long. When Gomez asked why, she said Park told her it was because she did a biopsy. 'But you didn't tell me,' the 48-year-old recalls saying, and Park responding with silence. When doctors see something suspicious during a Pap smear, they may want to do a biopsy, Ramji said. But the risks, benefits, complications and alternatives should be clearly communicated. Jenn McIntyre, who was the executive director of Romero House at the time, an organization just a two-minute walk from Park's clinic that provides transitional housing and support to refugee claimants, recalls speaking to Gomez, a client who became a friend. 'I remember just listening to her, and hearing, and feeling so terrible for that experience because women's health is very personal, it can be very scary. So it's one of the most important areas to have really sensitive care, really good care,' McIntyre said. Gomez said she never filed a patient complaint. 'I was just trying to forget about her, about the situation.' In Colombia she said her experience would be called 'gynecologist violence.' 'It's like the dignity of women is not respected and they were mistreated. And it is why I feel violated.' 'IT MADE ME FEEL INFANTILIZED' It's been just over a year since 58-year-old Esther Arbeid says she's felt like herself. On March 21, 2024, Park removed her ovaries and Fallopian tubes at St. Joe's. Arbeid said she was told it would be a routine laparoscopic surgery involving three small incisions of the same size. She says she was released the same day and given a handout about taking care of the incision and pain management, with no further aftercare discussed. When she got home, Arbeid said she discovered a 4 ½-centimetre-long incision on her right side, a contrast to the others, each about a centimetre. The Canadian Press viewed a post-operative photo of Arbeid's incisions, showing the one on her right side sizably bigger than her left. 'That looks like open surgery to me,' she recalls thinking. Her mother, Norma Rose, who was with her the day of the surgery, also said the scar that marked the right side of her daughter's body did not look laparoscopic. 'We go to a doctor, particularly a surgeon, with this huge amount of trust. And that trust was destroyed,' said Rose. Posner, the Ottawa physician, said an incision of that size suggests there may have been complications. Canadian Medical Protective Association best practices state a physician is obliged to disclose unanticipated outcomes to a patient. 'People understand that doctors are human and then they're making difficult decisions. People understand that complications happen, but they don't like when they get the sense that people are avoiding them,' Posner said. He said he tells residents, 'If there's a patient you don't want to go visit post-op or postpartum … That's the first patient you should go see.' Arbeid said she left three tearful voice mails at Park's clinic over a 10-day period, begging her for help. She was in too much pain to walk and could only shuffle her legs. 'I hated leaving messages on a doctor's answering machine crying. I hated it. It made me feel infantilized, ignored,' she said. Eventually, Arbeid said Park called her back and said she didn't recall the incisions being bigger than normal. She says the pain on her right side persisted through the summer, and eventually, after visiting her family doctor in October 2024, she learned she had an incisional hernia, requiring another surgery. An email Arbeid received from Shouldice Hospital, reviewed by The Canadian Press, showed an incisional specialist was scheduled to operate on her hernia March 19, 2025. Weeks before Arbeid's second procedure, she filled out a CPSO patient complaint form saying she felt ghosted, gaslit and ignored, but she never filed it. Friends, family and colleagues advised her to focus on her health. 'She was just coming up to her appointment of surgery and had to take the time to focus on that and focus on her recovery properly,' her mother said. 'The first priority is always maintaining and guarding your health.' WHAT'S NEXT Zahra Bakhsh said she found out in September that her IUD was 'just floating around' after Park inserted it at her clinic in July 2024. The 44-year-old says another gynecologist in nearby Mississauga, Ont., made the discovery when her IUD was stuck to his glove after an exam. Ramji said IUDs can move from their initial position, and even fall out if they've migrated low enough. A study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology in 2023 found that the overall risk of IUD expulsion is five per cent. Since then, Bakhsh has thought a lot about who should have been responsible for the well-being of patients like herself. She sent a letter on April 28 to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and almost 30 other politicians with another patient, Karin Martin, who had three biopsies with Park last spring and summer before she was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Park had already stopped practising surgery at Unity Health in July, but Martin said she did not disclose this to her, delaying an urgent surgery she went into in September with another surgeon. Bakhsh and Martin questioned whether Park's resignation at about the same time that she had planned to retire held her fully accountable. 'We need to understand whether this was an isolated regulatory lapse or indicative of a systemic problem in how patient complaints are handled in Ontario,' they state in the letter. On April 30, Bakhsh received an email from Ford, who was the only politician to respond. For a split second, she said she got excited. 'By the time I made it to the second line, I was mortified. I was like, this has got to be a joke,' she said. The email thanked her for sharing her views and said that the letter would be shared with the minister of health. 'I appreciate the opportunity to read your comments and get a better understanding of your perspective,' the email signed by Ford said. 'Your input is important. You can be sure our government will consider it when developing policies and deciding how to address the various challenges we face today.' The Ministry of Health told The Canadian Press that it expects every medical professional to 'uphold the highest standard of patient care and the comprehensive rules regarding how health regulatory colleges, such as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), must handle complaints involving patient abuse.' What Martin said struck her about the health minister's response was that it stood by the current system in place. 'Clearly, that does not work.' Martin said this situation should serve as a wake-up call. In the letter, they say, 'It underscores the importance of vigilant medical regulation and the grave consequences when that vigilance falters. We entrust our doctors with our health and our confidence; when that trust is violated on such a scale, it shakes public faith in the entire system.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2025. Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content. Hannah Alberga, The Canadian Press
