The double standards of Canadian morality are evident as it is the same country that celebrated the neutralising of the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri
All countries, including moral democracies, have spy agencies and their infrastructure embedded in officialdom. These are vital towards ensuring the safety, security and mitigation of increasingly asymmetric threats. India has some like the Research Analysis Wing (RAW), and Canada, its Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and there is nothing abnormal or extraordinary about the same. Their mandate entails the collection, analysis, and timely warning with data to support the larger national security outlook, and therefore the means to achieve the same could be both, overt and covert. Part of the mandate also includes counterintelligence (defence against spy agencies from other countries, including ‘friendly’ countries), counterterrorism and conducting operations, across seas. It is par for the course and there are certain unsaid and inviolable ‘redlines’ and tolerances afforded on the same, especially amongst ‘friendly’ countries.
Beyond the one-upmanship and naivety postured by Ottawa, it is the unprecedented compromise of the established (though unsaid) norms of reciprocal secrecy between ‘friendly’ nations, that is simply unwarranted. Under this accepted and respected norm between two ‘friendly’ nations, certain officials of various security backgrounds knowingly operate in the official Embassies/Consulates, as part of the overall diplomatic mission. While there could be topical issues of bilateral disagreement, but never is the lid on such specialist security personnel, never blown. It is the nature of the domain that mutual confidentiality is always maintained as one inadvertent leak on the identity of the personnel is professional invalidation, forever. While this reciprocal accommodation may not be tolerated between traditionally ‘enemy’ countries e.g., Pakistan and India, it is certainly to be expected between Canada and India, whose strategic interests ought to (and did) converge, naturally. In one stroke of misplaced bravado, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau undid the sacred equation and named Pavan Kumar Rai, as the local station chief of the Research Analysis Wing (RAW). This practically ends the said official’s possible career in missions abroad, effectively. The desperation to pander to domestic politics got the better of a struggling (in opinion polls) Trudeau as he partook in pretended outrage, without proof. A miffed Delhi was livid and a reciprocal action of expelling Olivier Sylvestre, the Canadian intelligence agency’s station chief in Delhi, followed. All gloves are off, and Delhi was forced into a tit-for-tat with Delhi insisting, “The decision reflects Government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities". That Delhi did not think that the said diplomat was interfering in ‘our internal matters’ till the time the Canadians unthinkingly escalated the war of words, suggests the breakdown of a traditional arrangement between the two countries.
It is particularly peculiar that Trudeau felt compelled to take the recklessly revelatory step of naming the official, given the relatively seamless Indo-Canadian relationship, and more importantly, the wounded history of the bombing of Air India Flight 182, in June 1985. A public inquiry conducted by the retired judge of the Canadian Supreme Court, John Major, had held Ottawa’s security infrastructure lacking the requisite urgency about a threat perception, that it did not purportedly understand. Canada’s security apparatus had bungled the case of the principal terror accused, Talwinder Singh Parmar.
Even now, the fringe elements in Canada had not only upped the ante of civil protests but had gone as far as releasing photos of Indian Embassy staffers, in a ‘wanted’ style optic that had compromised on safety of the Indian Embassy staffers. This should have been reason enough for Trudeau to understand the Indian concern, as opposed to indulging in grandstanding, as he chose. The pressures and backdrop of a faltering election re-bid was playing on Trudeau’s mind when he took the hastily bizarre step.
Irrespective of the truth behind Trudeau’s accusations of India in the killing of a Canadian citizen – the double standards of Canadian morality when it came to celebrating the neutralising of the likes of Osama Bin Laden or even Ayman al-Zawahiri, is brazen. Trudeau had tweeted following the killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul by a US drone, “The death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a step toward a safer world. Canada will keep working with our global partners to counter terrorist threats, promote peace and security, and keep people here at home and around the world safe”. Trudeau had not fully comprehended the concept of respecting sovereignty, as what was seemingly good for the goose was not good for the gander.
The inconsistency of stand and moralising is glaring, especially since Trudeau had the necessary heft to make direct calls with the powers-that-be in Delhi to manage the situation, instead of divulging the unnecessary, that too, without proof. While Delhi’s diplomacy has been increasingly driven by its own electoral and partisan agenda for some time, it too got a taste of the same from the Canadian side. It is now beyond the vanilla issue of ‘involvement’, as it now entails violating and derailing the hitherto norms of ‘normalcy’. This time, Trudeau started the unnecessary and avoidable theatrics.
(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. The views expressed are personal)
