Toronto: The judge who led the Canadian commission probing foreign interference in the country, is joining the Government of Prime Minister Mark Carney as the senior-most bureaucrat in the justice ministry.
The Canadian prime minister’s office announced on Friday that Marie-Josee Hogue, a Puisne Judge of the Court of Appeal of Quebec, has been appointed as the Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada. Her appointment was among a dozen announced amid a reshuffle in the topmost levels of Canada’s bureaucracy.
Relations between India and Canada have been renewed after Carney assumed office as PM in March. The breakthrough in the reset came when he invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis in June. Carney greeting Modi was among the clips featured in a video posted by the Canadian PM on Friday as Canada concluded its presidency of the G7.
Further consolidation occurred when the two PMs met on the margins of the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Johannesburg last month, which was followed by the announcement that two countries will engage in negotiations towards a high ambition Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), with those talks expected to commence in the first quarter of next year. Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Anita Anand and Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu have also been oon bilateral visits to India in recent months.
The final report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, which was headed by Hogue, was released in January and alleged that India is the “second most active country engaging in electoral foreign interference in Canada”. Only China, the report stated, has a greater impact on the country’s democratic processes. Other nations accused of interference included Russia, Pakistan and Iran.
{{/usCountry}}The final report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, which was headed by Hogue, was released in January and alleged that India is the “second most active country engaging in electoral foreign interference in Canada”. Only China, the report stated, has a greater impact on the country’s democratic processes. Other nations accused of interference included Russia, Pakistan and Iran.
{{/usCountry}}It stated, “India perceives Canada as not taking India’s national security concerns about Khalistani separatism (the goal of an independent Sikh homeland in northern India called “Khalistan”) sufficiently seriously.”
It did acknowledge that according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) “India has some legitimate basis for concerns about the security threat posed by Khalistani extremism in Canada. Some extremists have engaged in threat-related activities directed at India from within Canada, notably by coordinating and funding terrorist activities in India.”
It noted India’s activities “primarily target the approximately 800,000 members of the Sikh diaspora in Canada and aim to promote a pro-India and anti-Khalistan narrative”.
The Ministry of External Affairs had rejected the report’s ‘insinuations on India”.
The report referred to the statement by the then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on September 18, 2023, that there were “credible allegations” of a potential link between Indian agents and the killing of pro-Khalistan figure Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, British Columbia, three months later. It also alluded to the exit of six Indian diplomats and officials in October last year for their alleged link to violent criminal activity in Canada.
India had rejected all allegations of interfering in Canada’s internal affairs and elections. New Delhi had described Trudeau’s statement as “absurd” and “motivated.”