Why Mark Carney Is Being Accused of ‘Gaslighting’ Canadian Sikhs

This article was originally published in PressProgress on 3/4/26.

Prime Minister Mark Carney wrapped up his trip to India Monday by standing beside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying “We are one family” and inviting him to visit Canada. The pair announced a series of economic partnerships and, in a statement, affirmed a “joint commitment to the rule of law.”

Meanwhile at home, the front page of the Globe and Mail reported that Canadian national-security officials were shown evidence that Indian consular staff had provided intel that had helped in the 2023 assassination of Sikh activist Bhai Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey.

“Trade is constantly being prioritized over our fundamental freedoms and our right to life and safety and security,” Prabjot Singh, legal counsel for Sikh Federation Canada, tells PressProgress, adding that over the past four decades, successive Canadian governments have repeatedly made the same “mistake.”

Singh said he doesn’t know whether “decision makers right now are naive to India’s violence or if frankly they just don’t care about our community. Gaslighting is being facilitated by this government.”

According to one of the Globe’s sources, Canadian authorities believed an Indian official who worked as a visa officer at the Indian consulate in Vancouver was also “an intelligence officer with India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW.”

The Globe’s sources said that the information about Nijjar was then provided to a RAW officer in New Delhi, alleged to be Vikash Yadav — a man who was named in a US case as an Indian official who allegedly provided directions to kill a different Sikh activist. The sources said that Canadian authorities believe Yadav then provided information to the Bishnoi gang, a group that just over two years later was designated a terrorist entity by the government of Canada in response to a wave of extortions on Canadian soil.

Singh said that the Canadian government is trying to “explain away” many of the historical problems that Canadian citizens have had with India by deflecting responsibility away from its government and on to the Bishnoi gang.

“So it really doesn’t make any sense, and there’s no way to really justify or explain any of it,” Singh told PressProgress.

India’s government has repeatedly denied any connection to violence or extortion in Canada.

Late last year, Sikh Federation Canada issued a call for “accountability and transparency” after the Canadian government suggested it would be “moving forward” from past tensions stemming from Nijjar’s assassination.

The news about the Indian officials’ alleged involvement in Nijjar’s killing comes after a Canadian government official said India was no longer linked to violent crimes in Canada. India’s high commissioner to Canada went a step further, saying there was “never” a problem to begin with.

But while both the Canadian and Indian governments attempt to set the stage for a positive reunion and paint tensions as a thing of the past, activists say the Sikh community in Canada has many reasons to feel betrayed and dismissed.

Glossing over our own intelligence?

The evidence of years and years of threats to the lives of Canadian Sikhs, as well as intel from law-enforcement and national-security agencies, show that claiming India’s threats are a thing of the past may not be as simple as top government officials are making it out to be.

Just days before Carney’s trip, Moninder Singh, a prominent Sikh activist and the head of Sikh Federation Canada, said he was warned by Vancouver police about an imminent threat to his life, that also extended to his wife and young child.

According to Singh, this was the fourth such warning he had received — and he is not alone, with a number of Sikhs across the country receiving “duty to warn” notices related to threats against their lives, particularly leading up to and after the assasination of Bhai Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

In a statement, the World Sikh Organization of Canada said they are “aware of incidents in the past six months of individuals being surveilled, harassed and intimidated by agents of the Government of India. Over a dozen Sikh community members continue to live under the shadow of credible threats or ‘duties to warn.’ These are not historical concerns, they are ongoing dangers.”

In response to questions from PressProgress, the RCMP confirmed that “duty to warns have been conducted by law enforcement across the country with members of the South Asian community,” but failed to provide further details due to “privacy and safety.”

In 2023, Jagmeet Singh, then the leader of the federal NDP, was informed by Canadian security officials of a credible threat to his life.

In 2024, the RCMP released information about “multiple ongoing investigations” that revealed “links tying agents of the Government of India to homicides and violent acts.”

Just days later, David Morrison, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, testified to a parliamentary committee that a senior official in Modi’s government, Amit Shah, was alleged to have authorized a campaign to intimidate or kill Canadians.

In 2025, the Foreign Interference Commission also identified India as engaging in transnational repression in Canada, through activities that “primarily target the approximately 800,000 members of the Sikh diaspora in Canada and aim to promote a pro-India and anti-Khalistan narrative” [pdf].

Throughout the commission’s inquiry, a number of documents were made public, but while documents related to China and Russia were openly shared, much of the material involving India was significantly redacted.

Stephanie Carvin, a Carleton University international-affairs professor and former CSIS intelligence analyst, says that Canada is much more open with intel relating to “politically convenient” targets like Russia or Iran, but less so when there are economic interests at play, like with China and India.

“I worry that it’s a borderline politicization of the issue, and potentially of the intelligence as well — that to just simply ignore it and dismiss it out of hand, when there does seem to be quite a lot of it, is a real problem,” Carvin said.

“I just worry that one day, if we don’t deal with this issue now, I do worry that it will come back and harm us again, possibly at the cost of people’s lives.”

A CSIS report published in 2025 identified the “main perpetrators of foreign interference and espionage against Canada” as China, India, Russia, Iran and Pakistan [pdf].

Carvin says she finds it “highly dubious” that India suddenly ceased these activities ahead of Carney’s trip.

“India has been involved in what we call ‘foreign interference’ in Canada since the 1980s, and I find the idea highly dubious that they have suddenly stopped because of a few high-level meetings between officials,” Carvin told PressProgress.

Carvin said that while the government may need to rebuild ties with India to diversify trade, “stabilization does not mean ignoring reality.”

“I know that we need to re-engage India, but if we lose the lessons of the past five years, then we’re doomed to repeat them,” she added.

“Just outright dismissing the fact that this is happening now is a problem. I don’t understand the basis upon which that assessment was made.”

Prabjot Singh says the Canadian government’s handling of the situation is an “embarrassing capitulation” to India, despite an ongoing lack of accountability.

Singh says the government is trying to “appease” Indian officials, at the expense of the Sikh community — and that the consequences of Canada’s policies have now moved beyond the “targeted assassination of political dissidents” to “a widespread campaign of terror targeting the entire community with extortion, arson and other forms of violence.”

Pressed by reporters on Tuesday afternoon about whether he remained concerned by — or even believed — the reported links between the government of India and criminal activity in Canada, Carney touted his government’s renewed commitment to “national security cooperation” with India and said he had had “frank discussions” with Modi.

“We will not tolerate foreign interference, transnational repression, by anyone,” he said. “And I stress, by anyone.”