The Trudeau government has neglected the country’s military, but its immigration policies, and student visa system, represent another serious security lapse.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Diane Francis: Trudeau dropped the ball on national security Back to video

“As we have all observed, our current government has not been heeding national security advice and has not been vigilant on these issues over the past nine years,” said former Conservative immigration minister Chris Alexander, in an interview with blogger Brad Salzberg.

“The main challenge today is that the number of threats — from terrorist and criminal groups, as well as hostile foreign states — has grown significantly while our national security capabilities have failed to keep pace.”

Problems were illustrated last year when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused “agents of the Government of India” of murdering Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C. New Delhi denied any responsibility and said that Canada had refused to extradite Nijjar, even after Interpol issued two red notices.

“He (Nijjar) had over a dozen criminal cases of murder and other terrorist activities against him in India. The details of the cases were shared with the Canadian authorities, but no action was taken except putting him on a no-fly list,” an Indian official told the Economic Times.

On Sept. 21, the Hindustan Times reported that, “Overall, there are 21 key gangsters based in Canada who are wanted by Indian agencies and their list and detailed evidence against them has been shared with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on more than one occasion in the past year.”

The Indian media has questioned the fact that the man propping up Trudeau’s government, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, has been sympathetic toward Sikh separatism, and accused him of pulling the strings on the India file.

The Economic Times, for example, described him as, “The man who pulls Trudeau’s strings on the Khalistan issue,” noting that, “With his government dependent on the NDP support, Trudeau has to acquiesce to Jagmeet’s virulent anti-India agenda.”

In 2013, India denied entry to Singh (a member of Parliament whose parents immigrated to Canada from India), after he criticized New Delhi’s crackdown on Sikhs following Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination by Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

Canada’s immigration policies, on the other hand, have not been so strict. Last year, deportation orders were issued for 700 student visa holders from India for using fraudulent university letters to obtain entry, but the orders were frozen by then-immigration minister Sean Fraser.

Fraser declared that, “Any pending removals will be halted in the interim and there will be a temporary permission to stay over the course of this period of consideration.… Those student visa system who are genuine applicants that came to Canada to study and were victimized by fraudsters will be given permission to remain in Canada,” but “those who are complicit in a fraudulent scheme will be held accountable.”

The question is: why weren’t these credentials vetted properly in the first place? Have previous entrants been audited? Is it common practice to rubber-stamp student visas without doing any due diligence?

The problem outlined here is not about India or Sikhs. It’s about incompetence. Last year, Bangladesh also attacked Canada for refusing to extradite Noor Chowdhury, who was convicted of assassinating former Bangladeshi president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

“Canada must not be a hub of all the murderers. The murderers can go to Canada and take shelter, and they can have a wonderful life while those they killed, their relatives are suffering,” then-Bangladeshi foreign minister AK Abdul Momen told India Today last fall.

Trudeau and Singh do not protect Canadians.