Politics

Departures adopted two weeks of negotiations between India and Canada


Posted: 49 Minutes Ago
Last Updated: 40 Minutes Ago

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau upon his arrival at Bharat Mandapam conference heart for the G20 Summit in New Delhi, India on Sept. 9, 2023. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

A lot of Canadian diplomats left India in a single day, CBC News has discovered.

The departures adopted two weeks of negotiations between India and Canada after India issued a requirement for “parity” within the quantity of diplomats current within the two nations, a supply with data of the state of affairs instructed CBC News.

That demand was a part of an indignant response by the authorities of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s allegation final month that Indian brokers had been concerned within the homicide of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey, B.C. on June 19.

India claimed to have solely 21 accredited diplomats in Canada and mentioned that Canada had 62 in India, unfold throughout its High Commission in New Delhi and 4 consulates in Mumbai, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Bengaluru.

New Delhi gave Canada till October 10 to withdraw 41 diplomats to make the 2 diplomatic contingents equal in dimension. If the diplomats remained within the nation, India mentioned, they might lose their diplomatic immunity from arrest and prosecution.

But Canadian officers
allowed the deadline to pass whereas they continued to speak to the Indian facet.

Those conversations now seem to have come to an finish.

Canadian officers have questioned India’s arithmetic, which they are saying doesn’t give an correct image of the respective sizes of the 2 diplomatic missions.

India’s declare to have solely 21 accredited diplomats in Canada seems to battle with the registry of accredited overseas representatives in Canada, which exhibits that India has 60 in Canada.

It’s not clear whether or not Canada will retaliate towards the Indian transfer with additional expulsions.

Global Affairs Canada has not publicly introduced the in a single day departure and refused to substantiate it when requested by CBC News.

The Indian demand got here as a impolite shock for Canada, because it represented a dramatic escalation from the sooner tit-for-tat expulsions.

“I can’t think of another instance … short of breaking diplomatic relations with another country and taking everybody out,” mentioned Gar Pardy. “I can’t think of another incident over the last 40 or 50 years where something like this has happened. Even in our worst days of our relationship with the Soviet Union, usually there were smaller numbers are involved.”

Former Canadian diplomat Jeff Nankivell, president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, agreed that the sanction was extraordinary.

“I can’t think of a of a precedent, certainly no precedent in the Canada-India relationship, and to do it on on the scale that is being reported certainly would be a significant drag on Canada’s diplomatic operations across India,” he mentioned.

Nankivell mentioned Canada wants giant consular operations in India to deal with the amount of visa functions from that nation, which is each the highest supply nation for worldwide college students to Canada and the highest supply nation for immigrants to Canada total.

More to come back …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Evan Dyer

Senior Reporter

Evan Dyer has been a journalist with CBC for 25 years, after an early profession as a freelancer in Argentina. He works within the Parliamentary Bureau and could be reached at evan.dyer@cbc.ca.