Editor’s Note: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a Canadian international affairs analyst at present primarily based in Odesa. He is a senior fellow on the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He is a daily contributor to CNN Opinion. The views expressed on this commentary are his personal. Read extra opinion at CNN.

CNN
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It is difficult to think about any world chief eager to share the international coverage swamp during which the beleaguered Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, at present finds himself.

Having spent the previous months combating accusations that he acted too slowly to address serious allegations that China attempted to meddle in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections, Trudeau’s has landed in a probably expensive diplomatic canine combat with the world’s most populous democracy, India, at precisely the time he wants Delhi essentially the most.

Put merely, the timing couldn’t be worse.

Earlier this week, Trudeau claimed in Parliament that Canadian intelligence companies had been investigating “credible allegations” that “agents of the government of India” carried out the killing of Sikh Canadian separatist chief Hardeep Singh Nijjar outdoors a Sikh temple in British Columbia final June whereas sitting in his truck. Nijjar led a bunch pushing for the creation of an unbiased Sikh homeland in northern India known as Khalistan. India has vehemently denied Canada’s declare, calling it “absurd and motivated.”

What has stunned critics is that Trudeau made the allegations public earlier than the police investigation was accomplished. That has angered the Indian government, which is demanding that Ottawa show the evidence.

Another head scratcher is why, shortly after Trudeau’s daring declare, international affairs minister Mélanie Joly expelled an Indian diplomat — whom she described as the head of Indian intelligence in Canada and who would’ve presumably identified in regards to the alleged assassination — whereas the investigation continues. (Meanwhile, regardless of intense stress from the Ukrainian diaspora over Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, Joly has not expelled a single Russian diplomat).

Facing accusations of transferring too slowly on the Chinese interference file, Trudeau might have felt a must press ahead. “Given the prime minister spent the better part of a year dealing with a foreign interference scandal – allegations he knew about Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections and turned a blind eye because it helped his party — there was no way he could sit on this information. Imagine if it got out that he buried knowledge of a foreign state assassinating a Canadian on Canadian soil. He’d be done,” Yaroslav Baran, of Pendulum, an Ottawa-based political evaluation and communications agency, advised me.

In a quickly deteriorating bilateral relationship, either side have expelled diplomats. A Canadian trade mission has been postponed and trade talks frozen. Delhi has gone even additional by temporarily stopping the processing of visas for Canadian residents and warning its residents about visiting Canada.

Meanwhile, stress on Trudeau to fill the knowledge vacuum is rising: “The Prime Minister needs to lay out his case, immediately, to bolster support for the government’s actions both at home and abroad,” the Toronto Globe and Mail said in an editorial. “Canadians deserve clarity on such an important matter, particularly given the potential for significant diplomatic and economic repercussions.”

India is the most important counter balance that the West has to China’s ascension because the dominant superpower of the twenty first century. That explains why Canada’s primary ally, the United States, is sitting resolutely on the sidelines. The Biden administration can’t be blamed for prioritizing its ongoing bromance with India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the bilateral relationship with Ottawa.

For Trudeau and Joly — his former Quebec lieutenant who got here to the publish with no foreign affairs experience — the disaster comes shortly after the federal government unveiled a long-awaited and much vaunted Indo-Pacific strategy meant to make relations with India and the area a cornerstone of Canadian international coverage.

The present disaster — coming after one with China over the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in 2018 on a US warrant for alleged financial institution fraud and evasion of financial sanctions in opposition to Iran — locations Canada in a tough place to spice up ties with the 2 main powers within the area. (The fees in opposition to Meng had been dismissed by a federal decide final yr.)

In addition to losing a protracted and costly 2020 campaign to snag one of the two temporary seats on the UN Security Council, Canada is dropping its mojo on the worldwide stage as a center energy.

“This is a big deal,” Baran stated. “Canada’s relations with China have been in a deep freeze since China abducted two Canadians in retaliation for the Meng arrest. The new Indo-Pacific strategy calls for a pivot away from China towards India — an equally massive market but with democracy and the rule of law thrown in. India was the big hope for a China offset.”

Facing an election between now and 2025, Trudeau must maintain home political concerns in thoughts going ahead. Canadians of Indian origin represent a significant voting bloc, nearly 4 % of the inhabitants or 1.3 million; greater than half of them Sikhs, together with minority opposition chief Jagmeet Singh whose New Democratic Party retains Trudeau’s ruling Liberals in energy.

If the connection with India turns into extra corrosive, it might affect the ailing Canadian financial system: Indian college students characterize a whopping 40% of total overseas foreign students, it’s one of Canada’s top ten trading partners and the fourth biggest source of tourism.

For Trudeau, who has survived three ethics violations and can go down in historical past as the first Canadian prime minister to be found guilty of breaking federal ethics laws, the disaster happens within the background of plummeting ratings, led to by a cussed cost of living and housing crisis.

A cynic would possibly say that prematurely publicizing the explosive findings in opposition to India is a diversion tactic to steer consideration away from the China interference file and the home points piling up. Or that it’s merely beginner hour on the places of work of the prime minister and international affairs.

Or — as was acknowledged Tuesday in an Atlantic Council panel on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly — that main actors are more and more leaning into transnational repression to get rid of or silence opponents. Goody-two-shoes Canada, eager to defend freedom of expression at residence, innocently finds itself within the jaws of the very superpowers it’s making an attempt to court docket.

Whatever the case, even for someone described as being made of Teflon, the results of the India disaster for Trudeau could possibly be politically deadly if not deftly dealt with — particularly with Ottawa’s conventional greatest good friend, Washington, unlikely to throw a lifeline.