Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to suffer diplomatic and political fallout for accusing India, without solid evidence, of complicity in the murder of Sikh militant Hardeep Singh Nijjar, whose extradition India repeatedly requested. Nijjar immigrated illegally to Canada using a false passport and then used his Canadian perch to establish a terrorist training camp, blow up a crowded cinema in India, and seek targeted killings of rivals and Indian government officials.
Even if India had ordered the hit on its own Osama bin Laden, and there is no conclusive evidence it did so, Nijjar seems a curious sword on which Trudeau should fall.
Trudeau has always been a lightweight. Canadians wanted a fresh face and a new style of politics. Trudeau, the son of a former leader, provided Canadian politics with the same makeover and generated the same enthusiasm that former Prime Minister Tony Blair did in the United Kingdom in 1997 or former President Barack Obama did in the United States in 2009.
Leadership is not a Hollywood movie, however. Trudeau quickly proved himself a naïf on the global stage, and China moved fast to exploit his international innocence.
Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, was Canada’s prime minister from 1968 until 1984, with a brief nine-month interlude in 1979-80. In 1973, Pierre Trudeau was the first prime minister to visit the People’s Republic of China, where he met with Mao Zedong. In 1984, the elder Trudeau invited Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang to address the Canadian Parliament. Justin Trudeau picked up where his father left off. China is Canada’s largest trading partner after the U.S. and the country to which Canada runs its largest trade deficit.
In 2016, Justin Trudeau paid a weeklong visit to China seeking a more balanced relationship but failed. In subsequent years, only press exposure stopped Chinese efforts to win favorable extradition treaty terms and the ability of Chinese state-owned enterprises to sue local Canadian provincial governments, including over environmental regulations. That same year, journalists uncovered a Chinese cash-for-access scheme in which Chinese interests could make large donations to meet Justin Trudeau in the homes of wealthy Chinese Canadians.
In 2019, Justin Trudeau’s defense minister attended a celebration to mark the 70th anniversary of communist rule in China at a time when the Chinese Air Force increasingly violated Canadian airspace and harassed its jets.
Earlier this year, Justin Trudeau testified in an inquiry after evidence emerged that China interfered in the 2019 and 2021 Canadian elections by illicitly subsidizing candidates it thought were sympathetic to Beijing’s interests. While Justin Trudeau downplayed the impact of Chinese interference, intelligence provided by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service led to the exclusion of one long-term party ally with whom it alleged Beijing had compromised. Justin Trudeau’s party won both elections in which Beijing supposedly supported candidates.
With his allegations against New Delhi, Justin Trudeau had lowered the evidentiary baseline upon which Ottawa acts. If circumstantial evidence is the new standard, then there is far greater evidence to suggest he knowingly or unknowingly acts as Beijing’s useful idiot. Certainly, Communist China’s spies must be having a good chuckle at the witch hunt Justin Trudeau is leading against India when Chinese spies act with nearly free rein across Canada.
If Justin Trudeau purposely ignores Beijing’s machinations, the trouble could be even worse. From Beijing’s perspective, India’s rise is among its greatest strategic challenges. Not only is India now the world’s largest country, but China’s population is in free fall. Both trends have profound economic ramifications. Two years ago, I toured part of the India-China border between Ladakh and Tibet. As one Indian guide pointed out, every Indian soldier had three or four siblings. Every Chinese soldier was an only child.
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Strategically, China is concerned by not only India’s rise but also its growing ties with the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Japan. By sparking a crisis, China drives a wedge between India and a future Beijing dreads. No one but Canada’s prime minister knows his true motivation, but it is now clear: China could not hope for a better ally than Justin Trudeau.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.