Quotulatiousness

December 11, 2024

Canada’s current situation, as viewed by Fortissax

Fortissax recently spoke to an audience in Toronto. This is part of the transcript of his speech:

No doubt, many of you already have an idea.

The fact of the matter is this: 25% of the people in this country are, or soon will be, foreigners. Most of them are not the children of immigrants but fresh-off-the-boat migrants.

The economy? It’s in the dumps. Canada has the lowest upward mobility in the OECD for young people. One of the lowest fertility rates in the Western world. And the fastest-changing demographics in the Western world — as I’m sure you’ve all noticed here in the streets of Toronto, the old capital of Anglo-Canadians.

Think about this: approximately 4.9 million foreigners are classified as “temporary migrants.” Combine that with permanent residents, refugees, and immigrants, and that number swells to 6.2 million in just four years.


And it doesn’t stop there.

Crime is reportedly the highest it’s ever been. We have no military. The Canadian Armed Forces has faced retention issues for two decades. And what is command preoccupied with? Men’s bathrooms stocked with tampons and servicemen being “radicalized” by wearing extremist clothing like MAGA hats.


Let’s not forget foreign influence.

The Chinese Communist Party exploited the Hong Kong handover in the 1990s to infiltrate Canada, using British Columbia as their foothold. As Sam Cooper exposes in Claws of the Panda and Willful Blindness, they established a stronghold in Metro Vancouver, taking over the business community.

This “Vancouver Model”, as we Canadians ironically call it, normalizes our capitulation to foreign hostiles. Triads, working hand-in-glove with the Chinese communists, built a global drug empire. Fentanyl, mass-produced in football field-sized factories in China, is shipped to Vancouver and distributed across the entire Western Hemisphere.

Let this sink in: more Canadians have died from this economic warfare than all our soldiers lost in the Second World War.


And now, there’s India.

Intelligence agencies from the Republic of India have demonstrated their ability to conduct assassinations on Canadian soil. Recently, a Khalistani nationalist and separatist was killed — a figure I’ll leave to your sympathies or judgments. Regardless, this marks a disturbing shift.

India weaponizes its diaspora against the international community. In exchange for non-alignment with China, the West — particularly the Anglosphere — uses Indian migrants as wage-slave labor to suppress costs.

The result? A disaster.

In Canada, Australia, the U.K., and increasingly the United States, we see Indians climbing the ladders of power, pursuing their own interests — often brazenly. In Brampton, part of Greater Toronto, a 50-foot statue of the Hindu god Hanuman looms.

And let’s not forget the Punjabi Sikh population. They openly support an independent Khalistan — or remain at best indifferent to the cause. They have infiltrated Canada’s state apparatus, even reaching the Ministry of National Defense, where Harjit Sajjan prioritized rescuing Afghan Sikhs during Kabul operations over broader Canadian interests.

In Surrey, British Columbia, the trucking industry is effectively controlled by Sikhs. In online spaces, Sikh nationalists demand Brampton be recognized as a province, seemingly aware that their homeland exists more abroad than in Punjab itself. The leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, serves as yet another example — barred from entering India due to his sympathies for separatism.


But foreign influence is only half the story. Among our own lies another problem: disintegration.

Decades of Western alienation and economic parasitism by the federal government are fueling separatist movements in places like Alberta and Saskatchewan. In Quebec, the Parti Québécois is polling higher than the ruling CAQ, openly advocating for secession from Confederation.

Meanwhile, the federal Conservatives court immigrant voters, alienating native Canadians and abandoning their base.


And then there’s the economic misery.

The average Canadian home costs $700,000. The median income? Just $48,000. Upward mobility is nonexistent. The managerial regime hoards wealth and power, gatekeeping opportunity through credentialism, exorbitant tuition, and crushing taxes.

55% of Canadians have post-secondary education, and yet most have nothing to show for it. The regime is not run by titans of intelligence or visionaries. It’s run by ideologues — loyal to their cause, not to competence or merit.


The final insult: demographics.

Over the next six years, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba will become majority non-Canadian. The 50% threshold will be breached, with profound consequences for local politics.

Ontario will hover just above 50%, while Quebec and the Maritime provinces will remain over 70% and 80% Canadian, respectively. This is not a death sentence, but it is a profound transformation for Western Canada, which has historically been more propositional and less identitarian than the East.


This is where we are.

Our sovereignty is compromised. Our identity is eroded. But we are not yet defeated. What happens next depends entirely on us.

November 4, 2024

Ujjal Dosanjh blames Justin Trudeau for the rise of Sikh extremism in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, India, Media, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Liberal Party normally manages to avoid having any internal differences come to public attention, so having a former Liberal cabinet minister come out and directly criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is rather noteworthy:

Ujjal Dosanjh speaking at the 12th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas – Engaging Diaspora Connecting Across Generation, in New Delhi on January 08, 2014.
Photo by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (GODL-India) via Wikimedia Commons.

“A silent majority of the Sikhs do not want to have anything to do with Khalistan. They just don’t speak out because they’re afraid of violence and violent repercussions,” reports Ujjal Dosanjh, as a Sikh living in Vancouver, B.C.

The call for a separate Sikh homeland in Punjab, India — to be called Khalistan — has been brewing since the 1930s, when British rule in India was nearing its end. Although the movement now has marginal support in India, it has taken wings in Canada and escalated into the present derailing of relations between two friendly Commonwealth democracies, India and Canada.

Unlike many of his Sikh peers in Canada, Ujjal — a former NDP premier of British Columbia and a former federal cabinet minister under Liberal prime minister Paul Martin — isn’t afraid to speak out. He’s been extremely vocal, especially since 1985; that’s when the bombing of Air India Flight 182 by Khalistani extremists, killing 329 people, brought the separatist movement to Canada.

Ujjal, now 78, has faced death threats from extremists but remains unwavering in his determination to convince fellow Canadians that the overwhelming majority of the nearly 800,000 Sikhs in Canada do not support the Khalistani movement. “I’d say less than five per cent, less than five per cent,” he emphasizes.

[…]

While accountability for this violence is an imperative, the purpose of my conversation with Uijal is not to sift through the evidence and intelligence. What I want to understand is how we got to this place where Canada’s Sikh population, the largest Sikh diaspora in the world, has in effect been co-opted by the Khalistanis to the point where this obscure separatist movement has become a Canadian problem.

Without hesitation, Ujjal points to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

For two reasons, Ujjal blames Trudeau: “One, he’s never really understood the vast majority of Sikhs are quite secular in their outlook, despite the fact that they go to the temple,” he says. And the second reason: “Khalistanis are not a majority, and the fact nobody speaks against them is out of fear”. Through intimidation, Ujjal elaborates, Khalistani supporters control many of the temples in Canada. And it’s Trudeau’s fault, he asserts, “that Canadians now equate Khalistanis with Sikhs, as if we are all Khalistanis if we’re Sikhs”.

October 1, 2023

It’s written as a satire, but I think it accurately reflects the widespread historical ignorance in Canada

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Tristin Hopper imagines the diary entries for a week in the life of a Canadian politician:

Period Speech

In the wake of the Canadian House of Commons accidentally applauding a former member of the Waffen-SS, one of many embarrassing facts it’s revealed is the ruinous state of the history education among Canada’s elected representatives. Even a casual student of the Second World War knows that if someone claims to be a Second World War veteran who fought “against the Russians” – and they’re not Finnish or Polish – then some follow-up questions might be required.

Monday

Imagine the depths of my embarrassment: That I, a sworn member of His Majesty’s Imperial Royal Canadian Legislative Parliament, should be caught applauding a Nazi. A literal foot soldier of the Kaiser! The bloodthirsty invaders of Vimy Ridge! The same forces of subjugation and conquest who staged the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor and sent the HMS Titanic to a watery grave. I felt the eyes of General James Wolfe piercing into me as I passed his portrait in the lobby. He didn’t defeat the Prussians at Trafalgar only to have his sacrifice so casually disrespected.

Tuesday

Would that the presence of a Nazi in Parliament be the only time our politics have been sidelined by the troubled history of a foreign land. But alas, we find ourself plunged into the issue of Khalistan. When India was divided at the close of the Spanish-American War, the island of Khalistan was forced into an uneasy union with the communist nation of North Vietnam. Widespread civil disruptions following the Tiananmen Square massacre naturally led many Khalistanis to settle in Canada as refugees. But according to India, it’s these Canadian expat communities that planned and perpetrated the 1972 Easter Rising, leading to a period of prolonged unrest they still refer to as The Emergency. Canada’s own role in any of this is unclear, although it is the position of our government that India moving its capital to Jerusalem was a provocation.

July 3, 2021

Who were the Mughals? Rise and Fall of the Mughal Empire explained

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Epimetheus
Published 20 Oct 2019

Who were the Mughals? Rise and Fall of the Mughal Empire explained (Documentary)

The Mughal empire’s history from Babur to the fall in 1857.

This video and others like it are sponsored by my Patrons over on patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776

June 1, 2021

Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire explained in less than 7 minutes

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Epimetheus
Published 8 Oct 2019

Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire explained in less than 7 minutes Sikh history documentary

This video covers Sikh history from the Guru Nanak till the fall of the Sikh Empire.

This video and others like it are sponsored by my Patrons over on patreon.
https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776

October 18, 2019

Colonel Daniel Stepaniuk’s one-man campaign to wipe out (some) religious observance in the Militia

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Christie Blatchford on the oddly partial actions of the officer in charge of more than a dozen Ontario militia regiments as far as religion is concerned:

The Lorne Scots (Peel, Dufferin and Halton Regiment) on parade in Brampton, Ontario on 24 September, 2016.
Photo by Nicholas Russon.

An army brigade commander has told the 14 Ontario reserve regiments under his charge that they must cancel any “church parade” they have planned.

Despite a lack of complaints about the parades, which see soldiers march to their regimental church, Col. Daniel Stepaniuk urged his commanding officers to stop participating in “any event where the primary purpose is liturgical, spiritual or religious … even if the service is non-denominational.”

A custom in the Canadian Army since the time of Confederation, the parades aren’t as common as they once were, though many units still have at least one a year, often tied to Remembrance Day ceremonies.

[…]

First of all, there is the glaring contradiction with Stepaniuk’s harsh stand on church parades and a parade that happened in Toronto last April.

A group of soldiers — I counted between 15 and 20 — were issued weapons, allowed to march in their military uniforms and were escorted by an armoured vehicle in the annual Khalsa parade for Canada’s Sikh community. It is considered a holy day.

The soldiers were from the Lorne Scots, one of Stepaniuk’s reserve units based in Brampton. The CO of the unit said at the time that he signed off on the weapons only after his commander (that would presumably be Stepaniuk, or perhaps the brigadier-general above him) approved the soldiers’ participation.

So weapons worn at a Khalsa Day parade good, though against the rules (The Canadian Armed Forces Manual of Drill and Ceremonial), according to army spokeswoman Karla Gimby.

But soldiers going anywhere near a church, bad, and against rules five years old that no one cared to enforce until now.

But most of all, in such small incremental strikes, does Canadian history and tradition lose strength.

September 18, 2019

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms* (*not all sections apply in Quebec)

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne on the disgraceful habit of the federal government (and nine provincial governments) to look the other way when Quebec decides that some of the guarantees in the Charter don’t apply in La Belle Province:

For many observant persons, particularly Muslims, Sikhs and orthodox Jews, this amounts to a religious hiring bar: the wearing of the hijab, the turban and the kippa are key requirements of their faith, and as such core elements of their identity. To demand that they work uncovered is, in effect, to post a sign saying Muslims, Sikhs and Jews need not apply.

We should be clear on this. It’s not just a dress code, or an infringement of religious freedom, or religious discrimination, or those other abstract phrases you hear tossed about. We are talking about a law barring employment in much of the public sector — not just police and judges, but government lawyers and teachers — to certain religious minorities.

Existing workers may have been grandfathered, but only so long as they remain in their current jobs. Should they ever move, or seek a promotion, they will face the same restrictions. The signal to the province’s religious and, let’s say it, racial minorities, vulnerable as they will be feeling already after the mounting public vitriol to which they have been exposed in the name of the endless “reasonable accommodation” debate, is unmistakable: you are not wanted here. Not surprisingly, many are getting out — out of the public service, out of Quebec.

That this is actually happening, in 2019, in a province of Canada — members of religious minorities being driven from their jobs, and for no reason other than their religion — is sickening, and shameful. That shame is not reserved to Premier Francois Legault or his CAQ government, the people responsible for designing and implementing this disgraceful exercise in segregation, this manifestly cruel attempt to cleanse the province’s schools and courts of religious minorities. It is no less shaming to the rest of us, everywhere across Canada, so long as we permit it to continue.

That is, so far as we are capable of feeling it. But experience has taught us to look the other way when it comes to Quebec, to tell ourselves that it is none of our affair, that we must not raise a fuss when the province explicitly elevates the interests of its ethnic and linguistic majority over those of its minorities, or threatens the country’s life for long years at a time — the beloved “knife at the throat” strategy — to back its escalating fiscal and constitutional demands. We dare not. We cannot. For then Quebec would leave.

August 9, 2019

What’s happening in Jammu and Kashmir?

Filed under: Government, History, India, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Pieter J. Friedrich reports on recent events concerning the unique constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir within the Republic of India:

CIA map of the Kashmir Region in 2004.
Via Wikimedia Commons. Click image to see full-sized map.

Terror grips the most militarized zone in the world after India’s Central Government terminated Jammu and Kashmir’s 70-year-old “special status” as the first step towards stripping the disputed region of statehood entirely.

Internationally infamous as the world’s hottest potential nuclear flashpoint, J&K originally acceded to India in 1947 only on the condition that the newly-formed country be restricted from interfering in the domestic affairs of the mountainous northern region. The agreement was sealed between the last king of J&K, Maharaja Hari Singh Dogra, and the representative of the British crown, Governor-General Lord Mountbatten. In 1949, when passage of the constitution formed the Republic of India, the Maharaja’s conditions for accession were enshrined in Article 370.

The crux of the article – in combination with Article 35A of 1954 – was that, while J&K accepted India’s handling of issues like defense and foreign policy, the state otherwise reserved the right to autonomy in handling its domestic affairs. Kashmiris, thus, lived under their own distinct laws. Notably, citizens of other parts of India were prohibited from settling permanently or owning property in Kashmir. In the eyes of many Kashmiris, this prevented settler colonialism. On August 5, 2019, the President of India abolished this “special status” by decree.

Simultaneously, Home Minister Amit Shah – charged with India’s internal security – introduced a bill in the upper house of parliament to strip J&K of statehood, downgrade it to a “Union Territory,” and partition the region.

As Shah did this, the Central Government shut down Kashmir. It imposed a virtual curfew, banning movement of the public, shuttering educational institutions, and barring all public assemblies or meetings. It severed communications, cutting off phone and internet access. And it conducted arrests of mainstream Kashmiri political leaders – such as former chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Omar Abdullah – on unknown charges.

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which was just re-elected in May, campaigned on promises to scrap J&K’s “special status.” The BJP’s manifesto alleged that it was “an obstacle in the development of the state,” while Shah insisted it stood in the way of of Kashmir becoming an “integral party of India permanently” and was necessary for “national security.” Indeed, the tumultuous region has suffered a significant influx in violence in recent years.

Since 2014, when Prime Minister Modi’s regime first came to power, terrorist incidents in J&K have nearly tripled and security forces deaths have nearly doubled. According to a July 2019 UN report, independent bodies documented 159 security forces deaths in 2018 – a figure comparable to US troop fatalities in Iraq in 2009. The latest round of escalating tensions traces back to at least 2010, when mass protests erupted over an “encounter killing” of three civilians by Indian Army troops. Protests again erupted in 2016. During suppression efforts, security forces killed hundreds of protesters.

The Central Government has responded by flooding J&K with more and more soldiers. The small region – slightly smaller than the United Kingdom – is already occupied by a bare minimum of 500,000 troops. Since late July 2019, India has deployed nearly another 50,000.

Delhi has additionally responded by repeatedly dissolving J&K’s elected state government, imposing direct rule three times since 2015. The last time was in June 2018, after India’s ruling BJP withdrew from a coalition with then J&K Chief Minister Mufti – apparently because she advocated “reconciliation” instead of a “muscular security policy” as the most effective solution to the Kashmir conflict. Elections have not been allowed since 2014.

The ongoing occupation as well as the long-term use of direct rule – imposed for approximately ten of the past 42 years – contribute to the perception of Kashmiris that they are nothing more than vassals within the Republic of India.

August 5, 2019

More on the still-damaged diplomatic relationship between India and Canada

Filed under: Cancon, India, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Campbell quotes from a recent article in the Hindustan Times about the not-yet-healed damage in the diplomatic world between Justin Trudeau’s government and the Indian government of Narendra Modi:

Justin Trudeau and family during India visit
Image via NDTV, originally tweeted by @vijayrupanibjp

In the influential Hindustan Times, Toronto based journalist Anirudh Bhattacharya writes … “in an astonishing attack that will not help heal fraught ties between India and Canada, the former top advisor to the North American nation’s Prime Minister has accused the Indian Government of sabotaging Justin Trudeau’s visit to India in February 2018 to favour his political opponents [and] This scathing statement is in the forthcoming book, Trudeau: The Education of a Prime Minister, written by senior Canadian journalist John Ivison. The author [Ivison] confirmed to the Hindustan Times that Butts’ comment came during an interview.” The article adds that “Indian diplomats didn’t comment on the matter because it is so politically charged and the Canadian Government has yet to respond to questions from HT on its stand on the incendiary remark from Butts.”

So, while some pundits forecast that the return of Gerald Butts would reignite the whole SNC-Lavalin/Jane Philpott and Jody Wilson-Raybould scandal, it appears that the damage will be deeper and we will get a chance to revisit the disaster that Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland visited upon Canadian foreign policy in 2018. India is a rising great power; it helps to contain China in new “Western Approaches:” the Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. India is a growing trading power; it is a HUGE potential market for Canadian goods and services. India is one of the top three providers of new Canadians ~ and that’s where our problems with India originated. Someone in the Trudeau PMO thought (since thinking was the problem that probably lets Justin Trudeau off the hook) that it would be a good idea for Prime Minister Trudeau to attend a Khalsa Day parade in Toronto back in April 2017. I explained, back at the time of the India trip fiasco, why that was a mistake and how Jason Kenney had already set the example of doing it right. Now Khalsa Day, also known as Vaisakhi, is an important festival for Sikhs, it marks their New Year. But the festivities, especially in Toronto where 300,000 Sikhs live, are, sometimes, taken over or interrupted by Sikh separatists who advocate violent revolution in India. Jason Kenney saw that in 2012 and he stormed off a stage and berated his hosts, in public for trying to use him to undermine Canadian foreign policy, which valued, as it should, good relations with India. But, in 2017 all the Trudeau PMO (headed by Gerald Butts and Katie Telford) could see were all those Sikh voters. Neither the PMO team nor new Canadian foreign minister Chrystia Freeland was able to prevent Trudeau from being used as a photo-op prop by avowed Sikh separatists … there is no indication that anyone tried although, even though, given the bureaucracy’s corporate memory of events in 2012, I would be amazed in alarms were not sounded.

June 26, 2018

Saragarhi – The Last Stand – Extra History

Filed under: Asia, Britain, History, India, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Extra Credits
Published on 5 Aug 2017

A humble signal station manned by only twenty one Sikh soldiers of the British Empire finds itself beset by 10,000 attackers. There is no hope for relief, but even knowing it will come at the cost of their lives, the Sikhs refuse to stand down.

Twenty one men in the 36th Sikh Regiment stand against thousands of attackers, prepared to make their final stand.

May 1, 2018

Sikh separatists (and even terrorists) are being protected by the federal government

Filed under: Cancon, Government, India, Politics, Religion — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

There’s no reason that Canadian Sikhs can’t agitate for their fellow Sikhs in India to create a separate country in the Punjab, but that freedom must not include active support for terrorists. The Canadian government is looking particularly bad on this front, and it isn’t just because of Justin Trudeau’s farcical adventures on his recent trip to India. None of the major federal parties want to appear to be anti-Sikh, as Sikh voters cluster in several key swing ridings around the country, and any criticism of the terrorists is spun as an attack on all Sikhs. At Quillette Terry Milewski details the government’s unwillingness to deal with the problem:

The Sikh faith, created in what is now northern India by the 15th-century Guru Nanak, remains obscure to many in the West. Turbaned Sikh men are sometimes confused with Muslims, and some have been assaulted by confused thugs following Islamist terrorist attacks. Like the United States, Britain and other Western countries, Canada has been home to emigrant Sikhs for generations—the vast majority of them living peaceably in their adopted homeland.

In the 1980s, however, a powerful spasm of separatist militancy shook India and spread to the Sikh diaspora. In June, 1984, two months before the Madison Square Garden convention, Prime Minister Gandhi and her government set out to end a killing spree by Sikh militants who had turned the Sikhs’ holiest site — the Golden Temple at Amritsar — into an armed camp. The Indian army wrecked the temple complex and took many lives. Revenge came on October 31, 1984, when Gandhi was gunned down in her garden by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Hindu mobs immediately took revenge for the revenge, slaughtering thousands of Sikhs in hellish reprisals that were aggravated by official complicity. The police looked the other way. The horrors of 1984 won’t be forgotten by either side.

Soon, Canada and its Sikh community were dragged into the thick of the struggle. In June of 1985, Parmar’s Babbar Khalsa placed suitcase bombs on two planes leaving Vancouver. One brought down Flight 182, a massacre that remained, until 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in the history of aviation. The second bomb, intended to destroy another Air India plane simultaneously, exploded on the ground at Narita Airport in Japan, killing two baggage handlers. The reverberations from the attack were so profound in Canada that even today, 33 years later, a striking emblem of the Khalistani dream survives: a large “martyr” poster honouring Talwinder Parmar, sword in hand, permanently fixed to the exterior of an important Sikh gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. Tens of thousands gather beneath it each spring for an annual Sikh parade. In American terms, the poster is equivalent to a public veneration of Osama Bin Laden.

[…]

Today, the parents who lost their children [on Air India Flight 182] are old, the orphaned children have their own children and the Sikh struggle for independence is moribund in India. Last year, in fact, Sikh voters overwhelmingly supported a united India and were key to the election of the Congress Party — the party of Indira Gandhi — to govern the Sikh homeland of Punjab. Support for Congress was especially strong in majority-Sikh districts. And Punjab’s Chief Minister is a strongly pro-unity Sikh, Amarinder Singh, who has alleged separatist influence in the Canadian government.

Harjit Sajjan, a Sikh who is Canada’s Minister of National Defence, firmly denied the claim. And on Justin Trudeau’s visit to India this year, Singh agreed to a photo-op including Sajjan. But the Chief Minister let it be known that he’d handed over a list of Canadians he suspects of fundraising for Punjab’s few remaining separatist Sikh militants.

The listed suspects amount to a tiny subculture among Canada’s 450,000 Sikhs, the vast bulk of whom seek no return to the bloody 1980s and 1990s, when the battle for Khalistan took some 20,000 lives in India, most of them Sikh. But the hardliners are a well-organized political force, still raising the cry of “Khalistan Zindabad!” — long live Khalistan — in some Canadian gurdwaras where “martyred” Sikh assassins are memorialized as models for the young. These include the two bodyguards who machine-gunned Indira Gandhi. Khalistani fervour is alive on social media and a 2018 tweet from “George” (@PCPO_Brampton) declared: “Indira’s assassins are HEROES. Sikhs should glorify them.”

The endurance of such attitudes in Canada reflects the weak record of its justice system in deterring violence. For years, it seemed, Canadian courts were where terrorism cases went to die.

February 26, 2018

India’s largest newspaper on Justin Trudeau’s “disaster visit”

Filed under: Cancon, India, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Paul Wells linked to this story in the world’s largest circulation English language newspaper, The Times of India:

Justin Trudeau and family during India visit
Image via NDTV, originally tweeted by @vijayrupanibjp

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s visit was a disaster that has little parallel in India’s recent diplomatic history. But as the Canadian prime minister returned home on Saturday after almost a week of recurrent diplomatic missteps, ironically, it may have provided the opportunity to reset relations between Canada and India.

On Saturday, Indian government officials were angry at suggestions by Canadian officials that India was responsible for Khalistani terrorist Jaspal Atwal getting a visa to India and used his presence to embarrass Trudeau.

Trudeau, in his meeting with prime minister Narendra Modi, also complained that his visit had been shadowed by a single issue. Atwal got a visa because he was taken off the blacklist some years ago. But he was part of a number of Trudeau’s own events that did not involve the Indian government at all.

A prime ministerial visit to a foreign country for a week with a thin official component is always fraught with danger. In addition, moving the official meetings to the very end of the trip indicated that the government meetings were an after-thought. Most foreign leaders who throw in other events almost always front-load the official meetings, and then go on to business or tourism events.

Here, it was clear from the start that Trudeau came to India to score with his Sikh constituency back home — four out of the six cabinet ministers who travelled with him were Sikh, as were an overwhelming number of MPs who also travelled with him. Until the media barrage in India forced the Canadian side to change tack, Trudeau was not even ready to meet Amarinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab. Even the Canadian high commissioner’s official reception was a celebration of Punjab with the prime minister himself waltzing in on bhangra beats.

February 23, 2018

“…the Trudeaus playing ‘Mr Dressup and Family’ in exotic locations on the taxpayers’ dime isn’t the problem”

Filed under: Cancon, India, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The press is having a hard time presenting Justin Trudeau’s India trip in a positive light, which clearly pains the teeny-bopper Trudeau fan club that composes a large part of the Canadian media. Ted Campbell sees the trip as a series of wasted opportunities to begin healing the breach between India and Canada:

I’ve taken my time in commenting on the prime minister’s trip to India. To say that I’m very disappointed is to put it mildly … I’m disappointed and a little embarrassed to be a Canadian. But the Trudeaus playing “Mr Dressup and Family” in exotic locations on the taxpayers’ dime isn’t the problem. We have, in fact, a serious problem as far as India is concerned and we, Canada, one of India’s oldest and firmest friends is in danger of being seen as an adversary. That’s a problem and it is, in my mind, a HUGE problem for Canada.

As Vishnu Prakash, former Indian envoy to Canada, told Indian news site The Print on Monday, ““Over the years, the Canadian political establishment, across the spectrum (whether it is the NDP, Conservatives or Liberals) has been mollycoddling Khalistani elements. Under the Trudeau government, this has increased. He had himself appeared on a Khalistani platform in Toronto in April last year.” It, the “mollycoddling Khalistani elements,” has been going on since at least the 1980s, back when Indira Ghandi’s government cracked down (1984) and nearly provoked a civil war and even in 1985 when Air India flight 182 was bombed, almost certainly an attack organized by Canadians, in Canada, as retaliation. Then the governments of the day spent 20 years and over $100 million on an investigation that retired Supreme Court Justice John Major described as a “cascading series of errors” by the government, writ large, including, especially, the RCMP and CSIS. India was not impressed.

India was less impressed when Canadian political parties began to actively court the Canadian the entire Indo-Canadian community but failed to condemn Sikh separatism. Canadians, including Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau have “explained,” correctly, that people are allowed to support unpopular causes here in Canada, so long as they don’t break our laws, but India, not unreasonably, given Canada’s own history of separatist violence, would like something more. But the Sikh vote is active and “efficient” and all parties want it and that seems, to India, anyway, to mean turning a blind eye to the (disputed) fact assertion that the Khalistan independence movement is centred in and funded from Canada … Prime Minister Trudeau made thing worse, according to The Hindu, when “On April 30, [2017] Mr. Trudeau addressed a parade for ‘Khalsa Day’, which included floats glorifying Sikh militant leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Amreek Singh and former General Shahbeg Singh who were killed in the siege of the Golden Temple and Operation Bluestar in June 1984.” That act appears to have crossed a line, leading to what the whole world is now interpreting as a major diplomatic snub […]

The big issue is not the rather gentlemanly snub of Justin Trudeau by India’s highest officials; our prime minister appears more interested in having an all expenses paid vacation with his family than in doing the nation’s business in any event; the real issue is the Canadian political actions that made it politically necessary for Prime Minister Modi to administer that snub at all.

What Canada needs to do now is repair relations with India, and that may require Prime Minister Trudeau to look very, very closely at any ties any of his ministers may have with the Khalistan independence movement, he says there are none, and either making them sever all ties with separatists or severing them from the Liberal cabinet, caucus and even the Party. Andrew Scheer needs to do the same with the Conservatives and Jagmeet Singh needs to speak out for national unity ~ if it’s good for Canada then it’s good for India, too. On this issue, at least, politics should indeed, stop at the water’s edge.

Of course, when you allow things like this to happen, diplomacy becomes a much trickier profession than normal:

In Britain, the Daily Mail published the comments from a lot of Indians who have been offended by Trudeau’s choices of clothing on the visit so far:

Justin Trudeau has been ridiculed on social media by Indians for his ‘tacky’ and over the top outfit choices while on his first visit to their nation as Prime Minister.

While many praised his clothing during the first two days of his trip, patience was wearing thin by the time he attended a Bollywood gala on Tuesday night, before the tide turned against him on Wednesday.

Ministers, authors, journalists and ordinary Indians lined up to mock him on Wednesday, saying his wardrobe was ‘fake and annoying’.

Perhaps taking note of the criticism, the Canadian leader donned a suit on Thursday as he visited Jama Masjid, one of India’s largest mosques.

Leading the criticism was Omar Abdullah, former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, who tweeted on Wednesday saying Trudeau’s preening was ‘all just a bit much.’

‘We Indians do not dress like this every day sir, not even in Bollywood.’

Bhaavna Arora, a bestselling Indian author, also chimed in, accusing Trudeau of wearing ‘fancy dress’ and saying she found it ‘fake and annoying’.

Shekhar Gupta, founder of Indian newspaper The Print also mocked the Canadian Prime Minister, accusing him of ‘running a week-long “election campaign” in India in fancy dress.’

October 3, 2017

Jagmeet Singh wins the federal NDP leadership race

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The NDP have finally selected a leader who may be able to recapture some of the “lightning in a bottle” phenomenon of the late Jack Layton’s time as party leader (and bring back some former NDP voters who plumped for Justin last time around). Jay Currie is enthusiastic about the new guy:

Federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh taking part in a Pride Parade in June 2017 (during the leadership campaign).
Photo via Wikimedia.

… I was cheered to see the rollover victory of Jagmeet Singh for the NDP leadership. Singh seems to be from the pragmatic end of the NDP and will be relatively immune from identitarian and intersectional attack simply because he’s brown and wears brilliant turbans. He’s intelligent, well spoken and has a bit of charisma. And he is just going to kill Justin Trudeau in places Trudeau needs to win.

It is simplistic to say that the Sikh community in Canada will universally support one of its own, there will certainly be a temptation to defect from Trudeau to Singh. While that might have some effect in Tory ridings, it will be felt most strongly in seats which have traditionally swung from Liberal to New Democrat and back again.

I am not sure, however, that Singh’s ethnicity is his biggest threat to Trudeau. By 2019 the emptiness of much of the Liberal’s program will be apparent to all. The broken promises, the tepid policy initiatives and, above all, the fiscal incompetence on the revenue side and on expenditures will be pretty apparent. For small business owners and consumers with half a clue, the combination of the lunatic small business tax measures and the expensive, but pointless, carbon tax will pour votes into the Conservative column. But with Canada’s first past the post system, that may not be enough.

Singh’s real threat to Trudeau is in marginal seats where the Libs beat the Conservatives by a few thousand votes in the last election because a) people had had enough of Harper, b) Justin seemed bright and shiny. People who would have voted NDP in the past were so eager to get rid of Harper they voted for Trudeau. Mulclair simply lacked the appeal to keep the faithful in the pews. At a guess, the rank and file NDP voters, as well as the multi-culti virtue signallers, will be much more inclined to give Singh a go. Which means he has the capacity to bleed off Liberal voters in significant numbers.

November 6, 2015

Canada’s new Minister of National Defence

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the National Post, Adrian Humphreys provides a look at the new defence minister in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet:

Defence minister Harjit Sajjan

Many defence ministers pose for photos with military hardware, but few pull off the true badass combat stance as well as Harjit Singh Sajjan — draped in flak jacket and camouflage, gripping an assault rifle on an actual battlefield.

Sajjan was, until recently, a decorated Lieutenant-Colonel in the Armed Forces, the first Sikh Canadian to command an army regiment.

“Command breaks down barriers because no one looks at what you look like when the bullets are flying,” he said in 2011. “Having to carry your, you know, wounded soldiers off the battlefield, not just wounded, but the ones that have been killed and place them into a helicopter, nothing prepares you for that.”

Sajjan, sworn in Wednesday as Canada’s new Minister of National Defence, was, in military lingo, “a trigger puller.”

He was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina and three times to Afghanistan, for which he was awarded one of the military’s highest recognitions, the Order of Military Merit, for reducing the Taliban’s influence in Kandahar Province.

“He has a taste for the reality of war and that’s very, very important,” said David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

“He will have seen the aftermath of the effect of war on some of our men and women, which is a major issue with veteran’s affairs,” said Bercuson.

[…]

He served as a reservist, and was deployed with the Canadian peacekeeping forces to Bosnia in 1996.

In 2006 he served in Afghanistan, playing a key intelligence advisory role to Brig.-Gen David Fraser in the successful Operation Medusa offensive against the Taliban. He returned to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011.

Rising to the rank of reserve lieutenant-colonel, he was named commander of the B.C. Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own), in 2012.

I’m pleased that Trudeau managed to find someone to fill this cabinet post who has actual military experience in the field (as opposed to a former general or admiral). I hope he can fight his political corner to get the Canadian Forces the updated equipment they so desperately need, even if the F-35 is not going to be part of the package (Trudeau explicitly promised to drop the F-35 purchase during the election).

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