NEW DELHI: A Canadian intelligence agency has included India and China in a list of countries allegedly involved in foreign interference and espionage in Canada. In the case of India, however, Khalistan extremism was identified as a major national security threat to Canada, a point New Delhi has belaboured with Ottawa for long.
Context of the Report
The report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) comes amid efforts by Prime Minister Mark Carney to repair the relationship with India, following his visit to the country earlier this year. Over the past 12 months, Carney and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi have successfully managed to drag the relationship out of a deep freeze that it had descended into over the killing of a Khalistan separatist — Hardeep Singh Nijjar — allegedly by Indian agents in 2023.
Key Accusations
Apart from India and China, the report named Pakistan, Russia and Iran as main perpetrators of foreign interference and espionage against Canada. The same report for 2024 too had accused the same five countries of external interference. However, the latest report has significantly tempered down its earlier references to India.
The 2025 report says that “historically” India has cultivated covert relationships with Canadian politicians, journalists and members of the Indo-Canadian community to exert its influence and advance its interests. This, it said, included “transnational repression activities, such as surveillance and other coercive tactics meant to suppress criticism of the Government of India and create fear in the community.”
Shift in Tone
Unlike the last time, there was no mention of the Nijjar issue in the report or what it had described last year as an escalation in India’s repression efforts against the Khalistan movement. On Khalistan, the report said that some Canada-Based Khalistani Extremists (CBKEs) were well connected to Canadian citizens “who leverage Canadian institutions to promote their violent extremist agenda and collect funds from unsuspecting community members that are then diverted toward violent activities.”
The report also flagged a threat from Sikh extremists who, it said, use Canada as a base to “promote, fundraise or plan violence primarily in India.”
