OTTAWA/NEW DELHI, May 7: Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller has denied External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar’s statement that Ottawa has been ignoring Indian warnings and welcoming a number of gangland people with organised crime links from Punjab into the country.
Asked by journalists if the Justin Trudeau Government has been lax about who it lets into the country as the EAM has said, Miller said: “We are not lax and the Indian foreign minister is entitled to his opinion.”
Asked again, he said: “Let him speak his mind; it is just not accurate.”
Asked if the three Indians arrested in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar were in Canada on student visas, he refused to confirm.
“I can’t (confirm). This is information I can’t share with you at this time. It is an ongoing police investigation. The questions lie properly with the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police).”
Asked if criminal record checks are done on those with student visas, he said in the affirmative. “You check them, and if they have a criminal record they don’t come in,” he said.
He reiterated that he couldn’t confirm if the three arrested Indian men are on active student visas.
On Friday, Canadian police arrested Kamalpreet Singh, Karanpreet Singh and Karan Brar for alleged involvement in the killing of Nijjar.
Nijjar, a prominent Khalistani separatist, was gunned down outside a gurudwara in Surrey, British Columbia, in June 2023.
Canadian PM Trudeau had sparked a controversy in September last year when he told the Canadian parliament that Canadian security agencies had been actively pursuing “credible allegations of a potential link” between agents of the Government of India and the killing of Nijjar.
India has rejected the claims and called the allegations as “absurd and motivated.”
On May 4, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said that Canada has been welcoming a number of gangland people with organised crime links from Punjab and ignoring Indian warnings against giving them visa, and therefore killings like that of separatist Nijjar is an issue that Ottawa has to worry about.
Jaishankar, while speaking to a group of professionals in Bhubaneswar, said he had seen the report about the arrests of the three men: “I also saw this report; okay somebody may have been arrested, their police may have done some investigation, but the fact is the number of gangland people, the number of people with organised crime links from Punjab, have been made welcome in Canada.
We have been telling Canada that these are wanted criminals from India, you are giving them visa; many have come on false documentation, and yet you allow them to live there. If you decide to import people with negative backgrounds there will be issues.
“If something has happened there, it is for them to worry about,” he added.
He also said that the Khalistani elements have organised themselves politically in Canada and become a political lobby.
EAM said these separatist elements “have tried to create space for themselves in the politics of these countries”.
He said: “At this time, I would say it is not so much of a problem in the US; our biggest problem right now is in Canada. Because in Canada, actually, the party in power in Canada, other parties in Canada, have given these kinds of extremism, separatism and advocates of violence a certain legitimacy, in the name of free speech.” (UNI)
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