Trudeau said that Canada wants to work constructively on the issue and had reached out to India “to get into the bottom of this matter”.
The Canadian Prime Minister was delivering his remarks at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, to mark the launch of Canada’s first community-wide smart energy grid on Saturday, where he also took questions on the India-Canada diplomatic standoff.
“From the very beginning, we shared the real allegations that we are deeply concerned about but we have reached out to the Indian government and to partners around the world to get to the bottom of this, to take it seriously,” he said.
“We have serious reasons to believe that agents of the government of India could have been involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil and India’s response is to kick out a whole bunch of Canadian diplomats by violating their rights under the Vienna Convention. That is of concern to countries around the world because if a given country can just decide that their diplomats of another country are no longer protected,” he added.
India-Canada diplomatic row: Indian High Commission asks Canada to produce evidence in Nijjar’s killing
Speaking about US state secretary Antony Blinken’s statement that the US wants to see Canada moving its investigation forward on Hardeep Singh Nijjar and that India needs to help make it happen, the Canadian PM said, “we reached out to our friends and allies like the US and others to work on this really serious violation of international law and of sovereignty of a democracy.”
“If bigger countries can violate international law without consequences, then the whole world gets more dangerous for everyone,” he said.
India has previously rejected Trudeau’s allegations as “absurd” and “motivated”.
While diplomatic tensions between the two countries persist, India had last month resumed some visa services in Canada, more than a month after they were suspended at the height of the row. Canada has already withdrawn 41 diplomats and their family members from India.