How Should Sikhs Remember Trudeau?
"His history with Sikhs is a complicated one...However, for all his faults, we cannot forget what he did for the community when he got it right."
Jaskaran Sandhu
January 7, 2025 | 5 min. read | Opinion
How should Sikh Canadians remember Justin Trudeau’s 10-year reign? It depends.
Most of the time, this is a dull answer to grand questions, but when you have a decade-long track record to consider, it’s perhaps dishonest to answer it any other way.
It started very strong. In 2015, a record-breaking 17 Sikh candidates were elected nationwide, 16 of which rode a massive Liberal wave into power. Trudeau leaned heavily on that crop of Sikh MPs, appointing four to the cabinet, including into significant and prominent portfolios: Harjit Sajjan as Defence Minister, Amarjeet Sohi as Infrastructure Minister, Bardish Chagger as Small Business Minister, and Navdeep Bains as Innovation Minister.
Sikhs were ecstatic about that kind of representation.
Many believed we had made it, thinking that Sikhs had now eternally earned their spot in the Canadian mainstream. That optimism was probably best captured by a poster released by the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada during 2016’s Sikh Heritage Month, proudly displaying the four new ministers in Trudeau’s government.
“I have more Sikhs in my cabinet than Modi does,” Trudeau joked that year. For Sikh Canadians, the humour was well received.
His overtures to the community early in his first term saw him even make a formal apology in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru incident.
However, the community’s optimism in 2016 would dissipate quickly in 2018, when Trudeau would make his now infamous trip to India.
The errors started before even getting to Delhi.
Trudeau and his camp did not consult or meet with Sikh advocacy groups, including the World Sikh Organization of Canada, before visiting - contrary to previous governments, including Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in 2012. Instead, the Liberals apparently relied on some senior Sikh MPs to lead and organize the doomed mission.
According to reports, Canadian decision-makers were also warned around the same time by intelligence agencies about Indian foreign interference in Canada targeting the Sikh community. However, the Trudeau government looked the other way in the hopes of building more substantial trade and political ties with India.
As a result, Trudeau was woefully unprepared for the communication traps laid by India regarding Sikhs. While most of the world remembers the wardrobe choices, it was his total capitulation on false Indian talking points regarding Sikh advocacy that the Sikh community remembers the most.
Much of the digital Anti-Sikh hate and rhetoric we see today first took root during that trip. No Sikh MP challenged it then, supposedly muzzled by the party. It was left to the community to play defence and counter the flood of baseless Indian narratives being pushed in Canada, from media to politics.
Trudeau disappointed the community when he went on to sign the Framework for Cooperation on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism between Canada and India during that trip. Previous governments in Canada had balked at the thought of signing similar agreements with India due to the latter's poor human rights record and oppressive targeting of minorities, such as the Sikhs, including its long history of extrajudicial murder, police torture, and shoddy investigations. To this day, Sikh groups continue to call on the Canadian government to cancel the framework for the threat it presents to Sikhs both inside and outside of India.
2018 also saw the publication of the Public Report on the Terrorism Threat to Canada, which randomly listed, for the first time, Sikhs as an internal terrorist threat to Canada. Sikh groups immediately denounced it for the arbitrary inclusion of the community. When challenged over months to produce evidence or reasoning for including Sikhs, the government eventually amended the report and removed any such reference to the community.
2018 and 2019 changed the relationship between the Trudeau government and Sikhs, increasing friction on other policy issues. For example, the Sikh community’s repeated calls, since 2016, for an expedited program to bring Afghan Sikhs and Hindus, via private sponsorship, to Canada - somewhat similar to special programs that would eventually be quickly set up for refugees from Ukraine in 2022 - was a frustrating ordeal for many different reasons.
Although Trudeau did speak up for the Farmers’ Protest in 2020, calling on India to ensure the right to peaceful protest at a time when it was attacking farmers with water cannons, tear gas, and police brutality. This move was welcomed and celebrated by the farmers demonstrating outside Delhi and the Sikhs supporting their cause from Canada.
That wouldn't be the last time Trudeau publicly called out India on the world stage.
On September 18, 2023, Trudeau stood up in Parliament and made a statement that shook the globe and placed him forever into Sikh history. Sikhs have understood and fought against Indian foreign interference and transnational repression in the diaspora for decades. But on that day, Trudeau did something that had never really been done before - he put India’s violent campaign against Sikhs on the public record, from the floor of Parliament, for the world to hear.
Standing up and sharing credible intelligence concerning India’s role in the assassination of Sikh Canadian activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil was not an easy thing to do. The weight of that is immense. Trudeau will always have the respect of not just Sikh Canadians but Sikhs across the world for taking that stand and continuing to stick by it as India amped up its disinfo networks to undermine him and Canada.
This all also connects further to ongoing RCMP investigations into the Indian Intelligence-Criminal Gangs nexus used to commit arsons, homicides, and extortions in Canada, as well as the ongoing Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Ottawa looking at how India is targeting Canada and Canadians.
More recently, however, there’s an ongoing issue concerning international students, many of whom hail from Punjabi and Sikh backgrounds. On the one hand, Trudeau’s liberal immigration policies have meant many more Sikhs have entered Canada with the hopes of calling this place home, bolstering an already influential diaspora community. On the other hand, these students were given very little support upon their arrival, and abrupt government policy changes, hampering their chances of becoming permanent residents at a significant personal cost, have left many of these youth in a desperate situation. How Trudeau will be judged on this file is yet to be determined.
There are missed opportunities, too, like the failure to pass a Sikh Genocide motion, which seems less likely now, as the Liberals embark on a leadership race during a prorogued parliament in the leadup to a 2025 general election that can come as early as this spring. However, is it fair to get caught up on what did not transpire, for a whole host of reasons, when we also have had the Trudeau government make large investments in projects like the permanent Sikh gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum?
So, I’ll ask the question I began with again - how should Sikhs remember Trudeau?
It may depend on how well you can adjust for recency bias. Or maybe we should focus on how he stood up with courage against a spiteful and shameless foe when it mattered the most. Recent or not.
Perhaps the beating he took during the trip to India in 2018 was necessary for him to grasp the need of the moment in 2023 when he confronted India on transnational repression.
His history with Sikhs is a complicated one. His path to understanding or defending the Sikh community was not linear. However, for all his faults, we cannot forget what he did for the community when he got it right.
Jaskaran Sandhu hails from Brampton, Canada, and is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a Strategist at the public affairs and relations agency State Strategy and a lawyer. Jaskaran also previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_
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