Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he is perplexed, the heart broken by the tensions of Canada-Ind

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a conference in India last month that he did not fully understand why Canada had such a bad relationship with India and suggested that the Liberal party has infiltrated Sikh activists who wish to discover a separate state from India.

Frankly, I had a broken heart to look at the regular deterioration of this relationship under my successor. I don't think I completely understand why, said Harper in his remarks at a conference on February 28 in New Delhi called the NXT Conclave.

His comment was published online on YouTube.

The links between Ottawa and New Delhi have been in a deep frost since the fall of 2023, when the primary minister Justin Trudeau said that his government had credible allegations connecting Indian government agents to the murder of a Sikh activist near Vancouver.

A year later, Ottawa expelled six Indian diplomats after the RCMP alleged that New Delhi was behind generalized acts of murder, extortion and coercion across Canada.

New Delhi is accused of having played a role in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian activist who called for the creation of an independent Sikh State called Khalistan.

Harper alluded to the criminal investigations in progress briefly in his remarks, saying that I am certainly not able to assess the accusations.

New Delhi says that the Khalistan movement threatens the national security of the India. Ottawa has long declared that he maintains the territorial integrity India but would not suppress freedom of expression in Canada.

The question had become irritating during the Trudeaus time in the government, as a series of separation referendums and parade tanks representing violence received little traditional media attention in Canada, but was the subject of emotional reports in India.

Trudeau has also angry Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he expressed his concern about the repression of Modi governments against farmers' demonstrations in India who included a large number of Sikhs.

Harper argued that his government has adopted a different approach to a marginal minority that supports the khalistan and which is harmful to Canada's relations with India. He said his government made the hypothesis that most Canadians are not interested in the secession movement.

It is time that all political parties and politicians in Canada have made the construction of these links from people to the person, who represent the vast majority of our peoples, the priority and not the priority of establishing relations with the Khalistanis, said Harper.

I will give the government of Prime Minister Modi a large credit for not having disrupted these links of people to the population given the current freshness between governments.

In Canada, you have the right to be Khalistani. This is a democratic opinion, said Harper. But that should not infiltrate our party in power, and that should not inhibit the good people's good relations between India and Canada.

Modi is known to be close to Harper, who chairs the International Democratic Union, a global coalition of conservative parties which included the party of Modis Bharatiya Janata.

In 2019, Harper visited Modi in India and on Twitter, the platform now known as X, called Modi a friend and the most important leader in India since independence that had shaped each conversation on geopolitics and the world economy.

In January, the national survey on foreign interference qualified India the second most active country engaged in electoral foreign interference in Canada, in particular the question of the Khalistan.

India concentrates its activities of foreign interference on the Indo-Canadian community and on important non-indo-Canadians to achieve its objectives, the survey reported.

An intelligence corpus indicates that proxy agents can have and continue to be, illegal financial support for various Canadian politicians in order to guarantee the election of pro-Indian candidates or to gain an influence on the candidates who arise, the investigation concluded, adding that some of these candidates may not be aware of the India influence.

The Canadian press contacted Harper through his consulting company to comment but has not yet received an answer.

In his comments at the conference, Harper also warned that the World Order collapses and said that the intermediate powers like India and Canada should collaborate more on critical minerals and intelligence, instead of encouraging a world of hard influence spheres.

The emerging world is not a desirable situation for humanity. In fact, this state of affairs is disturbing the rivalries of the war period before the world I, and history tells us where it led, he said.

God helps us then that we are entering a new period with his combination of advanced weapons and computer power.

Harper said the prices offered in Canada are unjustified, and that it is disturbed by the apparently agnostic assets of democratic nations, citing its free attacks against countries like Canada and Denmark while feeling in Russia and Turkey.