How Canada’s US complex is straining its ties with India

I covered Canada for almost 15 years as a foreign correspondent. Canadians have a complex about their neighbour, the United States. They are unable to get over this complex, that they are an inferior cousin of their next-door superpower, although the superior cousin offers the former protection and security through treaties and alliances.

The prosperity of both the US and Canada is inextricably tied to their mutual cooperation and deep economic collaboration. Yet, it constantly troubles the Canadians that the entire world treats the US and Canada differently. They want to be equals, which they are not. It is similar to the inferiority complex that some South Asian neighbours have about a mightier, richer India with global influence.

In the current spat over the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, this is an important psychological input that the India has not taken into account in its dealings with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his fellow Liberal politicians. It has rankled many Canadians since the start of the Nijjar episode, that India has treated the US allegations about an alleged murder plot against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun quite differently from the killing outside the Surrey gurdwara. It is counter-productive to impress upon Ottawa that the US has supplied evidence to India while Canada has not.

This inferiority complex about the US became apparent from the moment I walked into Canada’s embassy in the US to get my work visa for Ottawa, while I was a resident in Washington. The consular official told me that my work visa for Canada would be co-terminus with my US media visa. Weird, I thought.

The second time I applied for a Canadian visa, another official told me — out of the blue — that Canada is a sovereign country and that the duration of my US visa would have no bearing on Canada. I was granted a five-year work visa, much longer than the validity of my US media visa. Looking back, the two incidents are indicative of how Ottawa has tied itself up in knots over its stand on the Nijjar killing and the spiralling descent in bilateral relations.

I have met numerous people across Canada — from British Columbia on the Pacific coast to Newfoundland on the Atlantic coast — who want to live in the US. It is a safe assumption that for a huge number of Canadians, the other side of the American border is the promised land. However, unlike Mexicans, who flood the US border or sneak across it, Canadians simply don’t behave in the same way because they are far richer. The compulsions which persuade Mexicans to risk their lives simply don’t exist in Canada. Yet, the desire remains and is all-pervasive, which adds to the Canadian complex about the US.

Even Canadians who ought to know better do not think better. A Canadian diplomat in Washington once told me that the US had permitted only a dozen Canadian consulates to open in the US, compared to 50 Mexican consulates. To suggest that the Americans treat Mexico better than Canada is the height of this complex.

It does not help that for Indian students, the US remains the first choice for higher studies, barring very few universities of excellence, like McGill in Montreal. Thousands of H1-B visa-holders have become permanent residents of Canada only to abandon it and move to the US once they get their green cards. Canada’s immigration planners feel cheated when these qualified Indians migrate, because Canada does has a population shortage. Canada obviously doesn’t like it when potential immigrants use it only as a stop-gap until they can permanently move across to the border.

Walking along the beautiful riverfront of Windsor, Ontario, I have watched Canadian citizens — including my European relatives who have lived in Windsor for half a century — look wistfully at the seedy areas across the Detroit river with regret writ large on their faces. Former US President Donald Trump recently disparaged Detroit as a ‘Third World’ city, but that is where my Euro-Canadian relatives would rather be, instead of the much better-off Windsor.

Indians are now making a mistake in believing they are being singled out for whining over Nijjar’s killing. When Canada lost its election bid to the UN Security Council in 2020, it could not believe that it had been spurned by the international community, for the second time in a row. India won that election for the Asian seat.

Trudeau does not realise that being sanctimonious does not pay. His ongoing quarrel with New Delhi is the most recent example. In 2011, Canada picked a fight with the UAE, when the Emiratis closed a Canadian military base, imposed visa restrictions on Canadian passport-holders and even refused to allow a plane carrying the Canadian Defence Minister to land in the UAE. Seven years later, Canada made peace with the UAE by granting more flying rights to Emirati flag carriers.

Canada’s lobby in India is made up of people whose ambition is to emigrate to that country at the first opportunity. The Indian lobby in Canada has been ineffective. Otherwise, better sense may have prevailed and stopped the ongoing downward spiral in relations.

The India-US nuclear deal would not have come about if it had not been for an influential Indian lobby in the US. Vice-versa, the US lobby in India helped transform the bilateral defence relationship. Similarly, the Israel lobby in India and the American-Jewish lobby have ensured that Israel-India relations have galloped forward in the last three decades.

The Nijjar episode has shown that few Indians are willing to stand up for Canada and vice-versa. As their two defeats at the UN demonstrated, shared values alone will not guarantee good relations. Canadians must realise that this is true with India too.