Ottawa:
Taking a jibe at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his allegations on India for its involvement in the alleged killing of the Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, Canada’s opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he should come out clean with all the facts in order to make judgements.
In a media address on Tuesday, Mr Poilievre said, “I think the prime minister needs to come clean with all the facts. We need to know all the evidence possible so that Canadians can make judgments on that.
Mr Poilievre’s remarks came in response to a media query that asked what more should be done as an Indian diplomat was expelled by Canada.
“The prime minister hasn’t provided any facts. He provided a statement. And I will just emphasize that he didn’t tell me any more in private than he told Canadians in public. So we want to see more information,” Mr Poilievre said.
He stated that the allegations could be found untrue or incredible if more information is not provided.
“We need to have the evidence that drew that allowed the prime minister to come to the conclusions he made yesterday,” he said.
“I would have to have more evidence to make a judgment on that. I do find it interesting that he knew about vast foreign interference by Beijing for many years, at the same time as Beijing had kept two Canadian citizens hostage. And he said nothing. And he did nothing. Just very interesting that that was the approach he took in that case,” he added.
A day ago, Mr Trudeau accused the Indian government of the fatal shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. He claimed that his country’s national security officials had reasons to believe that “agents of the Indian government” carried out the killing of the Canadian citizen, who also served as the president of Surrey’s Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara.
Najjar, who was wanted in India, was gunned down outside a Gurdwara, in a parking area in Canada’s Surrey, British Columbia on June 18.
Hailing from Bharsinghpur village in Punjab’s Jalandhar, Nijjar was based in Surrey and had been declared “absconder” by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
India has, however, rejected the allegations by Canadian PM Trudeau regarding the government’s involvement in the fatal shooting of Nijjar. In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) termed the allegations ‘absurd ‘and ‘motivated’.
“We have seen and reject the statement of the Canadian Prime Minister in their Parliament, as also the statement by their Foreign Minister,” said the MEA in an official statement.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)