After a nine-year tenure, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation following a collapse in support. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has dominated the polls for months, driven by his commitment to “commonsense” economic reforms, and he’s widely expected to become Canada’s next head of government after the next federal election. In American terms, he’s more Ron DeSantis than Donald Trump, best demonstrated in a viral interview where he calmly chomps on an apple as he destroys a hostile reporter.

Canadian politics aren’t exactly known for their excitement, but the Trudeau years sure created some drama. After a century of friendship, a progressive Canada has diverged from the U.S. both economically and culturally. This all seems alien to most Americans.

Back in his stand-up comedy days, Jon Stewart related a conversation with a Canadian fan. “What do Americans really think about Canada?” a woman asked. Stewart replied, “We don’t.” And for the past century, there wasn’t much need to.

When Americans considered their northern neighbor, they saw a slightly more British and polite version of ourselves. As a child, my grandparents would drive me from their home in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., to spend a day in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Sure, the traffic signs looked odd and the currency was more colorful, but the cities looked about the same on both sides of the International Bridge.

That perspective is no longer the reality thanks to Trudeau’s increasing antagonism toward both America and her ideals. His primary victim, of course, was Canada herself.

Let’s start with economics. Between 2009 and 2019, America’s GDP grew by 27%, while Canada’s expanded by 25%. Par for the course. Since then, however, America’s economy has grown by 11%, while Canada’s has only grown by 6%. And over the course of Trudeau’s tenure, his country’s national debt increased about 180%.

According to the IMF, Canada’s per capita income has fallen to about 70% of America’s, compared to 80% just five years ago. That makes Canada now the economic equivalent of Alabama, the fourth-poorest state in the union. Meanwhile, the Great White North’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.8%, a figure that has steadily grown over the past 18 months. For the U.S., it’s just 4.2%.

This economic divergence is all the more startling, given the $2 billion in trade that crosses our common border daily, along with 400,000 people, and that 90% of all Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. A citizen’s financial life today is very different depending on which side of the International Bridge they live. (And if you’re going to cross it, a gallon of gas is about a dollar cheaper in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.)

The cultural divergence is hard to measure but even harder not to notice. The reign of Justin dramatically shifted Canada to the left, just as his father Pierre’s did a generation earlier.

Trudeau fils harshly punished dissent against Canada’s restrictive COVID-19 mandates, jailing pastors and even freezing the bank accounts of its critics. He also tried to criminalize any “communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

In 2021, Trudeau’s Liberal government pushed a scandalous claim that a mass grave of 215 children was discovered beside a religious residential school for First Nations students. The result was a mob-fueled pogrom in which 112 Canadian churches were vandalized or burned down. Years after the fact, no evidence has been found of the supposed graves, yet Trudeau hasn’t backed down from the allegation.

Canada also has distanced itself from American foreign policy, embracing a more passive role with both China and Israel. It did align more or less with Biden’s environmental agenda, soft-on-crime policies, passion for gun control and ethical failures. But those aren’t selling with voters in either country.

President-elect Trump responded to Trudeau’s hostility with threats, which sounded less like intended outcomes than opening offers for negotiation. Trump proposed a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods and repeatedly joked about the Great White North becoming our 51st state. But this is the same Trump who, in his first term, worked closely with Canada and Mexico to replace NAFTA with the USMCA, an agreement that benefitted all three nations.

As Trudeau stumbled off the stage, Poilievre promised to respond to any tariffs by fighting “fire with fire,” while at the same time pushing to increase Canadian exports to the U.S. Both nations will benefit from constructive economic engagement, a fact the two new leaders will be eager to accept.

Trump and Poilievre also agree on stronger border controls to fight illegal immigration, drug trafficking and terrorism. While Trump shouts “America first,” Poilievre responds with “Canada first.”

A robust military is also promised by both leaders, where the need for close collaboration is obvious. Gone are the days of a military focused more on gender inclusivity than readiness, especially given the threats posed by China and Russia.

No doubt Trump will be a challenging personality for Poilievre to handle, but the expected Canadian PM is far more politically aligned with the president-elect than Trudeau could ever hope to be. Both nations will pursue their aims with a cautious pragmatism, finding common ground in policy while clashing in personal temperament.

A resurgent Canada will even lead to beneficial competition between the two nations. Coming from Alberta, the Texas of the north, Poilievre will likely prioritize drilling for oil and increased mining, further motivating the U.S. to do likewise. He’s also expected to greenlight energy projects to strengthen Canada’s position as a reliable energy partner for its southern neighbor.

Right now, the big question is when will a new prime minister take office? Trudeau remains a caretaker prime minister but has prorogued Parliament until March. Canadian law requires a new election by October, but the Liberal Party first needs to choose a leader. Until Poilievre actually assumes the high office, expect a lot more “51st state” memes from Team Trump.

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On Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described in parliament what he called credible allegations that India was connected to Nijjar’s assassination in British Columbia state in June.

The Indian government dismissed the allegations as “absurd” and asked Canada instead to crack down on anti-India groups operating in its territory.

The row centers around the Sikh independence movement, commonly known as the Khalistan movement. India accuses Canada of sheltering Khalistani activists.

Here’s all you need to know:

What triggered the tensions?

Najjar, 45, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple on June 18 in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population, three years after India had designated him as a “terrorist”.

Nijjar supported the demand for a Sikh homeland in India’s northern state of Punjab, the birthplace of the Sikh religion, which borders Pakistan. He was reportedly organizing an unofficial referendum in India for an independent Sikh nation at the time of this death.

Trudeau on Monday said any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen was “an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”.

On Tuesday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said allegations of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada are “absurd and motivated”.

It said the “unsubstantiated allegations” sought to shift focus away from “Khalistani terrorists and extremists who have been provided shelter in Canada”.

Indian authorities announced a cash reward last year for information leading to Nijjar’s arrest, accusing him of involvement in an alleged attack on a Hindu priest in India.

A sign outside a Sikh temple after Nijjar’s killing in Surrey, British Columbia [File: Chris Helgren/Reuters]

Trudeau said he brought up Nijjar’s killing with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in New Delhi last week. He said he told Modi that any Indian government involvement would be unacceptable and that he asked for cooperation in the investigation.

“In the strongest possible terms, I continue to urge the government of India to cooperate with Canada to get to the bottom of this matter,” he said.

How did India respond?

The MEA dismissed the accusation that India was linked to Nijjar’s killing.

“Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” a ministry statement said.

On Tuesday, the foreign ministry said it had given a senior Canadian diplomat five days to leave the country, without disclosing his name or rank.

“The decision reflects the government of India’s growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities,” it said.

The ministry had summoned Cameron MacKay, Canada’s high commissioner in New Delhi, to notify him of the move, it added.

Earlier, New Delhi urged Ottawa to take action against anti-Indian groups in Canada.

“Allegations of the government of India’s involvement in any act of violence in Canada are absurd and motivated,” it said, adding that similar accusations made by Trudeau to Modi had been “completely rejected”.

Who was Hardeep Singh Nijjar?

Here is what is known about Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the man at the center of the India-Canada row.

Najjar was born in 1977 in Jalandhar district in India’s northern state of Punjab and moved to Canada in 1997, where he worked as a plumber, according to the Khalistan Extremism Monitor of the New Delhi-based independent Institute for Conflict Management.

He was initially associated with the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) Sikh separatist group, according to India’s counter-terrorist, National Investigation Agency. New Delhi has listed BKI as a “terrorist organization” and says it is funded by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency, a charge Islamabad denies.

Nijjar later became chief of the Khalistan Tiger Force (KTF) group and was “actively involved in operationalizing, networking, training and financing” its members, according to a 2020 Indian government statement.

New Delhi officially categorized him as a “terrorist” in the same statement, saying he was involved in “exhorting seditionary and insurrectionary imputations” and “attempting to create disharmony among different communities” in the country.

For supporters demanding a so-called independent Sikh state of Khalistan, Nijjar was a prominent leader and a strong voice for the cause.

He was elected head of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurudwara, a Sikh place of worship, in Surrey, the Vancouver suburb where he lived. He held that position at the time of his death.

Nijjar was shot dead outside the same gurudwara on the evening of June 18.

Hundreds of people protested outside the Indian consulate in Vancouver after his murder, alleging foreign hands were involved in his death, local media reported at the time.

What is the Sikh separatist movement?

Sikhism is a minority religion originating in northern India that traces its roots back to the 15th century and drew influences from both Hinduism and Islam.

Its adherents make up less than two percent of India’s 1.4 billion people but Sikhs are nearly 60 percent of the population in the northern state of Punjab, the faith’s heartland.

India won its independence in 1947 but immediately suffered through the blood-soaked Partition that divided the former British colony along religious lines.

Muslims fled to the newly formed nation of Pakistan while Hindus and Sikhs fled to India in the ensuing violence, which killed at least one million people.

The historical region of Punjab was split between the two countries and was wracked by some of the worst violence of Partition.

Since then, some Sikhs have called for the creation of “Khalistan”, a separate sovereign nation and “land of the pure” carved out of Punjab and governed by the faith’s precepts.

Those calls grew louder in subsequent decades as Punjab became one of the wealthiest states in India, owing to an agricultural revolution that dramatically lifted farm yields.

The separatist movement began as an armed rebellion in the late 1980s among Sikhs demanding a separate homeland. The violent movement lasted more than a decade and was suppressed by an Indian government crackdown in which thousands of people were killed, including prominent Sikh leaders.

Hundreds of Sikh youths were also killed in police operations, many of which were later proven in courts to have been staged, according to rights groups.

In 1984, Indian forces stormed the Golden Temple, Sikhism’s holiest shrine, in Amritsar to flush out separatists who had taken refuge there. The operation killed about 400 people, according to official figures, but Sikh groups say thousands were killed.

The dead included Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, whom the Indian government accused of leading the armed rebellion.

On October 31, 1984, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who had ordered the raid on the temple, was assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards.

Her death triggered a series of anti-Sikh riots, in which Hindu mobs went from house to house across northern India, particularly New Delhi, pulling Sikhs from their homes, hacking many to death and burning others alive.

Canadian-based Sikh extremists were also accused of carrying out the 1985 bombing of an Air India flight, killing 329 people, for the Khalistan cause.

Is the movement still active?

There is no active rebellion in Punjab today, but the Khalistan movement still has some supporters in the state, as well as in the sizable Sikh diaspora overseas.

The Indian government has warned repeatedly over the years that Sikh separatists were trying to make a comeback. Modi’s government has also intensified the pursuit of Sikh separatists and arrested dozens of leaders from various outfits allegedly linked to the movement.

But Hartosh Bal, executive editor of The Caravan magazine in India, told Al Jazeera the Sikh separatist movement has been non-existent for decades.

“The Khalistan movement has a long history and during the 1980s, there was a violent military movement on Indian soil. But ever since – at least in India, in the state of Punjab, where the Sikhs are the majority – the Khalistan movement has been virtually non-existent, enjoys no political support and goes up and down depending on the attention the Indian government pays to it,” Bal said.

“This attention has gone up considerably since the Modi government came to power in 2014. It does have strong roots both in Canada and the UK, where things like referendums are held, but given that the vast majority of Sikhs are on Indian soil and are not participants in this referendum, these could have ideally been easily ignored.

“But the Modi government has consistently hyped up the Khalistani threat to India. I think, again, because it suits them domestically to talk about security threats to the Indian nation, rather than the actual measure of threat on the ground from the movement.”

How strong is the movement outside India?

India has been asking countries such as Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom to take legal action against Sikh activists. It has particularly raised these concerns with Canada, where Sikhs make up nearly 2 percent of the country’s population.

Earlier this year, Sikh protesters pulled down the Indian flag at the country’s high commission in London and smashed the building’s window in a show of anger against the move to arrest Amritpal Singh, a 30-year-old separatist leader who had revived calls for Khalistan and stirred fears of violence in Punjab.

Protesters also smashed windows at the Indian consulate in San Francisco and skirmished with embassy workers.

The MEA denounced the incidents and summoned the UK’s deputy high commissioner in New Delhi to lodge a protest against what it called the breach of security at the embassy in London.

The Indian government also accused Khalistan supporters in Canada of vandalizing Hindu temples with “anti-India” graffiti and of attacking the offices of the Indian High Commission in Ottawa during a protest in March.

Last year, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, a Sikh separatist leader and head of the Khalistan Commando Force, was shot dead in Pakistan.

The post Who was Hardeep Singh Nijjar whose killing triggered India-Canada tensions? appeared first on News Agency nabakhabar.

A leaflet handed out by the Ottawa Police Service on Thursday, and shared by Canadian journalists on social media, told members of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” occupation that they “will face severe penalties under provincial and federal legislation”.

That could include arrest and criminal charges, seizure or removal of their vehicles, and a suspension of their driver’s licenses, the leaflet states.

The apparent reinforcements added to an already heavy security presence in the central area, but there was no immediate sign of a move to clear the protesters.

Approximately 400 vehicles are still involved in what Ottawa residents and political leaders have described as an “occupation” and “siege” of the city’s downtown core.

“We are going to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space. We are going to remove this unlawful protest. We will return our city to a state of normalcy,” Steve Bell, interim chief of the Ottawa Police Service, said in a statement on Wednesday evening.

A large group of Canadian truckers and their supporters descended on Parliament Hill late last month to protest a mandatory vaccination requirement at the Canada-US border. Hundreds have remained in Ottawa, demanding an end to all COVID-19 curbs in the country. Others have called for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to be removed from office.

Blockades at key points along the US-Canada border also were erected in support of the central protest in Ottawa, disrupting traffic and commercial trade between the two countries, but those were dismantled over the past several days.

Earlier this week, Trudeau invoked an emergency measure for the first time in the country’s history to give his federal government sweeping powers to disperse the blockades and protests and provide support for law enforcement agencies.

“It’s high time that these illegal and dangerous activities stop,” Trudeau said on Thursday morning in the House of Commons, where lawmakers were debating the use of the Emergencies Act. The order needs to be approved in parliament to remain in place.

“They are a threat to our economy and our relationship with trading partners,” he said. “They are a threat to public safety.”

Jagmeet Singh, leader of the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP), has criticised Trudeau for a “lack of leadership” during the protests but said the NDP would support the Emergencies Act invocation – which means it will be approved.

“It should have never come to this,” Singh said in parliament on Thursday. “We will withdraw our support if at any point we feel these powers are being misused.”

Meanwhile, Ottawa protest organisers – among them several far-right activists – have remained defiant despite the increased police presence and the use of the Emergencies Act.

Tamara Lich, a prominent fundraiser for and organiser of the convoy, said in a video posted by CTV News late on Wednesday: “I’m ready, I’m not afraid, and we’re going hold the line.”

“I’m prepared sit on my a** and watch them hit me with pepper spray,” said another one of the leaders, Pat King, who is known for espousing hateful, white supremacist views online.

Authorities have raised concerns about the potential for violence, as far-right groups are involved in the occupation.

The federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have sent officers to Ottawa, and public broadcaster Radio-Canada reported on Thursday that the province of Quebec was preparing to provide police.

This week, the RCMP arrested 13 people at a border blockade in the western province of Alberta after a large cache of weapons was seized. Four people also were charged with conspiracy to commit murder after police said the group had “a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade”.

On Thursday, a poll of 1,518 Canadians released by Maru Public Opinion found that 67 percent believed it is time to clear out the protesters, while 82 percent said there is no way the rally should have gone on for as long as it has.

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