The News Rundown

CSIS flags extremist Khalistani activists as national security threat

Over the past several years Canada has gotten into the bad habit of importing the world's problems, and with tensions heating up around the world, it's important to note what our federal government has done to our country on our behalf. Now we're finding out that Canada is becoming a hotbed for extremism and even possibly terrorism.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is warning that a small but militant group of Sikhs are using the country as a base for promoting, fundraising and planning violence in India in support of an independent homeland in Punjab. In its annual report to Parliament in June, CSIS said that these homegrown extremists represent only a small group among Sikhs who are otherwise pursuing non-violent advocacy for a state they call Khalistan, but nevertheless it is alarming that such a threat has been building within Canada.
This CSIS report comes just a day after Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to reinstate their high commissioners and are eyeing renewed visa services to each other's citizens and businesses.
The Khalistani movement has been calling for an independent Sikh homeland in northern India called Khalistan, which Modi's government has vigorously opposed and denounced as a national security threat.
Andrew Kirsch, a security consultant and former intelligence officer with CSIS, said the spy agency is signalling that the threat from Khalistan extremists is real and should be taken seriously.
He said: “If they’re highlighting it, it means it’s become a priority item, that the threat is serious and they want to raise awareness about it. Clearly, this stuff is going on, and they want the public to know about it.”
These annual reports are important because they offer insight into how the spy agency is spending time and resources, he said.
Kirsch said: “Unfortunately, we can’t tell people what information that threat is based on. But our intelligence service is trained to wade through disinformation. I have a high degree of confidence in their analysis.”
The CSIS report says politically motivated violent extremism has been an element of the Khalistani movement in Canada since the 1980s. Sikh activists, however, argue India has used these perceived threats to target peaceful advocacy for Khalistan.
Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, which advocates on behalf of this country’s nearly one million Sikhs, says his group has reached out to CSIS over concerns about the language in the report. He says despite alarms raised by India, there’s no evidence Khalistani extremists pose a threat to Canada, and the report acknowledges there were no attacks in Canada related to Sikh extremism in 2024.
“The problem is India sees any activism for Khalistan as extremist, and it has targeted that,” says Singh.
Canada is attempting to rebuild relations with India, which suffered a major rupture in September, 2023, when then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau accused New Delhi of a role in the killing of Canadian Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent advocate for Khalistan. India has denied the allegation.
Nijjar, who was designated a terrorist by India, was gunned down in the parking lot of a gurdwara in Surrey, B.C., in June, 2023. Four Indian nationals are facing charges in connection with the killing. Mr. Trudeau said Canada had credible allegations the murder was carried out by agents of India. New Delhi has refused to acknowledge any role in foreign interference or transnational oppression of Sikhs in Canada.
Also this week, newly released court documents have detailed how a senior Indian intelligence officer, Vikash Yadak, allegedly recruited a businessman to assassinate a Canadian pro-Khalistan activist.
The unsealed files said Nikhil Gupta, an Indian national suspected of drugs and weapons trafficking, had admitted he was asked at a meeting in New Delhi to conduct the killing. The target was Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer with Canadian and U.S. citizenship who heads Sikhs For Justice, a New York-based group that advocates for Khalistan.
Pannun, similar to Nijjar, was declared a terrorist by India in 2020, and the US believes India to be behind the attempted murder. Yadak allegedly told Gupta if he carried out the assassination, the charges for his crimes in India would be forgiven.
Balpreet Singh says the CSIS report may signal a shift in policy from Ottawa. He suggested it may be designed to appease New Delhi as Canada seeks to repair relations, and multiple Sikh organizations protested Prime Minister Mark Carney’s decision to invite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 summit in Alberta earlier this month.
Regardless, CSIS still continues to say that India, along with Russia, China and Iran, are the biggest foreign interference threats to Canadian democracy.
Whether or not CSIS's report was politically motivated by the change in Liberal leadership, or if it was politically motivated as a gesture of goodwill towards India, it's hard to say for sure. But the fact remains that Canada's Khalistani problems are not going away. While foreign states' may be to blame for foreign interference, Canada has to take its share of the blame for turning a blind eye to the extremism that the government let into the country and then fostered through inaction.
Supplementals:

Undocumented students and undocumented Canadians are a topic that not many people want to talk about, but they exist in Canada.
Last month CBC Edmonton ran a story about the Edmonton public school board wanting to guarantee undocumented children a right to attend school.
This week Global Edmonton profiled a family where one child aged 13 is going to school undocumented.
She then passes on what she learnt to 3 younger siblings, also undocumented, who haven’t been able to go to school for 2 years since they were “kicked out” when officials realized they were undocumented.
The Zapata family with 4 children came to Canada “a few years ago” from Mexico and applied for refugee status.
All four children attended while the application was being processed but when it was denied 3 of the 4 children were removed from the school system.
The family has stayed in Canada without documentation because they feel it is unsafe to go back to Mexico.
A briefing note prepared for former Immigration Minister Marc Miller estimates that there are as many as 500,000 people living undocumented in Canada.
The term undocumented migrant, undocumented Canadian, and asylum seeker are all short form for illegal. These people need to be called what they are: illegal immigrants or illegal aliens.
Zapata and her family, along with a coalition of non-profit advocacy groups, want Alberta to follow in Ontario’s footsteps. Ontario is the only province that legally requires students to enrol undocumented children.
But it’s not just Zapata and her family.
Another family, the Rodriguez family, came to Canada in 2019, applied for refugee status, and were denied. They’re also from Mexico.
Dayana Rodriguez, the eldest Rodriguez child, attended school until 2022 but stopped after losing residency status.
When the family applied she dropped out and is now working to support the family.
The Rodriguez family also had a new arrival 5 years ago who was born in Canada and likely won’t face the same problems.
Samantha Vaux, a social worker with an Edmonton-based group that works with undocumented families, said education is one aspect of life barred to “undocumented people” but public healthcare also is and jobs are not protected by labour laws.
Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides hasn’t said whether the province will change the law but noted that foreign children are eligible for a “funded education”. in the province.
With the stories of these two undocumented families out of the way let’s unpack the issue.
First, through the advocacy and the news stories we’ve learned that there are substantially more undocumented people living in Canada than most Canadians think.
Undocumented immigrants are an issue that most people associate with the US.
500,000 is not a small number and we have to question a lot of things.
Are these people committing crimes? Are they working and taking jobs Canadians could take? Is school just the tip of the iceberg?
Secondly, is it right that the media gets a free pass to talk to and identify these families without facing repercussions?
That goes into the third, should these people (as family units) be removed from Canada?
Much hysteria has ensued about the ICE raids in the United States and whether or not that was justified.
Canada uses a points system for bringing in legal immigrants. That system has been diluted under the Trudeau administration. It needs to be firmed up.
With that, maybe we need to consider a points system as to whether or not certain people should be allowed to stay?
Despite any discussions on merit we must remember that these people came to Canada to claim refugee status and were denied.
This is a refugee system that has worked for decades and as recently as 2015 brought in tens of thousands from the Middle East.
Canada’s refugee system is not broken and has been hailed as very successful.
If people are abusing it they need to be dealt with by either finding an appropriate and legal track into Canada or by being removed.
It is as simple as that.
This needs to be done to prevent the further erosion of our immigration system and save whatever trust is left in the system.
Supplementals:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-public-school-board-wants-alberta-to-guarantee-undocumented-children-a-right-to-attend-school-1.7545623

Elections BC files response to Surrey election court challenge

There has been news in the BC Conservative challenge of the contentious election night battle in Surrey-Guildford, the closest election result in October 2024 that saw the BC NDP narrowly squeak by with a slim majority of 47-44-2.
Honveer Singh Randhawa, who lost Surrey-Guildford by 22 votes to New Democrat Garry Begg following a judicial recount, filed a petition at the New Westminster Supreme Court on Jan. 13 asking the Supreme Court of British Columbia to declare Begg's election invalid under Section 150 of the Election Act.
One clause under that section allows for an election to be "declared invalid because it was not conducted in accordance with this Act or a regulation under this Act." Randhawa has taken aim specifically at 22 mail-in ballots associated with a care facility in Surrey.
The response from Elections BC filed on June 19 in the BC Supreme Court noted that its staff had noted that the same email and phone number was used to request the 22 mail-in packets. The staff at Elections BC approved the request in light of the recent changes to the Election Act that allowed for an individual to help "more than one voter with a mail-in voting package provided the individual was appointed as an election official using the powers in s. 77(6)."
The 22 mail-in ballots were sent to the home. Elections BC said: "However, the Team failed to follow up with the District Electoral Officer, Ms. Malhi, to confirm that an individual at (the facility) was appointed as an election official."
The petition noted that all 22 certification envelopes for the mail-in ballots were signed, but three of them were not counted as they did not "meet certain requirements for counting." The envelopes did not identify anyone who had assisted the voters.
Randhawa's lawyer, Sunny Uppal, issued a press release Tuesday (June 24) in response: "In their response materials, Elections BC acknowledges that they sent mail-in ballots to a mental health facility without ensuring that an election official was present, as required by the Election Act. That this constitutes a serious irregularity in which one individual ordered 22 mail-in ballots on behalf of 22 vulnerable individuals without any checks and balances being in place to ensure those individuals were not being used as a tool for election fraud."
Part of Randhawa's case centres on "voter participation information" he had sought from Elections BC. Elections BC's filing outlined the type of reports candidates could download during the election. Starting three days before advanced voting, candidates could download voter participation information that included "the voter's unique identifier number (called the voter number), electoral district and voting area. In addition, if the voter updated their registration information or registered to vote in conjunction with voting, the voter's name and/or address was also included." This information was available to download in a spreadsheet until 8:30 p.m. on election day, ostensibly to help campaigns on which people had already voted, to assist in get-out-the-vote efforts.
After the election, on Oct. 29, Randhawa asked for the updated voter participation information spreadsheet but was told that due to the judicial recount, it "could not be provided on an urgent basis."
He requested the information again on Nov. 10, and a few days later, he heard back from counsel for Elections BC that it would take some time to provide him with the information in the requested format.
On Nov. 22, Randhawa received the documents he had requested with the voter participation information. "However, it was noted that this was interim information and Elections BC had not completed its quality assurance of the information."
The response to the petition noted that Randhawa did not file the petition within the 30-day limit set out in the Election Act and that his application to the court "can only be made on the basis of alleged contraventions of ss. 255-258 of the Election Act."
"To the extent that he makes any allegations pursuant to s. 150(5)(b) of the Election Act (i.e. that the election was not conducted in accordance with the Election Act or a regulation), those allegations are out of time and cannot be advanced as bases to invalidate the election in Surrey-Guildford," Elections BC's response said.
Ultimately, Elections BC said, Randhawa must rely on a different section of the Election Act to challenge the result: "Mr. Randhawa must prove that at least 22 votes cast in the Surrey-Guildford electoral district were invalid as a result of contraventions of ss. 256 and 257 of the Election Act in order for his petition to succeed."
Uppal argues that Randhawa's challenge under Section150(5)(b) should stand: "Now, despite admitting their error, Elections BC argues that Mr. Randhawa’s petition to challenge the election is time-barred because it was not filed within 30 days of the writ of the election," he said. "Conveniently, the 30-day period lapsed before Elections BC admitted their error. Mr. Uppal contends that Election BC’s position is contrary to public policy because it allows Elections BC to benefit from concealing their error from Mr. Randhawa and the public."
So basically, because Elections BC could not offer pertinent information on the voting participation records to Randhawa in a timely manner, it tried to toss out his petition on the grounds that it had been too long since the election.
Elections BC's petition also addressed the issue of possible non-resident voters who voted in Surrey-Guildford. It noted that of the 23 reported non-resident voters listed in the initial petition, three had updated addresses within the riding. Another voter had cast their ballot at a local hospital. Another person had voted at the SFU Halpern Centre. Their address had been updated through ICBC in 2024 to the Surrey-Cloverdale riding, but had not been successfully updated in the Elections BC database. The remaining 18 voters voted using identification with a residential address that matched the information on the list of voters at the time of voting. Two of the 18 had updated their address to another address within the riding around the time of the writ of election being issued and the election.
This whole issue shows how critical it is that there are rules followed during elections, and how mail in ballots can skirt by a lot of the rules, and how a lot of our democracy relies on people acting in good faith and honesty. When elections are as close as they were in BC last year, things get scrutinized a bit more, which is a good thing. But in all honesty, all elections in Canada need to have strict rules to follow because that's the only way we can have fairness.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Trump 'terminating' trade talks with Canada over digital services tax

The United States has terminated trade talks with Canada in part due to the digital services tax.
The digital services tax is a 3% tax levied against tech companies that operate in Canada. It was passed last year and the first payment is due next week.
President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social: “We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country.”
This is the full quote and it’s important to share the full quote because the media in Canada would have us believe that it’s all about the digital services tax.
Nowhere in Canadian media do you find that dairy is an issue, in particular Canada’s supply management system.
In their reporting on the matter the National Post quoted Trump as saying, “We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with… has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country”
They completely leave out the portion regarding dairy and don’t edit the quote to show that portions were trimmed.
We’ll come back to dairy in a little bit but first our government’s response.
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) issued a short statement saying, “The Canadian government will continue to engage in these complex negotiations with the United States in the best interests of Canadian workers and businesses.”
Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne was asked last week about the tax and said the government was still going ahead and was “not there at all” when asked if there was any topic of scrapping the tax.
This tax applies to any tech company that wants to operate in Canada and when combined with corporate tax rates makes doing business in this country more expensive.
The federal government expects to bring in billions with the tax being retroactive going back to 2022.
The first payment will cost US companies a combined $2b.
Joel Kaplan who is Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer backed up President Trump's statement saying, “Thank you, President Trump, for standing up for American tech companies in the face of unprecedented attacks from other governments. We appreciate your support and recognition of the importance of American business and innovation.”
Businesses have long been opposed to the tax and Canada has been pushing for the OECD to establish a policy deal that expands a country’s authority to tax profits earned within a country even if a company doesn’t have a physical location there.
These are called extraterritorial taxes that are part of a broader OECD effort to improve tax fairness globally as they say, called Pillar One and Pillar Two.
This is something that the United States has pushed back against even before Donald Trump was President.
The Biden administration had set themselves on a path to launch a trade dispute with Canada regarding the digital services tax.
The digital services tax was passed with last year’s fall economic update and back then even now the most ardent supporters of the government were calling on them to stop.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford last fall called on the tax to be paused and noted that, “for our American partners, this is nothing but an unfair tax that’s putting millions of Canadian jobs at risk.”
Perhaps the more striking thing is that no one in Canada is talking about Trump’s opening part of the sentence, dairy.
Supply management won’t be touched by the government as they passed legislation exempting it from any trade deals.
The Conservatives won’t touch supply management either.
Supply management is a dairy quota system that kicks in when producers produce more than a certain amount of product.
This has resulted in milk products being dumped with the goal of keeping dairy product prices artificially high in this country.
It also limits the amount of foreign dairy that can enter Canada, not only has the US had a problem with this, the UK has wanted to access our dairy market as well.
Dollar value wise the digital services tax is a bigger deal worth billions.
In terms of what the government won’t move on though, supply management and dairy is bigger and poses a bigger risk to securing a deal with the United States.
When it was announced at the G7 that there’d be 30 days to make a deal a lot of people took that as a positive timeline but we here at Western Context urged caution.
Carney and his government was in the midst of a big negotiation and yet somehow decided to allow the digital services tax to come into effect causing a large impact on American tech companies.
Meanwhile Trump was looking for a deal to lower tariffs.
Our country in all likelihood has soured the milk and made a deal orders of magnitude more difficult.
Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservatives said, “Disappointed that trade talks have halted. Hopefully they resume quickly. As always, Conservatives are ready to help get a good deal for Canada. We must put Canada First.”
Basically, this is the opposition's way of saying: like the Trudeau government, Carney has got us into a mess and again, we need a cross party effort to fix it.
Now he can’t say that but the reality is that things could get much worse very quickly.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country.” - President Donald Trump on trade talks with Canada.

Word of the Week

Petition - a document signed by a large number of people demanding or asking for some action from the government or another authority.

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Show Data

Episode Title: Threats and Petitions
Teaser: CSIS warns the public of Khalistani extremism, undocumented immigrants want free education in Alberta, and Elections BC tries to cover up their mistakes on election night. Also, Trump calls off trade talks with Canada again.
Production Code: WC-424-2025-06-28
Recorded Date: June 28, 2025
Release Date: June 29, 2025
Duration: 56:50
Edit Notes: 3x pause

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX