Phillips: A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke

2024/08/03 Leave a comment

Really wonder what they are thinking (or not thinking):

You can’t be too careful these days. With all the fake news, misinformation and AI-generated “deep fakes” out there you can’t take anything at face value. You have to be on your guard.

Which is why when I saw a headline this week saying a federal minister had lobbied for 100 Canadian soldiers to act as “backdrops” for a concert by an Indian pop star, my first thought was it must be one of those fakes. Or perhaps someone’s idea of a joke.

But no. It turns out a minister in the Trudeau government, Harjit Sajjan, really did try to convince the military to supply soldiers to be, in effect, props for a performance in Vancouver by one of India’s most popular singers and actors, Diljit Dosanjh.

Sajjan, the minister of emergency preparedness and a former defence minister, sent the request to the current defence minister, Bill Blair. Blair apparently passed it on to whoever’s in charge of these things in the Canadian Armed Forces and fortunately sanity prevailed. The military replied that “this request would not be feasible due to the tight timeline and personnel availability.”

This is a story that might well just slip by, especially in the depths of summer when no one’s paying attention. But it shouldn’t. It underlines this government’s fundamental lack of seriousness on issues of national security and, just as bad, its habit of playing diaspora politics rather than focusing on the national interest.

Sajjan isn’t having any of this. After the Globe & Mail reported his request for soldiers he didn’t apologize or back down. On the contrary. He defended the idea as “a good opportunity for the Canadian Armed Forces to engage with and expand connections to a diverse community of young Canadians.”

But this wasn’t an event with broad public connections like a Canada Day concert, a Grey Cup halftime show or a multicultural festival. It may well be appropriate for the military to have a presence at such events to, quite literally, show the flag.

This was a private, commercial concert by a very popular singer from another country. You might as well ask the air force to do a flyover at a Taylor Swift concert. The military, to state the obvious, isn’t there to serve as props for pop stars – however popular.

Now, it’s impossible to miss the fact that Dosanjh is a mega-star who was born in Punjab and makes much of those origins. He’s hugely popular in India and is reaching out to other countries; his Vancouver event was reportedly the biggest Punjabi music concert ever outside India.

Does any of this escape the Liberals? Of course not. They’re acutely attuned to currents in diaspora communities, including those from India and especially Punjab, the only Sikh-majority state in India. Sajjan himself was born in Punjab and is one of several ministers with origins in India. Nothing wrong with that – but there is something wrong with trying to use the military in a way that may bring political benefits.

Sajjan came under fire recently for telling the armed forces to mount a rescue operation for 225 Afghan Sikhs during the fall of Kabul in August 2021. The suggestion was that Sajjan, defence minister at the time, diverted resources from others desperate to get out before the Taliban took over.

In light of that you’d think he’d be extra cautious about doing anything else that might be interpreted as pandering to Punjabi-Canadian voters. But apparently not.

There’s a bit more spill-over from all this. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself dropped in at another concert by Dosanjh in July at the Rogers Centre in Toronto and referred to the singer as “a guy from Punjab.” 

That sounds banal but given the tense state of relations between India and Canada it created a minor storm. The national secretary of the ruling party in India, the BJP, accused Trudeau of “deliberate mischief through wordplay” by emphasizing Dosanjh’s Punjabi identity, rather than his Indian one.

If the government is serious about repairing relations with India, shouldn’t it avoid even small missteps that feed India’s narrative about Canada being a hotbed of Sikh separatism? Unless, of course, it prefers to play for partisan advantage.

Source: A federal minister wanted Canadian soldiers to serve as props at a pop concert. It’s just the latest way the Trudeau government has treated national security as a joke

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , , , ,

Visa denials denounced at Montreal AIDS conference, federal minister cancels speech

2022/08/02 Leave a comment

Of note. Wonder whether the organizing committee (and the Canadian government when agreeing to host it) foresaw the visa difficulties and the extent to which other international conferences in Canada have encountered similar visa issues or not:

The International AIDS Society will re-evaluate how it organizes international conferences as a result of visa denials by the Canadian government, the organization’s president said Friday in Montreal.

The comments came as International Development Minister cancelled a planned appearance at the conference.

Adeeba Kamarulzaman told attendees at the opening ceremony of the AIDS 2022 conference that she is “deeply upset by the high number of denials and pending visas that prevented many registered delegates, including IAS staff and leadership, from entering Canada.”

She said the International AIDS Society, the association of HIV/AIDS professionals that organizes the conference, wants to ensure its conferences include the communities most affected by HIV.

“We know that underlying the difficulty experienced by many attendees of AIDS 2022 to enter Canada, lies a broader problem of global inequity and systemic racism that significantly impacts global health,” she said. “HIV, in particular, has always disproportionately affected the most marginalized.”

Other speakers had strong criticism for Canada’s visa policies. Activist and writer Tim McCaskill told attendees that if countries like Canada aren’t up to allowing “all stakeholders” to attend, “then we need to hold these conference in places that are.”

At one point during the opening ceremony, a group of protesters took the stage, condemning the visa denials and inequalities in the global response to HIV. “No more AIDS conferences in racist countries,” one woman said as she made a short speech.

Sajjan had been scheduled to speak at the conference opening, but he cancelled and was not replaced by another Canadian government representative.

Sajjan’s office said “operational issues” prevented him from attending. “We remain steadfast supporters of UNAIDS, the Global Fund and our trusted partners,” Haley Hodgson, a spokeswoman for the minister, said in an email.

Omar Sharif Jr., the master of ceremonies of the opening event, said Sajjan had notified organizers of the cancellation “a short while ago,” drawing boos from the crowd.

Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of UNAIDS, said she was “sad the government of Canada isn’t here.”

In her speech, she called for a more just world, where everyone has access to quality health care and where those living with HIV don’t face stigma, “including a world where people from the global south are not denied entry into wealthy countries to bring their expertise,” she added.

The conference, which draws researchers, medical practitioners, activists and people living with HIV, focuses both on scientific progress in the fight against AIDS and the need for increased funding for HIV response.

UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, has said that millions of lives are at risk due to disruptions in HIV care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and declining funding for HIV response.

“As new infections are rising in many regions and access to treatment is slowing, how can it be right also that funding is declining?” Byanyima said to reporters earlier on Friday.

One of the messages of the conference is that if treatment has rendered the viral load undetectable, the virus is no longer transmissible.

That applies both to sexual partners and to pregnant HIV-positive women who could pass the virus on to children, said Maurine Murenga, the director of the Lean on Me Foundation. Her Kenyan organization works with adolescent girls and young women living with HIV or affected by tuberculosis.

“When I was diagnosed with HIV 20 years ago, I was given six months to live because there was no treatment. I didn’t know I would live long enough to come to a point where people living with HIV, on effective treatment, cannot pass HIV to our partners,” she told reporters.

The conference runs through Tuesday, and more than 9,000 delegates are expected to attend in person, with another 2,000 registered to participate remotely.

Source: Visa denials denounced at Montreal AIDS conference, federal minister cancels speech

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Celebrating Sikh soldiers on Remembrance Day

2015/11/11 Leave a comment

Poppy

Timing is perfect with Canada’s first Sikh Defence Minister:

When Pardeep Singh Nagra was a kid in Mississauga, he didn’t see Sikh soldiers in his history textbooks.

Now, the 45-year-old is standing in a room where you can read about the first Sikh soldier to win a Victoria Cross (Captain Ishar Singh, 1921), look at propaganda posters extolling the virtues of the mighty Sikh whiskers, and admire row upon row of toy soldiers in turbans.

Nagra is the director of the Sikh Heritage Museum of Canada, and he was still up at 4:30 a.m. Sunday morning, putting the finishing touches on the museum’s “Outwhiskered” exhibit for Remembrance Day. The exhibit covers the 1800s to present, with a major focus on the two world wars, highlighting a history that is often forgotten.

“Let me tell you, I’m going to be all over the place, so don’t mind me,” Nagra says before launching into a whirlwind tour of several centuries of history.

“There is an Indian man in Flanders, but we’ve never been raised or nurtured here, even in our education systems, with this type of stuff,” he says, pausing by a photo of an Indian soldier in Ypres.

Pardeep Singh Nagra, the museum’s Executive Director, poses in front of a 1944 edition of the Picture Post, a British photojournalism magazine.

LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR/ TORONTO STAR

Pardeep Singh Nagra, the museum’s Executive Director, poses in front of a 1944 edition of the Picture Post, a British photojournalism magazine.

In Canada, 10 Sikh soldiers enlisted for the First World War. None enlisted in the Second World War, fed up with a country that hadn’t given them the right to vote, he said. (That would come in 1947.)

More than 65,000 Sikh soldiers fought in the First World War as part of the British Army and over 300,000 Sikhs fought with the Allies in the Second World War. Their reputation as fierce military men was a staple of Allied propaganda and even Kellogg’s cereal box inserts.

“They wear beards and a long moustache. And all of them wrap their heads in turbans. The Sikhs ride and shoot well. A great many are in the Imperial forces,” reads the back of one Sikh trading card, possibly from the 1940s or 1950s.

At the entrance to the museum, images of Canada’s newest Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan line the walls, drawn recently by students at Khalsa Community School in Brampton. One student has given Sajjan the acrostic poem treatment — H for “Helpful to Sikh community,” A for “Amazing progression in politics and military,” and on from there.

Source: Celebrating Sikh soldiers on Remembrance Day | Toronto Star

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,