“Nijjar was foreign terrorist and not Canadian”: Canada’s Oppn party leader Maxime Bernier

Ottawa [Canada], October 18 : The leader of the People’s Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier, has said that Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead outside the gurdwara in Surrey in 2023, was not Canadian but a “foreign terrorist who used fraudulent documents to claim asylum in Canada several times starting in 1997.”

In a post on X, Bernier said that authorities should have deported Nijjar after his fake asylum claim, like the hundreds of thousands of fake asylum claimants who are in Canada right now.

He called for taking away Nijjar’s citizenship posthumously to rectify the administrative error.

He said that allegations made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Liberal government regarding Indian diplomats engaging in criminal activities in Canada are “highly serious” and stressed that they need to be addressed decisively if proven true.

Nijjar, who was designated a terrorist by India’s National Investigation Agency in 2020, was shot and killed outside a Gurdwara in Surrey in June last year.

In a post on X, Bernier said, “If true, allegations made by the RCMP and the Liberal government that Indian diplomats participated in criminal activities on our territory are very serious and should be dealt with. So far, however, we haven’t been given any proof. And Trudeau is clearly using this crisis to divert the attention from other controversies. One myth should be dispelled though: That the central figure in this controversy, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Khalistani militant who was murdered last year, was a Canadian.”

“He was actually a foreign terrorist who used fraudulent documents to claim asylum in Canada several times starting in 1997. His claims were rejected but he was nevertheless allowed to stay in this country and was somehow granted citizenship in 2007. Nijjar wasn’t a Canadian. We should perhaps posthumously take away his citizenship to right this administrative error. He should have been deported after his first fake asylum claim, like the hundreds of thousands of fake asylum claimants who are in Canada right now,” he added.