Justin Trudeau

Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, was Prime Minister of Canada from 2015 until March 2025. His place in Sikh history rests on two moments: the formal apology he delivered in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru, and his statement of 18 September 2023 that Canada was pursuing credible allegations linking agents of the Indian government to the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Key moments

• 18 May 2016: he delivered the apology in the House of Commons for the Komagata Maru of 1914. The ship reached Vancouver on 23 May 1914 with 376 passengers from India, most of them Sikh, Muslim or Hindu, and most were denied entry under the laws of the time (Prime Minister's Office).
• 18 September 2023: three months after Nijjar was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, Trudeau told the House of Commons that Canadian agencies were pursuing credible allegations of a link between agents of the Indian government and the killing, and that any foreign government's involvement in a killing on Canadian soil would be an unacceptable violation of sovereignty. Canada and India expelled each other's diplomats. India called the claim absurd and politically motivated and suspended visa processing for Canadians (Al Jazeera).
• 14 October 2024: the RCMP said it had found connections between agents of the Government of India and homicides and extortion in Canada, and that Indian diplomats and consular officials had used their posts to gather information later used to threaten or extort. It reported eight people charged in homicide cases and 22 with extortion. Canada expelled six Indian diplomats, High Commissioner Sanjay Kumar Verma among them, after India declined to waive their immunity. India expelled six Canadian diplomats and called the allegations preposterous (CP24; Gulf News).
• 16 October 2024: giving evidence to the foreign interference inquiry, Trudeau said the material Canada held in 2023 was mainly intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof. India's foreign ministry replied that Canada had presented no evidence and blamed his "cavalier behaviour" for the damage to relations (ThePrint).
• 29 October 2024: Canada's deputy foreign minister David Morrison told a parliamentary committee that the government considered India's Home Minister Amit Shah the architect of a campaign against Sikh separatists in Canada, and said he had confirmed Shah's name to The Washington Post. He did not reveal the evidence, and Indian officials rejected it (Al Jazeera). This was an official's statement, not Trudeau's.
• 6 January 2025: he announced he would resign as Liberal leader and Prime Minister once a successor was chosen, after party pressure and the December 2024 resignation of Chrystia Freeland. He formally stepped down on 14 March 2025, when Mark Carney took over (Al Jazeera).

What he is remembered for. An apology to those turned away in 1914, and a public statement that turned the Nijjar killing into a dispute between governments. India denied the allegations throughout and says Canada gave it no evidence; Trudeau himself later said the case rested at first on intelligence.