Opinion | Canada-India Security Cooperation Will Fail Unless Ottawa Closes Khalistan Asylum Loophole

For India, asylum and extradition cannot remain secondary to trade

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Canada and India have agreed to deepen cooperation against terrorism, violent extremism, organised crime, extortion and trafficking. The new Security Work Plan will be tested not by diplomatic language, but by whether cooperation reaches the Canadian asylum and extradition systems that Khalistan-aligned networks may have exploited for decades.

During David Morrison’s October 5-7 visit to New Delhi, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s senior diplomatic and international affairs adviser and India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval reviewed the plan. Their official readout promised stronger institutional channels, faster information-sharing and cooperation on law enforcement and extradition.

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For more than four decades, Khalistan-aligned groups have built a Canadian presence through advocacy organisations, community institutions and political relationships. Central to it is a powerful narrative: Khalistan supporters are persecuted in India and therefore require Western protection. It converts separatism into a refugee claim and portrays scrutiny of extremism, criminality or immigration fraud as an attack on Sikhs. But Sikhs are a religious community; Khalistan is a political project with a documented history of assassinations, bombings, extortion and mass murder, including Air India Flight 182. Claimed support for it cannot establish refugee status by itself.

The scale demands attention. As of September 30, 2025, Canada had 43,900 pending refugee claims involving India, 15 per cent of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s total inventory and the largest number associated with any country. During 2025, another 17,835 claims naming India as the alleged country of persecution were referred to the Refugee Protection........

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