Defence minister declines to right away deny India might need sabotaged Canada's aircraft

A fast clarification got here from Invoice Blair’s press secretary, who launched an announcement saying Canada has ‘no cause’ to imagine it was sabotage

Printed Sep 22, 2023 • Final up to date 6 hours in the past • 2 minute learn

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s aircraft is seen on the tarmac after being grounded resulting from a technical challenge following the G20 Summit in New Delhi, India. Photograph by SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Amid the far more critical accusation that India dedicated an assassination on Canadian soil, a Trudeau authorities minister didn’t instantly deny this week that India had one thing to do with the breakdown of Canada’s official VIP jet in New Delhi.

On the shut of the G20 summit in India earlier this month, the Canadian delegation was stranded for twenty-four hours as the results of a technical malfunction on CanForce One, the RCAF CC-150 Polaris used to take the prime minister on abroad journeys.

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When Defence Minister Invoice Blair was later requested by reporters if the breakdown was a results of “sabotage,” he gave a non-committal reply.

“I’m not going to touch upon that,” mentioned Blair. “There are, there are clearly ongoing considerations.”

This then prompted a fast clarification by Blair’s press secretary, Daniel Minden, who launched an announcement saying that Canada has “no cause” to imagine it was sabotage, and the plane was more than likely affected by a “technical challenge.”

The change was posted to social media by Steven Chase, an investigative reporter with the Globe and Mail.

Chase is a minor character within the ongoing India-Canada spat in that the Trudeau authorities has mentioned they solely went public with the assassination allegations on Monday to be able to get forward of a media report claiming as a lot.

Chase and the Globe’s Ottawa bureau chief, Robert Fife, have been reportedly on the verge of publishing allegations that Canadian safety companies had alerts intelligence exhibiting a hyperlink between Indian diplomats and the June homicide of Sikh nationalist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

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On Sept. 11, information first emerged that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the remainder of Canada’s G20 delegation have been unable to return house resulting from what the RCAF known as a “mechanical breakdown.”

“The issue entails a part that should get replaced,” learn an electronic mail to Postmedia from DND spokesperson Andrew McKelvey. As mechanics have been scrambled to repair the problem, a substitute CC-150 Polaris was dispatched from CFB Trenton.

As Canada waited for rescue, India reportedly provided them the usage of Air India One, their nation’s equal of CanForceOne, however the gesture was rejected.

Awkwardly, Trudeau turned stranded in India instantly following a tense assembly with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi through which the Canadian chief first accused his Indian counterpart of probably overseeing an extrajudicial killing in British Columbia.

The accusation was initially omitted in an official Indian authorities account of the assembly, however included earlier this week in an official Indian denial of the Canadian allegations, raised by Trudeau within the Home of Commons.

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“Related allegations have been made by the Canadian Prime Minister to our Prime Minister, and have been utterly rejected,” learn a Tuesday assertion by India’s Ministry of International Affairs.

As Indo-Canadian relations descended to document lows this week, Indian politicians have equally been making no scarcity of untamed accusations towards Canada. On Thursday, for example, Indian MP Ravneet Singh Bittu claimed that Trudeau’s Liberal Social gathering is funded partially by the “drug commerce.”

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