Thanks, Mr. Chair, and happy Halloween to everyone.

I would like to use my time to provide some insights into the role of India's foreign intelligence service in the conduct of covert operations abroad. I know that a question was asked about this in the committee's last meeting, and Mr. Rogers, the new CSIS director, said that he couldn't provide any details.

The name of that service is the research and analysis wing, or RAW. It operates from within the Prime Minister's office. It is subject to direction from the Prime Minister's national security adviser and is not publicly or judicially accountable for its actions. RAW sometimes enjoys heroic treatment within Indian popular culture as a defender of Indian security.

RAW has a long history, tracing its roots back to a British-run organization during the period of the Raj. After Indian independence, it was reformulated but struggled to attain any real professional capacity. It was significantly reformed and founded as RAW in 1968. For decades, the focus of its foreign operations was in intelligence-gathering targeting regional geopolitical adversaries, China and Pakistan in particular. From the late 1980s, RAW began to turn its attention to a different sort of perceived enemy—advocates of the Khalistan separatist movement. RAW slowly began to push its covert operations targeting Khalistani activists outward from India's near abroad, where it devoted special attention to operations in Pakistan. Some of the methods it deployed in Pakistan have now been exported to the west, to the United States and Canada, to elements of the Sikh diaspora living farther afield.

RAW posts officers under diplomatic cover to Indian embassies and consulates abroad. The power that RAW possesses as an independent arm of the Prime Minister's conduct of global diplomacy gives its sway over India's diplomatic corps and means that it can deploy India's foreign ministry officials as dutiful instruments in intelligence collection and as support for the conduct of covert operations. RAW, in my view, has joined the ranks of the Russian SVR and FSB and the Chinese MSS as posing a critical national security threat to Canada.

In September 2023, as members of this committee will know, the Prime Minister made an announcement in the House of Commons regarding “credible allegations” held by Canadian security agencies “of a potential link between agents of the Government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen”. On the same day, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced that Canada had expelled a top Indian diplomat. In a press briefing, the minister confirmed that the Indian diplomat who had been PNG'd was actually the head of India's RAW office in Canada. His name was Pavan Kumar Rai.

A little over a year later, immediately following the RCMP press conference that stimulated this committee's study, it was announced that six Indian diplomats, including the Indian high commissioner, were being expelled from Canada. The expulsion was part and parcel of an effort to urgently disrupt violent Indian foreign interference in Canada by breaking the chain between Indian diplomats collecting covert intelligence and the transmission of this information to proxy agents and criminal gangs operating within Canada to engage in intimidation, harassment and murder. This is a clear illustration of how Indian diplomats are being drawn into the RAW network of covert operations abroad.

What is to be done? The activities of RAW in Canada require a strong counter-intelligence response by CSIS and CSE in particular, in association with GAC and the RCMP. The task before these agencies is to identify RAW officials, monitor their activities and disrupt them whenever possible. Known or suspected RAW officers can be refused visas and diplomatic accreditation and kept out of the country. Those discovered to be engaged in covert foreign interference can be expelled. Proxy networks can be disrupted, investigated and charged. This is not an easy task. Our agencies will need the resources and expertise to do this job. It requires a coordinated and sustained effort. Canada must also use every opportunity to leverage its membership in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance to benefit from shared intelligence on RAW operations globally.

Canada also needs to mobilize a broad diplomatic national security coalition of allies—starting, but not ending, with Washington—to put constant pressure on the highest levels of the Modi government to force a stop to intolerable Indian covert operations. Much of this pressure campaign will, of necessity, operate away from the public eye, but on occasion, publicity might help, as the RCMP clearly believes in terms of their recent press conference. There is much more to be done, including through law enforcement, outreach to the South Asian community and more national security strategic transparency to make Canadians as a whole aware of the threat.

We must conduct a harder-edged, pragmatic diplomacy toward India, not over-invest in India as a counterweight to China. It is a role that recent events, such as the BRICS meeting, suggest it may not be interested in playing. However, the counter-intelligence effort is foundational, and it's one that, typically, our security and intelligence agencies have underinvested in in the past.

Thank you.

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