Prime minister Mark Carney departs for India today on the first leg of his major trade trip, and as pretty much as he’s out the door, senior officials giving a background briefing to reporters says that they believe that India is no longer engaging in transnational repression, otherwise they wouldn’t be on the trip. That…defies credulity. And the logic of not going on the trip if they were engaged in the repression doesn’t hold given that Carney was just in China two weeks ago, and lo, they haven’t stopped their own efforts around interference or repression.

Foreign interference from India, including transnational repression, has been going on in Canada since the 1980s. It did not stop last week. You can agree that stabilization of relations is important with India is important, while not believing this BS. www.thestar.com/politics/fed…

— Stephanie Carvin (@stephaniecarvin.bsky.social) 2026-02-25T23:42:11.723Z

“I really don’t think we’d be taking this trip if we thought these kinds of activities were continuing,” a senior government official said. lol ok so by that logic I guess that means China no longer interferes in our democracy either since the govt took a trip there

— Supriya Dwivedi (@supriya.bsky.social) 2026-02-26T00:35:08.800Z

We just had a whole-ass judicial inquiry that found that India was the number two country, following China, engaging in foreign interference and transnational repression in this country. It’s been happening since the 1980s, and we’re supposed to believe that they just folded up shop and went home because we asked nicely? Really? Just this week, more Sikh activists in Vancouver were warned by police that they and their families are being targeted. Are we supposed to believe that this is just a figment of their imaginations?

The worst part of this is that it’s just insulting to everyone’s intelligence. It’s transparently untrue, and it’s done to shut up the reporters who keep asking about the state of the relationship. There were so many better ways he could have answered this, including talking about how they have made progress with dialogue with Indian officials, or that they have police cooperation, or anything, but just saying “they stopped,” because apparently we asked nicely, is not going to cut it, and Carney is misjudging the public on this one yet again.

Ukraine Dispatch

There were overnight attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv. Ukraine’s defence minister says they plan to have 4000 kilometres of road protected by anti-drone netting by the end of the year. It is estimated that some 1700 Africans are fighting for Russia, mostly having been tricked into doing so.

Good reads:

• David McGuinty and Anita Anand has signed a defence agreement with South Korea.
• Sean Fraser is suggesting that the government could invoke time allocation on the hate crime bill, the longer it drags out in committee.
• Lina Diab is ignoring stakeholders in her portfolio, and even members of her own caucus know that she’s a walking disaster, but Carney has kept her in place.
• Global Affairs is preparing an $8 million food aid package for Cuba.
• Municipalities who haven’t met their obligations for the Housing Accelerator Fund are still getting most of their funding. Because who needs consequences?
• Here is a look at Canada’s plan to build our own sovereign GPS capacity, given the economic consequences of relying solely on the Americans for theirs.
• The US trade representatives says that any deal with Canada will include tariffs, and we need to just suck it up.
• The Vatican has returned more artefacts, this time they’re mostly Métis.
• Doctors and other health groups are calling for increased HPV vaccination, in the hopes of eliminating certain forms of cancer.
• Matt Jeneroux won’t speak ill of his Conservative former comrades.
• Pierre Poilievre is delivering a major foreign policy speech in Toronto today, talking about Canada-US relations. He’s also travelling to London and Berlin next week.
• Here is a look at how far-right agitators are trying to convince the Conservatives to adopt their talking points, and to shift the Overton window ever further to the right.
• Doug Ford has stopped his government from creating new reports on children’s deaths in the child welfare network (because you can’t fix it if you don’t see it).
• Kent Roach talks about the possibility of ICE crossing the border to do work here, an why that’s a frightening prospect given everything going on.
• Jen Gerson points out that Danielle Smith’s referendum stunts only serve to train the electorate to nihilism, which is not great.
• Justin Ling both praises Ukraine’s resilience and innovation over the course of the war, and uses it to point that Canada needs to take a cue and do more faster.
• Ling also remarks on the State of the Union address, the tepid response from the Democrats, and the activists outside who have a better grasp on how to push back.

Odds and ends:

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