Good morning,

When Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered his notable speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he signalled to Canadians and to potential trade suitors that his government’s approach to finding market alternatives to the U.S. would be both practical and pragmatic.

For the past several days, Canadians got a dose of the pragmatic.

During a four-day visit to India, Carney secured a $2.6-billion deal to supply Canadian uranium to the subcontinent. He launched talks on a new comprehensive trade deal with New Delhi and reached nine other commercial agreements valued at a combined $5.5-billion. (Some of those had been made public months ago.)

It’s an approach Carney has described as “values-based realism.” Carney was lauded at Davos for the “realism” bit. The India trip was a challenge to the “values-based” bit.

On Monday, The Globe published new details about the evidence Canadian authorities have gathered about the assassination of a Sikh activist in the parking lot of his Surrey, B.C., gurdwara in 2023.

In a deeply reported piece, Mike Hager and Greg Mercer detail the evidence presented to Canadian national-security officials, which indicated Indian consular staff operating in Vancouver supplied information to assist in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

Two sources told The Globe one of the Indian officials worked as a visa officer in the consulate, using his position to gather information about Nijjar from members of the Indian diaspora in Surrey, B.C.

Authorities believe the man, Kanwaljit Singh, was also an intelligence officer with India’s external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, the law-enforcement source said. The national-security source didn’t identify Singh by name, but confirmed that CSIS was monitoring an undercover RAW agent posted to the consulate who was also working as a visa officer.

Singh worked with Manish, a career diplomat who goes by one name and was Vancouver’s consul-general at the time, both sources said.

The evidence gathered by the sources alleges that information about Nijjar was passed to another RAW officer in New Delhi. That officer communicated with the Lawrence Bishnoi organized-crime group, a prominent Indian gang blamed for a rash of extortions and other offences in Canada, both sources said.

A Canada-based member of the gang then helped arrange the killing of the outspoken Sikh activist, the sources said.

The New Delhi officer, The Globe’s two sources said, was Vikash Yadav, the same officer named in a U.S. indictment as the mastermind behind a foiled plot to murder another Sikh activist, an associate of Nijjar’s.

The Globe is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to share details of the investigation. Their information is based on the RCMP’s investigation and intelligence from Canada’s spy service and its allies in the United States and Britain.

The Indian government issued a vehement denial on Monday.

“India categorically rejects allegations of involvement in transnational violence or organized crime. These claims are baseless, politically motivated and unsupported by credible evidence despite repeated requests,” Periasamy Kumaran, a senior secretary in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, told reporters on Monday.

Neither Carney nor Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand responded to the revelations.

“I am not going to comment on an investigation that is occurring now and a trial that is also in process stemming from an issue that is alleged to have arisen some time ago,” Anand told reporters.

Carney cancelled a scheduled press briefing with the reporters travelling with him, citing time constraints.

Sikh groups called for protests outside India’s Vancouver consulate on Tuesday. The World Sikh Organization of Canada said it was “deeply disturbed” by the report.

Moninder Singh, an activist who campaigned with Nijjar and is now the leader of the Sikh Federation of Canada, said the Carney government appears to be working at cross purposes: approaching India for closer trade and security ties while also acknowledging the country still poses a foreign interference threat.

“It’s shameful that you would put trade before Canadian lives,” said Singh, who was warned by Vancouver police last week that someone was trying to kill him and his family.

Four Indian citizens, all in their 20s, have been charged with first-degree murder in Nijjar’s slaying. They arrived in Canada on temporary visas. No diplomats or consular staff have been charged.

On Sunday, Carney told a crowd of about 100 business investors and executives in India’s financial capital of Mumbai that his visit marks the end of a “challenging period” in Canada-India relations and the beginning of a new, “more ambitious partnership” with the world’s fifth-biggest economy.

The trip is in keeping with what he pledged at Davos when he said Canada would be “pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values.

“We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be.”

This is the weekly British Columbia newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.