Montreal: Seated in the refined, bustling atmosphere of Monarque, a premier brasserie in Old Montreal, Stéphane Dion cuts a figure of quiet, calculated experience. A veteran of the Canadian Cabinet and the chief architect of the Clarity Act, Ottawa’s landmark law spelling out the rules for any future bid to break up the country, Dion has spent the last decade navigating the highest corridors of global diplomacy after a long career in Canadian politics.At 70, Dion is transitioning yet again. Having completed his postings as Canada’s ambassador to Germany and, most recently, to France and Monaco – roles he held while serving as the Prime Minister’s special envoy to the European Union – he ended his government service in mid-December 2025. Now, he is returning to the classroom as the first diplomat-in-residence at the Université de Montréal, where he once taught political science before his 1996 entry into federal politics.The timing of this conversation is not incidental. Across the planet, Prime Minister Mark Carney is on Indian soil, a trip freighted with the weight of one of the most damaging ruptures in Canada’s recent diplomatic history.It is a subject Dion has strong views on, and he gets to them quickly.He says the relationship was in good shape when he visited New Delhi as foreign minister in 2016.What followed, he argues, was a series of missteps on both sides, beginning with Trudeau’s 2018 trip to India, which the Indian government viewed unfavourably in part because of who accompanied the Prime Minister. “The Indian government had the sense that Prime Minister Trudeau invited too many Sikh people,” Dion says. “And Prime Minister Trudeau was saying, but they are not involved in India, they are involved in Canada.”This tension escalated into a full-blown crisis following the 2023 assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and the subsequent announcement by Prime Minister Trudeau in the House of Commons regarding “credible allegations” of Indian government involvement.It is here that Dion parts ways most sharply with his former leader.In answer to a question from The Wire whether Trudeau handled relations with India badly, he replies, “I would not say that. I would say that I would have personally preferred that Canada would not say in the House of Commons that we have some information that may be true. I would have waited. And I would say there is an inquiry happening, and I don’t want to interfere in these inquiries or these investigations.”He is careful to add that his objection is to the approach, not to the seriousness of the underlying concern. Canada did have evidence that troubled its government, he notes, and the United States had expressed similar worries. Dion also takes issue with how India responded differently to Washington than to Ottawa on the same matter. “If I was accused of something as bad as that, I would cooperate to a certain extent. Even though there is a guy who made a mistake”.US prosecutors had unsealed the indictment in November 2023 that accused an Indian businessman, Nikhil Gupta of arranging an attempted hit on a double US-Canadian citizen in New York on the instructions of an Indian government official. While the indictment never mentions the victim’s name, it was widely known to be Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, general counsel for Sikhs for Justice, a Khalistan group banned in India. India set up a high-powered committee, which accepted that Vikash Yadav, the former Raw officer was involved in the case, but framed him as a rogue agent.Nikhil Gupta recently changed his plea to guilty in a New York federal court.Besides Trudeau’s accusation, Canada a year later in October 2024 also accused Indian embassy officials of being behind a wave of violence against Canadian nationals, which led both sides to expel six diplomats each, including the high commissioners. The RCMP had deemed them persons of interest in what it described – and India strongly denied – as a campaign of alleged violence, extortion, and intimidation directed at the Sikh diaspora by agents of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.And in January 2025, a public inquiry headed by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue had described India as the second most active state actor involved in electoral foreign interference in Canada, after China.Against that backdrop, the events of the past week in Ottawa stand out.On February 25, ahead of Carney’s departure for India, a senior Canadian government official told journalists at a background briefing that the government no longer believed India was meddling in Canada through foreign interference, transnational repression or violence. Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal condemned the remarks outright, saying the official’s view was “disconnected from the reality confronting members of the Sikh community across Canada and contradicts assessments by national-security and law-enforcement agencies.”When Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand arrived in Mumbai, she was pressed repeatedly by travelling Canadian media to say whether she agreed with the official’s assessment. She declined to answer directly. Instead, she said, “No country has a pass when it comes to Canadian public safety and security. That is the reason why we’ve listed the Bishnoi gang as a terrorist entity. That is the reason why we ordered senior Indian diplomats and government officials to leave our country.”She defended Canada’s warming ties with India but also said she would continue to raise concerns about the Sikh community with her Indian counterparts. Adding to the confusion, CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam said in a statement that the intelligence agency’s threat assessment “has not changed.”Dion, for his part, does not dismiss the underlying concerns. “You may be sure that you have a lot of Canadians who are concerned about what the government of India is planning to do in Canada,” he says. “My government is saying that we have some evidence that makes us fearful about what the government of India was planning to do in Canada. And the US has the same concerns. I would be foolish not to have the same concerns myself.” But he understands what Carney is trying to achieve. “Prime Minister Carney wants to be optimistic, he wants to go ahead in a positive way. And hopefully it will work.”At the heart of the friction is a fundamental constitutional divergence regarding the nature of the state. Dion, as the architect of the Clarity Act, believes this is where the deepest misunderstanding between the two nations resides.“India is indivisible according to your constitution. Canada is not,” Dion explains. “A province has the right to separate… I needed to clarify that. Canada is divisible, but not by any means. You need to have a constitutional negotiation.”He points out that while India views separatist rhetoric as a criminal threat to its existence, Canada views it as a protected, if regulated, part of the democratic fabric. “In Canada, separatism is not illegal. Otherwise, we would have a lot of people in jail in Quebec. What is not acceptable is to do violence, planning and terrorism.”Dion argues that India has often mistaken this constitutional tolerance for active state support of separatist movements. “The government of Canada is strongly for a united India, but citizens are free to have different views. They are free to think that Canada should break up… We will never try to encourage the breakup of India. It would be foolish for us to take this view.”On the perception, common in India, that the Liberal Party leaned on Sikh separatist support to win marginal ridings, Dion is direct. “The Liberal Party of Canada is very popular among communities coming from everywhere in the world. It was true for the Sikhs, but it was true for the Hindus. I had Hindu people in my riding and they were strongly voting for me. There was no ambiguity.”He adds that the government’s position on India’s unity was never in question. “Never would I have accepted that the government of Canada would be ambiguous about the unity of another country, whether it is India or Sri Lanka. Yes, the Tamils voted for us. But we were clearly for the unity of Sri Lanka.”It is impossible to discuss the Liberal Party’s recent history without dwelling on Justin Trudeau, whose decade in power ended earlier last year. Dion played a direct role in shaping Justin Trudeau’s early path into federal politics. After becoming Liberal leader in late 2006, he encouraged the young Trudeau to seek a Commons seat. “I told him, Justin, win a riding. Because otherwise, you will always be the son of your father. If you want to not be the son of Pierre Elliott, but become Justin, you need to win something.” Dion lost the 2008 election to Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and stepped down as party leader shortly after. Justin Trudeau went on to lead the Liberals from 2013, winning a majority government in 2015 and bringing Dion into the cabinet as foreign minister. By 2017, Dion was moved to Europe as special envoy, and the two men maintained what Dion describes as a good personal relationship, disagreements and all. “I have a very good relationship with Justin. It doesn’t mean that I always agree with everything.”Having observed the father and worked with the son, Dion offers a comparison of their governing styles. “I think that Pierre Elliott was more conceptual,” he explained, describing the elder Trudeau as a deeply intellectual figure with a grand vision. In contrast, he described Justin as a leader who operated with “a strong empathy with the people”.The conversation moves, as it inevitably does these days, to Trump. Dion calls the past year a “big shock” for Canada. “The US is our best friend, whether we like it or not — that’s the joke we always do in Canada. We like their culture, we like their food, their music. But we are not American.” He endorses Carney’s goal of doubling Canada’s non-US exports within ten years, calling it “really quite demanding” but necessary. “At the end of the day, if we do that, we’ll be less dependent on the US, but we’ll still be very linked to the US. Nobody may replace the US for us.”On Europe and the rise of the far right, Dion says he does not see it taking hold in Canada in the same way. “I think it’s because of history. The British tried to assimilate the Catholic French and the Catholic French resisted. Then these two populations had to find another model than assimilation. It was cooperation in mutual respect.”Geography helped too. “Because our neighbours are three oceans and a very rich and big country. If we had directly Mexico with all Latin America behind it on our very long border, I don’t think we would have multiculturalism in our constitution.” He acknowledges pockets of sympathy for Trump’s approach, particularly in oil-dependent Alberta, but says the broader Canadian reaction has gone the other way. “More people agree against him. It’s strengthening the idea that he should not go there.”By now, the lunch plates have been cleared and the restaurant is thinning out around him.In his next chapter at the Université de Montréal, he says, he will be available to professors and students who want to draw on his experience.He is asked, one last time, whether he might return to politics. He does not hesitate.“I did enough,” he says. “I did enough.”