Opposition slams Trudeau as Indian government official calls sabotage claims ‘baseless’

OTTAWA—Justin Trudeau doubled down Wednesday on his support for a senior government official who suggested factions in the Indian government sabotaged the prime minister’s trip to India last week — despite a flat denial from India’s external affairs ministry which labelled the theory “baseless and unacceptable.”
Trudeau’s insistence that the official — revealed by the Conservatives to be the prime minister’s national security adviser, Daniel Jean — is a member of the professional, non-partisan public service whose advice should be respected and believed, prompted howls of outrage from opposition parties.
They accused Trudeau of provoking a diplomatic crisis with India in a desperate bid to deflect blame for his trouble-plagued eight-day tour of the country, which hit bottom with the revelation that a convicted attempted murderer and one-time Sikh separatist extremist had been invited to two events with the prime minister.
“There has never been a government, Liberal or Conservative, who has used a national security official to clean up an embarrassing mess that was self-inflicted by this prime minister,” Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer told the House of Commons.