India’s latest envoy to Canada says Ottawa should pivot away from pursuing a scaled-down trade deal and as an alternative reach for a comprehensive trade and investment agreement with the world’s most populous country.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Canadian Press, Indian High Commissioner Dinesh Patnaik also said Canadian businesses should expand trade and investment ties with India now, without waiting for governments to sign a proper trade agreement.
“We’re more fascinated with a comprehensive package than something with low ambition. We wish the next ambition,” he said in a Thursday interview.
“A trade deal is something we must always not wait for. We should always start getting whatever we will, the early gains.”
Canada and India have been in trade talks since 2010. Those negotiations were paused and restarted greater than once, and were shut down entirely by Ottawa in 2023, after the federal government accused Latest Delhi of playing a task within the assassination of a Canadian Sikh activist in Surrey, B.C.
The Carney government has made it a priority to reset relations with India, including a visit earlier this month by Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand to India where each countries released a joint statement titled “renewing momentum towards a stronger partnership.” The statement mentioned trade multiple times.
The statement was a significant shift in tone from a yr prior, when Canada expelled six senior Indian diplomats after the RCMP alleged Latest Delhi was behind wide-scale murder, extortion and coercion in Canada. In autumn 2023, India stripped diplomatic protection for many Canadian envoys.
Patnaik said despite the “slight hiccups” within the diplomatic relationship lately, “trade hasn’t slowed down.”
“But to take a look at it the opposite way, trade has never reached the heights as (it) must have been, between a G7 country and the fourth largest economy on the earth,” he added.
Before the diplomatic chill began in 2023, Canada and India had already scaled down their ambitions for trade talks from in search of a comprehensive economywide agreement to pursuing a deal limited to specific industries.
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The trade talks that launched in 2010 involved a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, but by 2023, negotiations were intensifying toward an Early Progress Trade Agreement, which may need held by itself or led to a later, comprehensive deal. Neither country formally declared which sectors were on the table.
India has signed each varieties of cope with different countries. For instance, Australia signed such a limited deal in 2022 that included sectors resembling coal, lentils and rare earths, with talk of possibly launching talks for a broader agreement.
Patnaik said India desires to “interact in every sector” with Canada through an agreement that goes beyond trade in specific goods, resembling Canadian lentils and Indian textiles.
He said a trade pact would yield huge economic advantages if it included service sectors resembling education and cultural fields resembling filmmaking.
“It’s time for us to take a look at things in a special perspective,” he said.
“I don’t want to cut back trade to only buying and selling, but to this larger economic framework where now we have investments, where now we have human resource collaborations, scientific research, innovation, high technology — every little thing.”
Each Canada and India are working to diversify their trade away from an increasingly erratic United States. U.S. President Donald Trump hit Canada with tariffs he linked to the minuscule flow of fentanyl across the border, and imposed 50 per cent tariffs on Indian products to pressure Latest Delhi to stop buying Russian oil.
But Canada was falling behind peer countries on trade with India even before Trump returned to the White House, Patnaik said.
He identified that since trade talks with Ottawa began in 2010, Latest Delhi has signed deals with the U.K., Australia and the United Arab Emirates and is “on the verge of signing one” with the European Union.
“If, probably, the trade talks with Canada wouldn’t have been paused, we probably would have had a trade agreement with Canada,” he said.
“We’re moving forward with the remaining of the world, and we don’t need to have a lesser ambition with Canada.”
India has long been viewed by trade analysts as a protectionist country, with strict control over imports and the scope of foreign corporations, together with a give attention to domestic manufacturing. The country has a trade surplus with many western nations, partly due to a boom in outsourced call centres and IT systems.
The country also imposes conditions on trade which have made it difficult for foreign firms — resembling the fumigation rules it imposed on Canadian peas and lentils in 2017.
The briefing binder Canada’s foreign service prepared for Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu when he took on the job this spring cited each the advantages and pitfalls involved in pursuing more trade with India.
“India offers significant opportunities over the medium term, despite it being a difficult marketplace for exporters,” says the May briefing book.
In that document, Global Affairs Canada accuses India of putting pressure on the worldwide trading order upon which Canada relies, particularly the principles outlined by the World Trade Organization.
“Negotiations of major interest resembling agriculture have long been stalemated. A handful of obstructive members, led by India, routinely block outcomes negotiated and desired by most members,” the binder says concerning the WTO.
Patnaik said India “will do whatever is needed to extend trade” with Canada.
“If we will just change laws and work sector by sector, we would as well do this,” he said.
Patnaik also suggested India wants to maneuver past trade conflicts over issues resembling fumigation and pesticides.
“Trade is largely opening up, not putting barriers. No non-tariff barriers, no sanitary phytosanitary issues,” he said.
He also presented his country as a pluralistic democracy that shares values and extensive diaspora ties with Canada.
The American non-profit Freedom House gives India a rating of 63 per cent for freedoms, citing concerns about discriminatory policies, religious persecution and harassment of civil society groups under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It also says the country is a real multiparty democracy with free and fair elections.
“We’re two democracies with complementary economies, open societies, diversity, pluralism, democracy, rule of law, freedom of press — every little thing that binds us together. And so we needs to be rather more closer,” Patnaik said.
“Let’s find ways of getting an interaction which is rather more intense, rather more strategic, rather more closer than what now we have at present.”