India and Canada are well beyond reset now, says Canadian High Commissioner to India
Three years after India-Canada ties were blown apart by allegations that Indian officials were involved in the killing of a Khalistani activist in Canada, and
Three years after India-Canada ties were blown apart by allegations that Indian officials were involved in the killing of a Khalistani activist in Canada, and New Delhi and Ottawa downsized missions and sent back High Commissioners, both sides celebrated restoring embassies back to full strength this week. In a wide-ranging conversation at The Hindu MIND event moderated by Suhasini Haidar, Canadian High Commissioner to India Christopher Cooter said the two countries have now gone well beyond a reset in ties. He also confirmed that they are discussing a bilateral visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada this December, when the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) will be announced. Mr. Cooter, however, sidestepped questions about whether Canada owes India an apology for the public allegations that spurred the rift. Edited excerpts Suhasini Haidar: You took charge of India-Canada ties at a time when relations hit rock bottom. Would you call yourself the reset ambassador? It’s taken us some time to get here. It’s been over a year since Prime Minister Modi was invited to the G7 summit at Kananaskis in Alberta. But we have built momentum. I happened to arrive at the time that we started this reset, and now we have gone well beyond a reset. We are in a kind of dangerous time globally. We have two very hot wars going on (the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the West Asia conflict). We’ve got trade disruptions going on. We’ve got climate change. We’ve got AI, the challenge and opportunity. And it happens to be that this period in which we are re-establishing our relationship is the one that works the best for us. In all of the 80 years or so that we have had diplomatic relations, I don’t think we have ever had an environment which draws us together in that same way.
Suhasini Haidar: Do you see a big announcement round the corner? Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading to North America in December for the G20 summit in the U.S. Do you expect his first bilateral visit in more than a decade this year? Yes, a continuing string of events over the last year will culminate this year, we expect, in the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Canada. The two Prime Ministers, when Prime Minister [Mark] Carney came here in March, set out this kind of road map in a joint statement. I think it has 50 or more deliverables and we are trying to fulfil those commitments. There are commercial deals in the offing. There’s a broader range of areas where we are doing things together, for example, in defence. So, it’ll become a bit more tangible to the average person. In October, we have the largest trade mission coming to Mumbai and Bengaluru. Suhasini Haidar: Have Canada-India trade relations been spurred by the Donald Trump administration’s actions? And will the push remain once Canada and the U.S. sort out their problems and go back to normal? A lot of people ask that question. The Canada-U.S. trade deal is a negotiation and there’s no question we will get there at some point. Mr. Trump is a hard bargainer. Well, so are we. That’s why the Prime Minister pulled out of talks that were going to produce a deal that wasn’t good enough for us. The pressures that we are getting from the U.S., yes, have accelerated certain things in Canada, but already Canada was shifting. The polling, the recent byelections we had, all demonstrate that across the country, from one end to the other, Canadians actually support the direction that we are taking. We can see that we had too many eggs in one basket.
We don’t want that degree of dependence. We want to diversify. And I think it will be good for India and the relationship with India because at the top, at the political level, the two Prime Ministers have a good chemistry. They have met four times over the last year. There’s a lot of political eye-to-eye view at this point. I think even if there were changes in government, that would survive this. Sharad Raghavan: Can you estimate what level of progress we are at on the trade deal? What are the sticking points? Canada is the ninth biggest economy in the world. India is the fourth biggest, and we should have a lot more trade. While the trade itself is rather modest, we generate a lot of employment and investment. Canadian pension funds and other big institutional investors have invested about $80 billion (U.S. dollars) in India. That makes us, along with Singapore and the UAE, the largest investors in your country, which is kind of funny – little, tiny countries in this big country, and we are the biggest investors. There are some tax issues, but generally speaking, they (Canadian investors) are very bullish on India. On the CEPA, the free trade agreement, we are now going to have the fourth round of discussions here in Delhi in a few days’ time. Previously, we discussed for 12 years, and we got no trade agreement. This time, we started in March 2026. We’ve probably done more in these six months than we did in those 12 years. That looks like pretty good math. Our hope is that we get there by the time of a Modi visit to Canada, which would mean achieving this in about nine months [since March]. That’s like a child – we hope this is a really nice baby.
Varghese K. George: In which sectors could India and Canada enhance their bilateral cooperation in trade and meet the $1-trillion investment goal? Canada has huge amounts of natural resources and technology that would be very apt in the Indian setting. Take nuclear, for example. We have been cooperating on nuclear since the 1950s. So, most of your reactors are based on Canadian CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) models. Eighteen of India’s 24 reactors are actually CANDU-based. We are looking at different types of technologies, different kinds of reactors, smaller ones, medium-sized ones, and then the whole cycle, right up to the decommissioning of other plants. I mean, we have got the things that you actually need, like energy. Canada is the fourth largest producer of oil, fifth largest in LPG, fifth largest in LNG. We have 20% of the world’s tungsten. We are No. 1 in potash, No. 2 or 3 in titanium. We are the only G7 country that can produce batteries for EVs (electric vehicles). Saptaparno Ghosh: Why has the hydrocarbon trade between the two countries not really picked up? On fossil fuels, what Canada lacks, which the U.S. has, is enough west coast ports. India has got some Canadian oil through the Gulf ports of the U.S. as well, but we have just completed the TMX (Trans Mountain Expansion Project) pipeline in 2024, and it can produce about 9,00,000 to 1,000,000 barrels a day now, and that’s coming out in Vancouver. Vancouver is a little bit shallow for some of the largest ships, so we’ve got to look at getting deep water ports. We have just announced another pipeline project that will go to deep water, and that will allow us to really have economies of scale, which we don’t have yet on the west coast of Canada for India.
The BriefWire