{"id":181269,"date":"2025-10-01T00:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/181269\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T00:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T00:25:09","slug":"canada-and-india-must-put-economics-at-the-heart-of-rapprochement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/181269\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada and India must put economics at the heart of rapprochement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech at the India-Japan Economic Forum in Tokyo on Aug. 29.Issei Kato\/Reuters<\/p>\n

John Stackhouse is senior vice-president in Royal Bank of Canada\u2019s Office of the CEO.<\/p>\n

An India-Canada<\/a> reset is underway, and this time it will require a lot more than handshakes. <\/p>\n

Two years ago, Justin Trudeau<\/a> sent relations between the two countries reeling. He publicly indicated the Indian government may have been involved in the murder of a Canadian Sikh activist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey, B.C., creating the biggest bilateral crisis since India tested a nuclear bomb in 1998. <\/p>\n

The two governments expelled diplomats, froze a range of visa services and suspended trade negotiations. Then came Donald Trump<\/a> and a new age of America First that put every other foreign policy second.<\/p>\n

This week, the Carney and Modi governments began in earnest a difficult rapprochement that will require some compromise by both. More importantly, it will require them to declare what their mutual interests are, rather than their shared values, in an increasingly divided world.<\/p>\n

Sikh separatist arrested as Canada smooths ties with India<\/a><\/p>\n

Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> himself opened the door to an interests-based policy when he invited Narendra Modi to the G7 in Alberta, in June. Mr. Modi, who was never enamoured with Mr. Trudeau, seized the olive branch.<\/p>\n

The two governments quickly appointed new high commissioners and re-engaged on security issues, particularly over the Nijjar case, which they both want to prevent from dominating bilateral relations. <\/p>\n

This week, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand and her Indian counterpart, S. Jaishankar, met at the United Nations, ahead of an expected visit to India this fall by Ms. Anand. And Ottawa quickly moved to action, labelling India\u2019s Bishnoi gang a \u201cterrorist organization,\u201d which will help both countries better police the rise of Indian-based criminal activity in Canada.<\/p>\n

All that is good news for those wanting to restore an active partnership, especially for trade and investment. But it won\u2019t be a simple channel-change back to a normalized relationship, as the two countries are on different economic, social and geopolitical wavelengths. They\u2019ll have to find some strategic points of interest.<\/p>\n

As Canada returns to India, it will need to navigate a more confident and independent power. Canada also needs to recognize that a decade of bilateral opportunities was either lost, or fell short. And in that decade, India has changed significantly. <\/p>\n

India silent on how Canada\u2019s terrorist listing of Bishnoi gang will affect warming ties<\/a><\/p>\n

It has achieved the highest nominal GDP growth among major global economies, while household incomes have nearly doubled, led by rural communities. As the world\u2019s most populous country, India now sees itself as an economic and political power for the mid-century. It\u2019s also quickly becoming one of the world\u2019s most advanced digital nations, with its Aadhaar biometric ID system now covering more than 90 per cent of the population. <\/p>\n

In that decade, Canada added \u2013 officially \u2013 500,000 people of Indian origin, making South Asia now the largest source of this country\u2019s immigration. <\/p>\n

Those two dynamics \u2013 rising India and diverse Canada \u2013 will require a fine balance.<\/p>\n

Mr. Carney, so far, has managed to rise above local politics to put Canadian interests at the centre of that balancing act. His government has signalled that a new chapter of India policy will focus first on economic issues, including better guardrails to ensure those interests are protected from diaspora politics.<\/p>\n

A more interests-based policy will need to strengthen commercial ties. Over the past five years, India has become a strategic option for many Canadians (and others) shifting away from China. Even as relations with India chilled and then froze, interest among major investors heated up. Between 2019 and 2023, Canadian pension funds directed 25 per cent of their investment flows to India, up from 10 per cent over the previous 15 years, as the country overtook China to become the second largest destination for Canadian pension funds, behind only the U.S.<\/p>\n

Ontario Teachers\u2019 Pension Plan has been at the forefront, investing over the past year in infrastructure (the National Highways Trust), vehicle finance (Kogta) and AI (Darwinbox). Brookfield has been equally active, buying up clean energy assets and telecom sites and, in late September, signing a US$1-billion partnership with GIC, a government-owned insurance company, to manage more than five million square feet of office space in three major cities, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.<\/p>\n

Canada, India appoint new envoys in sign of improving relations<\/a><\/p>\n

In trade, India has gone from Canada\u2019s 16th largest partner in 2008 to 10th in 2015 to 7th last year.<\/p>\n

The same can\u2019t be said about Canada, which ranks only 30th for India. Bilateral trade reached $31-billion in 2024, compared to $117-billion with China. The decline in international students will further slow that progress, as Canada\u2019s perceived closed-door policy has tarnished our reputation across a generation of educated Indian youth. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s not the only reason Ms. Anand\u2019s quest to restart trade negotiations may require patience. An increasingly confident India \u2013 and confident Mr. Modi \u2013 will not compromise easily, especially over issues like intellectual property rights, which India has long viewed as a form of Western colonialism. <\/p>\n

Those differences aside, the two countries have unique and deep ties, largely through the Indo-Canadian population. Going forward, India will want a more mature relationship, based on interests, especially economic interests. Canada can pursue greater opportunities, too, from heavy oil and liquefied natural gas to advanced manufacturing and space technologies. <\/p>\n

A renewed relationship will require both countries to recognize what they bring to each other. It can also stress what they can achieve through alliances and multilateral groups. Both Ms. Anand and Mr. Jaishankar rooted their UN addresses this week in the need for multilateralism in an America First world. India, as a rising second-tier power, and Canada, as a challenged middle power, can both find strength in collective efforts.<\/p>\n

Fifty years ago, in 1975, India-Canada relations hit their lowest point after Indira Gandhi\u2019s government tested a nuclear bomb the year before and then declared a state of emergency. The relationship didn\u2019t recover until Jean Chr\u00e9tien travelled to India in 1996.<\/p>\n

For both countries, too much is at stake for another long winter of discontent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech at the India-Japan Economic Forum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,44,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-181269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-news","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}