Anand ties India trade talks with restoring Canada’s full cohort of diplomats

CTV’s Colton Praill says the foreign affair minister’s trip to India is ‘ambitious’ and is an attempt to move forward after years of tense relations.

OTTAWA - Canada will not consider reopening trade talks with India until New Delhi allows the return of Canada’s full cohort of diplomats, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said Tuesday.

“The approach that we are following is a step-by-step approach, to be prudent along the way,” Anand told reporters in a video conference from Mumbai -- two years after India forced Ottawa to send most of its envoys home.

Anand met Monday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and senior government officials. She was invited to be the first Canadian cabinet minister to visit India after the diplomatic relationship soured in 2023.

During her visit, the two countries signed a statement outlining areas where they want to co-operate, including trade and artificial intelligence.

Canada and India expelled each other’s senior diplomats last fall after the RCMP accused New Delhi of playing a role in a network of violence linked to domestic homicides and acts of extortion.

In September 2023, the federal government accused New Delhi of playing a role in the assassination of a Sikh activist near Vancouver earlier that year.

Anand said the reset of diplomatic relations with India will happen only gradually. She said Ottawa needs to see its diplomatic presence restored before it considers a trade mission or revives talks on a possible trade deal, which have ebbed and flowed since 2010.

“It means first and foremost, ensuring that the consular and the diplomatic positions are filled. That means that law enforcement will (hold) dialogue across the two countries,” she said.

“This is not the time to start these (trade deal) conversations without progress on the other issues,” she added in French.

Canada removed most of its diplomats from India in October 2023 after New Delhi threatened to strip diplomatic immunity from 41 Canadians and their 42 dependants.

Canada and India both appointed new high commissioners in August.

A spokesperson from Global Affairs Canada said the department had “nothing to add to Anand’s comments at this time” when asked how many Canadian diplomats are now accredited to India.

Anand said she raised the matter of restoring Canada’s diplomatic cohort with her Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

“We both agreed that we would staff up as we had been before, in order to service our respective populations,” she said.

“We want to make sure that they have the resources to service the population wanting to obtain visas, and wanting to travel between the two countries.”

Anand said continuing closed-doors talks on security are another prerequisite for deepening trade ties. Canadian officials have said those security discussions are helping to address concerns about transnational repression, without allowing inflammatory comments on this issue to dominate the relationship.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada said Monday it is “deeply concerned” by the fact the joint statement between Canada and India offered “no assurances about stopping foreign interference or transnational repression.”

When asked about those concerns -- and specifically about Sikh separatists in Canada organizing another unofficial referendum on carving a Sikh state out of India -- Anand would not get into details of her conversation with Modi but said he did not bring up the referendum.

“I raised, at all points, issues relating to transnational repression, issues relating to the safety and security of every Canadian citizen and the importance of an independent legal investigation,” she said. “This has been top of mind for me in every conversation, and I never hesitate to raise the importance of it.”

Half of the Canadians who responded to a recent Angus Reid Institute poll, jointly paid for by the Asia Pacific Foundation, said restoring diplomatic ties with India was “the right move,” while 27 per cent were unsure and 22 per cent said they were opposed.

The survey found that 38 per cent of Canadians say India is “as good a trade partner as any,” while 34 per cent said India is a country they “wish Canada would trade with less” and 28 per cent said they were unsure.

Because the survey - which ran from Sept. 25-29 - was conducted online, it can’t be assigned a margin of error.

Before leaving India, Anand also met with Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal, who said he had a “productive discussion” last Saturday with Canada’s Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu.

Sidhu said the two countries can collaborate on clean technology, agriculture and critical minerals, while Goyal said trade and investment “should be grounded in the principles of mutual respect, trust and balance.”

Sidhu’s briefing binder, prepared by Global Affairs Canada in May, says India has contributed to problems in the global trading order on which Canada relies, particularly the rules outlined by the World Trade Organization.

“Negotiations of major interest such as agriculture have long been stalemated. A handful of obstructive members, led by India, routinely block outcomes negotiated and desired by most members,” the binder reads.

Anand is off to Singapore later this week to discuss trade. Canada is in talks on a trade agreement with a regional bloc called the Association of South East Asian Nations.

Both sides aimed to finalize a deal this year but Anand’s office said the goal is now “to conclude negotiations as soon as possible in 2026.”

After Singapore, Anand will head to China to meet with her counterpart Wang Yi. It’s part of the Carney government’s efforts “to regularize channels of communication between the two countries,” Anand’s office wrote in a news release.

The polling industry’s professional body, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

By Dylan Robertson.