India’s new High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik, is calling on Ottawa to set aside plans for a scaled-down trade pact and pursue a full-fledged trade and investment agreement with the world’s most populous country. In a candid interview, Patnaik also urged Canadian businesses to deepen their engagement with India immediately rather than waiting for governments to formalize a deal.
“We are more interested in a comprehensive package than something with low ambition. We want a higher ambition,” Patnaik said. “A trade deal is something we should not wait for. We should start getting whatever we can, the early gains.”
Canada and India have been in on-and-off negotiations since 2010, but talks were abruptly halted in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi of involvement in the assassination of a Sikh activist in Surrey, B.C. Relations have since thawed under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government, with Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand’s recent trip to India producing a joint statement on “renewing momentum towards a stronger partnership.”
Patnaik said that despite diplomatic “hiccups,” trade between the two countries hasn’t declined — though it has never reached its full potential. He argued that Canada should align its trade ambitions with India’s broader economic trajectory.
Before the freeze in relations, Canada had shifted from negotiating a comprehensive deal to pursuing a narrower Early Progress Trade Agreement (EPTA). Patnaik, however, made clear that India prefers to negotiate across all sectors — from agriculture and manufacturing to education, technology, and cultural industries.
“I don’t want to reduce trade to only buying and selling, but to this larger economic framework where we have investments, where we have human resource collaborations, scientific research, innovation, high technology — everything,” he said.
Since 2010, India has inked trade deals with the U.K., Australia, and the UAE, and is nearing an agreement with the European Union. Patnaik suggested Canada has fallen behind its peers by pausing talks. “If, probably, the trade talks with Canada would not have been paused, we probably would have had a trade agreement with Canada,” he said. “We are moving forward with the rest of the world, and we do not want to have a lesser ambition with Canada.”
Patnaik also signaled India’s willingness to move past past trade disputes, including fumigation and pesticide rules that previously strained agricultural exports. “Trade is basically opening up, not putting barriers. No non-tariff barriers, no sanitary phytosanitary issues,” he said, adding that both nations share democratic values, diversity, and strong diaspora ties.
“Let’s find ways of having an interaction which is much more intense, much more strategic, much more closer than what we have at present,” Patnaik concluded.