Does Canada Have an India Strategy? Why it Should and What Both Sides Can Gain from Comprehensive Talks

Abstract

After years of an economic relationship that can be described fairly as cool, Canada and India have begun negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Canada’s main interests in the CEPA are to secure transparency and non-discrimination for Canadians in the Indian economy, to take advantage of the efficiencies available from Indian information technology services providers, and to gain greater access to both the Indian and wider Asian markets using India as a platform for regional operations. For India, the strategic priority could be to gain greater access to the US market through Canada, given that a comprehensive US-India bilateral free trade agreement does not seem to be in the cards. A negotiation with Canada could be a second best route to this objective as a strategic signal of India’s potential importance to the North American economies.