India pushes renewed trade talks with Canada

Canada and India are quietly setting the stage to reboot formal free trade talks as the Trudeau government seeks economic alternatives to China following the dispute over the Meng Wanzhou-two Michaels affair.

Trade negotiators from both countries have held four “consultative meetings” in the last year via video, and the most recent one in October saw the two sides trade preliminary proposals, said Anshuman Gaur, India’s deputy high commissioner to Canada.

“They talked about the approaches and the possible path forward,” he said in an interview this past week. The renewed engagement is a result of India’s aggressive new trade policy, dubbed “early harvest,” which has seen the country attempt to make incremental steps toward full-scale free trade deals with Britain, the European Union, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and now Canada.

It also comes as the federal government emerges from the aftermath of its three-year diplomatic deep freeze with China after Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig were recently returned safely to Canada. They spent more than 1,000 days in Chinese prisons in what is widely viewed as retaliation for the RCMP’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on an American extradition warrant in 2018. Canada is seeking to lessen its economic dependence on China and diversify into new Asian markets by launching trade talks with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.