A Grizzly In The Room

Prime Minister Modi and Canadian Premier, Justin Trudeau, to steer past roadblocks towards greater economic cooperation.

- Manoj Ladwa

THE MUCH ANTICIPATED Narendra Modi bear hug and welcome tweet took their time coming. These by now, signature Modi welcome rituals for visiting foreign leaders were delayed, experts and the media in both countries and, indeed, most of the free world speculated, toindicate India’s displeasure at Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party’s alleged soft corner for Khalistani separatism.

India, long known for hectoring the world on moral and ideological issues, had learnt, under the Modi “doctrine”, to make a hard point with stony silence and a beaming smile. Little wonder then that the joint statement issued after the two-hour-long Modi-Trudeau meeting on 23 February, which by all accounts was held in a cordial atmosphere, focused in large measure on combating terrorism.

The underperforming economic relationship also received a boost. Bilateral merchandise trade between two of the world’s largest economies — India is the world’s sixth largest and Canada the tenth largest — with a combined GDP of about $4 trillionis a paltry $8.3 billion, according to figures from Statistics Canada. That’s a minuscule 0.2 per cent of all goods and services produced in these two countries. Compare that with Canada’s trade volume of almost $2 billion a day with the US and India’s $74-billion annual trade with the US and the difference will stand out starkly.

Both sides have made sporadic attempts in the past to push bilateral trade and investment into a higher growth trajectory but a mismatch of expectations and the domestic political compulsions of the current Canadian government have proved to be roadblocks.