The India-Canada trade deal will be ready by the end of the year, Canadian High Commissioner Christopher Cooter told The Hindu, adding that the two countries are planning for their increased engagement this year to culminate in a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada in December.
Speaking at The Hindu Mind in New Delhi, Mr. Cooter said that India and Canada had ample opportunities to invest in each other, saying that bilateral investment could scale up to $1 trillion.
He did, however, point out that India could ease some tax and regulatory issues to spur further investment, something Canada was engaging with the Union Finance Ministry on.
“Previously, we discussed for 12 years, and we got no trade agreement,” Mr. Cooter said. “This time, we started in March 2026. We’ve probably done more in these six months than we did in those 12 years.”
“Our hope is that we get there by the time of a Modi visit to Canada, which would mean achieving this in about nine months [since March],” he added. “That’s like a child — we hope this is a really nice baby. I’m pretty confident the trade deal will be agreed to by the end of the year.”
Big investments
Mr. Cooter acknowledged that while trade between India and Canada is currently small (about US$8 billion), the investment relationship between the two countries is a strong one, with a large space to grow.
“So, you actually provide good employment for 100,000 Canadians in Canada through Indian investment in Canada,” Mr. Cooter said. “The other part of the story is that, while trade itself is rather small, the pension funds and other big institutional investors have about $100-110 billion Canadian dollars or $80 billion U.S. dollars in investment in India.”
This, he said, placed Canada among the largest investors in India, along with Singapore and the UAE.
“But the difference with Canadian investment is that our investment through these institutional investors is also direct investment,” Mr. Cooter explained.
“We estimate that no less than 75% of all our investment through those funds is in physical assets. And no other country has that,” he added. “And I think it’s actually higher than that. So, those create not just tens of thousands, those create hundreds of thousands of jobs directly and indirectly.”
Bigger potential
Looking ahead, Mr. Cooter noted that most of Canada’s mining assets were abroad, but “virtually none” of them were in India.
“If you were to deregulate, I am pretty certain that our many hundreds of Canadian mining companies would come in here, start exploring, start mining, helping with processing, technology, etc,” he said. “That’s an example where we might invest in your country.”
“And you might invest in, let’s say, a tungsten mine in Canada because tungsten is useful for your defence industry,” Mr. Cooter added. “We’ve got the things that you actually need, like energy. We’re the fourth largest in oil, fifth largest in LPG, and fifth largest in LNG. We have 20% of the world’s potash and number 2 or 3 in titanium.”
He emphasised that Canadian funds and companies were eager to invest more in India and that there were some issues that India could address to enable that.
“There are some tax issues,” Mr. Cooter said. “They’re not major tax issues. That’s a discussion we are having now with the Finance Ministry in particular. There are things that slow the investment a little bit. You could take some more steps to deregulate. That would actually make the environment for Canadian investment even better.”
But generally speaking, he said that Canadian investors were “very bullish” on India and would like to do more here.
Published – September 10, 2026 08:31 pm IST
