India's High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik, told reporters that a visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada before the year closes is all but arranged, adding that Prime Minister Mark Carney had given his confirmation to the plan.

Patnaik, speaking to Marc-Andre Cossette on the Open Question programme, said that Modi was expected to travel to Canada before the year's end — a visit he described as reflecting how the two countries' ties had grown into a notably active and stronger partnership.

Published on October 9, that interview coincides with a Team Canada Trade Mission to India scheduled for October 12 through 17, during which Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu will head a delegation of close to 300 participants across stops in Mumbai and Bengaluru. The delegation dispatched to India stands as the most extensive trade mission the country has mounted in more than three decades, according to government statements.

In the interview, Patnaik mentioned that trip, noting Sidhu was set to travel the following month alongside a large Canadian delegation.

The envoy expressed confidence that talks on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) had advanced to a point where a deal could be wrapped up within a year of the framework's launch — a starting point he placed at 21 November, when the two Prime Ministers held discussions on the margins of the G20 in Johannesburg. He noted that negotiations had reached a high level of collaboration, that the agreement stood to rank among the fastest concluded with any partner country, and that a decade of prior engagement with Canada had laid groundwork that was now accelerating progress.

Patnaik noted that a higher degree of mutual trust between the parties had allowed negotiations to move at a quicker pace. Within a five-year window, the two parties have set a shared target of pushing combined trade flows to $70 billion — roughly double the current volume.

Patnaik outlined a preference for eliminating tariffs under the agreement, pointing to sectors such as textiles, leather, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals where duties exist that other trading partners do not impose, and added that there was an appetite on the Indian side to purchase goods from Canada. He expressed an interest in purchasing oil, gas, and agricultural food products, noting that uranium procurement from India was already under way.

Beyond tariffs, he drew attention to non-tariff obstacles — among them sanitary and phytosanitary requirements, rules of origin, and customs paperwork — noting that talks on those matters were under way. On the energy front, the official expressed a desire to purchase additional crude oil, along with increased volumes of LNG and LPG — covering both butane and propane — from the other party.

Patnaik said his concerns about Canada were rooted in the country's infrastructure shortcomings — specifically its pipelines, port facilities, and liquefaction terminals — which raised questions about whether energy deliveries could be made on schedule, and he made clear that no deal would hold value unless there was genuine confidence in the ability to honour supply commitments. Pointing to the projects office and the pace at which legislation had moved through, he described the country under Prime Minister Mark Carney as having undergone a transformation.

Patnaik described Canada as a gateway into the North American market for India, pointing to its proximity to the United States, while characterising India as an economy of close to $4 trillion that he projected would grow to around $25 trillion by 2047, and noting that Canada holds the position of a major energy producer.

Over the past year, the two countries' foreign ministers — Jaishankar on the Indian side and Anand representing Canada — held more than a dozen face-to-face encounters, according to that account.

Ties between the two nations deteriorated in 2023 after Trudeau, who was prime minister at the time, raised the possibility that agents connected to the Indian government had played a role in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist figure. The characterisation was flatly dismissed by Indian officials as having no basis in fact.