As Trudeau investigates India, Canada's trade policy hangs in the balance

financialpost.com:

It was just four months ago that India’s Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal at an event in Toronto hinted at the possibility of inking a trade deal with Canada by the end of this year, providing hopes of breaking a decade-long deadlock between the two countries.

During his three-day visit to Canada in May, Goyal said “tremendous progress” had been made and that a trade agreement by year-end was “certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.” He added that he wished a deal could be reached “much faster.”

Four months later, relations between the two countries could not be more different.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sept. 18 announced that Canada will pursue allegations of a potential link between government of India agents and the killing of a Canadian citizen in this country. As a result, trade deal negotiations seem to have “stopped in their tracks,” as Bob Fay, managing director of digital economy, Centre for International Governance Innovation’s (CIFI), put it.

“More worrisome is what will happen with Canada’s recently launched Indo-Pacific strategy that places India at the core of our engagement in that region,” he said.

Fay said Canada’s decision to investigate links between India and the fatal shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., has effects well beyond trade and includes areas such as the promotion of peace, resilience and security, but added that trade is “intricately linked to these areas.”

Prior to Trudeau’s announcement, it seemed as though the two nations were finally making some progress on a trade deal, something which the countries have been trying to do since talks first began in 2010 under former prime minister