Energy and critical minerals will be the cornerstone of new trade ties between India and Canada, a top Canadian minister said, as the two countries rekindle their relationship after a prolonged diplomatic rift.
India’s expected growth in energy demand is a “great opportunity” for the North American nation, which holds large supplies of oil, gas and critical minerals, Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson told Bloomberg Television at the India Energy Week in Goa on Wednesday.
“We produce 6% of the world’s oil today and India gets less than 1% of its oil from Canada,” he said. Increasing that share to a more reasonable level would make both countries stronger, more resilient and secure, he added.
India and Canada first clashed in 2023 when former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of orchestrating the assassination of Canadian citizen and Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. After years of strained relations, the two sides are now open to cooperating again as US President Donald Trump ramps up economic pressure on them.
“We used to be in a world where we sought to integrate with our closest trading partners, and we now find that that integration is used for coercion” or tariffs are used to gain leverage, Hodgson said. Canada now needs to “rewire its economy” and build relationships beyond those with its neighbors, he said.
Canadian officials are liaising with international partners to create new frameworks for critical minerals trade, including to facilitate off-take agreements and strategic stockpiling. That could include providing its “highest quality” uranium to help India achieve its goal of building 100 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2047.
India could also benefit from the ample LNG supplies that Canada can now provide through its 12 million-ton-a-year plant that started production in June, and which is expected to grow to a capacity of 50 million tons. Companies like Shell PLC, Petronas, Korea Gas Corp. and China’s CNOOC Ltd. “find our LNG to be competitively priced.”
“Today, bilateral trade between Canada and India is only $30 billion,” Hodgson said separately in a panel discussion at the event, adding that Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney expects that to double by the end of the decade.
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