Canada must deepen strategic relations with India, because if it is not at risk of being removed from the democratic alignment that has emerged in the Indo-Pacific region, experts in the bilateral room have emphasized.
“Canada has fallen behind its closest allies, the US and Australia, in building partnerships with India. When Indo-Pacific continues to increase to be important, in the interests of Canada to define the main role for himself with India towards a safer and more prosperous world, “a new commented published by the MacDonald Laurier Think Tank Institute based in Ottawa (MLI), and also displayed in the Canadian daily national post, said.
Opinion, posted on Monday, came from the Head of Foreign Policy & National Security Program MLI Shuvaloy Majumdar and Senior Fellow at the Indian Observer Research Foundation Sameer Patil.
“Bad News”, they noted, was that when US President Joe Biden and other leaders “worked to increase Western cooperation with India, Canada was completely lost in action”. Given the interests of Canadian security in the region, “People will think that Ottawa will bring ambition to the developing relationship between India and the West”. But whether it is related to Quad’s security, consisting of India, US, Australia and Japan, or Aukus, Australian, US and British groups, negotiations for the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF), launched this March, or cooperation with Pacific Island Countries, “Canada is only abandoned from the conversation,” they said.
They added, “With the advanced defense industry and innovation ecosystem, Canada has many things to be offered by India and Indo-Pacific in building the 21st century defense industry base.”Russian attacks on Ukraine “function as a reminder that democracy must assess the security of Indo-Pacific more seriously, in what might be considered on the Pacific side of NATO. The West does not need to wait for a similar crisis to erupt to start building security cooperation with Asian democracy, especially India and Japan, “they argue.
Canada has been working on the new Indo-Pacific strategy since November 2019 and it is expected to be announced later this year. The Special Secretariat has been established by the State Foreign Ministry, Global Affairs Canada, to develop the policy.
When the prime minister of the two countries met directly on the outskirts of the G7 Summit last month in Germany, it was their first meeting in more than four years. The reading of the meeting from the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada said they discussed, among other problems, “cooperation” in the “Indo-Pacific region that was free, open, and inclusive”.