Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada is a changed man after receiving COVID-19 vaccines from India. According to media reports, Canada is now looking to mend ties with India by asking for a mini-trade deal which has been left hanging in the balance for the last four years.
“We have held several rounds of virtual discussions with the Canadian side since June last year. In October, a bilateral meeting was held to explore the option of an early harvest or interim agreement. In this regard, a scoping paper has been shared with the Canadian side. A formal round of negotiations is likely to happen sometime in late April,” a commerce ministry official told Livemint.
The two sides have been negotiating a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) since 2010 with the latest round of negotiations last held in August 2017 as the Modi administration started giving Ottawa a cold shoulder for its leader Justin Trudeau’s erratic behaviour and a shambolic trip to India.
However, Canada is expected to go the extra distance this time around to placate New Delhi after Trudeau unceremoniously meddled into India’s internal affairs by commenting on the farmers’ protests.
Trudeau forced to plead to India for the vaccine
As reported by TFI earlier, the vaccine program of Canada of jabbing every single citizen by September 2021 had fallen way behind after the supply of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine had stopped for the last week of January and reduced to 50 per cent capacity for the month of February.
Read more: Trudeau has chosen to let Canadians die due to Covid-19 rather than asking PM Modi for vaccines
When Conservative party leader Michelle Rempel exposed the Trudeau government for keeping its ego at the front and putting the lives of millions of ordinary Canadians in danger — some sense finally prevailed in Canada’s Liberal PM as he finally turned towards Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February for the COVID-19 vaccine– much to the chagrin of the Khalistani elements who had been pressurising Trudeau to sever ties with New Delhi.
After Trudeau requested New Delhi for the vaccine, PM Modi took to Twitter to state, “Was happy to receive a call from my friend @JustinTrudeau. Assured him that India would do its best to facilitate supplies of COVID vaccines sought by Canada. We also agreed to continue collaborating on other important issues like Climate Change and the global economic recovery.”
Was happy to receive a call from my friend @JustinTrudeau. Assured him that India would do its best to facilitate supplies of COVID vaccines sought by Canada. We also agreed to continue collaborating on other important issues like Climate Change and the global economic recovery.
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) February 10, 2021
It is pertinent to note that India has been delivering home-grown, indigenously developed COVID vaccines around the world and yet PM Modi never took to Twitter to announce a single one of the endeavours. However, when it came to the conversation with Trudeau, the PM lead from the front and tweeted the portions of the talk instantly — suggesting New Delhi was sending a message to the Khalistan lovers that despite all the rhetorics, it is India that has had the last laugh.
In fact, Trudeau has taken such a sharp U-turn that he could not stop singing praises for India and the leadership of PM Modi. Trudeau stated that if the world manages to conquer the pandemic, it would be significant because of India’s tremendous pharmaceutical capacity, and PM Modi’s leadership in sharing this capacity with the rest of the world.
The fact that Canada is now looking forward to signing the trade deal means that Trudeau is going beyond the diktat issued by the Khalistan members in his cabinet. However, it needs to be seen for how long Trudeau’s ‘change of heart lasts’. On numerous occasions in the past, he has taken a similar volte-face, only to fall back into the lap of Khalistanis and their vile ideology. Hopefully, the debt of India’s vaccine diplomacy forces him to not relapse into his old behaviour, this time around.