India-Canada relations are going down with each passing day as both the countries have expelled the diplomats followed by the issuance of advisories.

Canada issued an advisory to its citizens on September 18 asking them to exercise a high degree of caution across India. It also asked to avoid all non-essential travel to north-eastern states and avoid all travel to Jammu and Kashmir and border areas with Pakistan.

Advertisement

Later, the Indian government came up with an advisory for its citizens urging them to exercise extreme caution in Canada, in view of the politically condoned hate crimes and criminal violence in Canada.

This comes as a worry for the tourism sector. In the recent past, Indians have been expanding their horizons for tourism as the middle class expands.

Amid the Russia-Ukraine war, flight connectivity is already hit as the airspace is not being used by Western carriers. Air India continues to use Russian airspace. However, all carriers actively avoid Ukrainian airspace.

According to reports, more than 6,00,000 passengers traveled between India and Canada last year.

Direct flights carried 82,309 passengers to India from Canada, while over 91,000 passengers flew to Canada from India in the second quarter of 2023.

A daily flight to Vancouver and Toronto from New Delhi is operated by Air India while Air Canada operates a daily flight to New Delhi from Toronto and four weekly from Montreal to New Delhi.

Winter is the high season for the route when NRIs spend time in India to avoid the harsher climate of Canada and they return to Canada before summer starts in India.

Last year, both countries revised the Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) that makes it open skies. India is the fourth-largest market for Canada, but Air Canada has not been able to mount additional flights as it has to avoid Russian airspace since February 2022, while Air India flies over Russia.

No other airline apart from Air India has the readiness or aircraft to serve the India-Canada market non-stop.

Air India would have a lot of plans to increase flights to Canada from New Delhi as well as add flights from other points in India. But the current incidents may hold it back.

It is to be noted that both the countries have good business relations. As per the Ministry of Commerce data, India exported goods worth USD 4,109.75 million in 2022-23, which stood at 0.91% of the total exports.

India’s imports from Canada were at USD 4,051.29 million, which is 0.57% of the total imports.

There has been a growth of 18% in total trade over the previous financial year.