The Minister of Civil Aviation has said that they look forward to working with foreign partners to develop its industry. So the MoU allows us to share policy expertise, share best practices, and bring technology and companies to the table that can help grow civil aviation infrastructure—everything from airports to runways to airplanes to new routes to passenger systems to security at airports, everything. Similarly, with rail, we look at companies like Bombardier that specialize in rail cars, signaling systems, entire infrastructure. There are a number of other companies that focus on smart cities and urban infrastructure design that includes rail, metros, and subways. We feel that Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu is extremely dynamic and playing a strong leadership role in developing this sector. And Canada can be a central player in this regard. 

Under your charge and stewardship in India, Canada has enhanced its engagement with the Eastern and North Eastern parts of India. What is the nature of this engagement?

The nature for us right now is exploratory in the context of opportunities where we can help develop the north east but also help develop Canada and Canadian companies. For example, we have had a couple of delegations going up to the north east provinces, to key states to get an idea of what are the needs in terms of infrastructure, in terms of education, in terms of urban development, water, irrigation, transports, airports. Because there is quite a bit that needs to be done there, we can play a role. Secondly, in terms of the relationship building, I think, it’s an opportunity for us to do more. I recently met with the chief secretary of Arunachal Pradesh. We talked quite a bit about hydroelectricity, about clean energy development, about environmental safeguards, about transportation infrastructure development.

DREAM RUN: During H.E. Patel’s tenure, Air Canada introduced a direct flight between Delhi and Toronto (November 2015). An announcement has been made to introduce another one between Vancouver and Delhi in October 2016. Canada’s sizeable investment of about CAD 600 million in two dreamliner aircraft is a reflection of its long term business interest in India

We are also looking at investment opportunities, I mentioned earlier. The magnitude of investment from Canada to India is rising dramatically and some of those are in large scale infrastructure projects. So right now your question is ‘how do you characterize that’, I’d say that we are interested in engaging in the North East. Secondly, we are at the exploratory stage of what the opportunities are.