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. 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. There are some business, trade, and other initiatives underway but they are limited and they have the potential to grow more. And the final comment here is that the fact that Prime Minister Modi has placed an emphasis on the North East is important, but the reality is, and I mentioned this before, we are interested in doing more where we haven’t done a lot before. In Delhi and Mumbai we have a very strong presence, and we are fully developed, and there are 170 other ambassadors that we are working with for similar things. When we go up to the NE, to different states, we are welcomed quite a bit there because there’s limited engagement there. So we want to be more in places that we haven’t engaged. So it’s a well thought out, conscious decision on our part to engage with the NE. And it’s a proactive one. 

After a long time, we once again have a direct flight between Delhi and Toronto. Would you see this as an outcome of more reinvigorating engagements between the two nations following the visit of PM Modi to Canada? As an example, following PM Modi’s visit to the US West Coast, now we have a direct flight from Delhi to San Francisco since December 2015.

Here’s what I’ll say. I’ll say Prime Minister Modi’s visit encouraged greater collaboration in terms of business, trade, investment, movement of people, tourism, business traffic, cargo everything. There’s no doubt. But at the same time these decisions are taken on commercial grounds. And so what I’ll say is that the Delhi Toronto flight is a reflection of the confidence that Air Canada has in the Indian market. And by extension it is a reflection that Canadian businesses and Canadians themselves have in the market, because the flights are very successful. They launched the flight in November, and they’ve been doing quite well. And they would not have invested, and we look at this as an investment—the dream liner costs almost 300 million dollars, so it’s an investment of 300 million dollars. So I think that to some extent Prime Minister Modi made it clear that relations are to be strong, but I think it is more of a sign that this confidence in the relationship and the market here, and I talk about the trade numbers and the immigration numbers, and all of that feeds into that. So that’s the first point, success and the confidence in the market. And secondly which you may or may not know, about a week and a half ago, Air Canada announced a second non-stop flight between Vancouver and Delhi, starting in October. This is huge news, and you should make sure that you make a point of that. This will also be a new dreamliner. So if anything, that’s doubling their investment in the market and further reflection of their confidence in the market here. And it’s important to note that if you look at the non-stop flights from India to North America, I believe there’s Air India to San Francisco, Chicago and JFK, there’s United that goes to New York. There’s only a handful of non-stops, two of those are now through Air Canada.