Energy-hungry India tells Carney 'we are willing to buy whatever Canada is offering'

India wants to buy any energy product it can from Canada and its officials are urging the federal government to streamline approvals for various projects so it can tap into new supplies to feed a rapidly growing country with relatively few natural resources of its own.

That's the message India's high commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik, relayed in an interview with CBC News before Prime Minister Mark Carney left for a five-day visit to the country. It's a trip that will be laser-focused on cutting new business deals and getting negotiations for a free trade agreement underway as part of a push to diversify from the American market.

"On energy, there is an appetite which even Canada cannot fulfill and we are willing to buy whatever Canada is offering on crude, on LPG, on LNG," Patnaik said, referring to oil and gas products.

Patnaik said turbocharging the trading relationship will help the two countries turn the page on years of bilateral bad blood.

Relations between the two countries have been frosty since former prime minister Justin Trudeau accused unnamed Indian agents of involvement in the 2023 killing of a Canadian Sikh separatist. India denies any involvement.

But things have improved markedly since Carney invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 in Alberta last year.

It was there that the two leaders agreed to pursue a comprehensive economic agreement that is expected to move a few steps closer to reality in the coming days as the two leaders come face-to-face again in Delhi.

"It's going to all come together so energy can redefine our relationship completely. Up until now, what we have been doing is just a drop in the bucket," Patnaik said.

That message was echoed by Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who has long been an advocate for closer trade ties with the Indo-Pacific economic powerhouse given just how much energy and agricultural products his province has that India wants to buy.

"Politics aside, at the end of the day, we've had some challenges in those relationships over the course of the better part of the last decade under the previous prime minister," said Moe.

"We have a prime minister now that is focused on advancing those trade relations."

To that end, Patnaik said India is interested in getting its hands on a lot more Canadian uranium in particular to power its growing nuclear sector.

India operates 25 reactors with eight more under construction. The government there is targeting a tenfold increase in nuclear capacity from roughly 8.7 gigawatts now to 100 gigawatts by 2047 — and Canada, as the world's second-largest uranium producer with huge proven high-grade deposits in Saskatchewan, could help achieve that ambition, Patnaik said.

"We are willing to take whatever," the high commissioner said, adding Indian companies are open to ownership stakes in Canadian uranium mines and buying more of this country's world-leading nuclear technology.