Toronto: Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who also holds the finance portfolio, will travel to India this week to attend the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meetings in Bengaluru.
The Department of Finance Canada announced that she will be in India from February 23 to 25. “At these meetings, the Deputy Prime Minister will work with Canada’s international partners to address global challenges, including the economic impacts of Putin’s illegal war, elevated inflation, climate change, international tax fairness, and global sovereign debt challenges,” a release said
“These meetings are an opportunity for Canada to work with our allies and partners to address the most pressing economic issues facing people in Canada and around the world today,” Freeland was quoted as saying.
This will be Freeland’s first official visit to India in nearly five years. Then Canada’s foreign minister, she had accompanied Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his bilateral trip to India in February 2018.
Senior Indian and Canadian officials said a bilateral meeting between Freeland and Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the margins of the meetings is expected. That dialogue is “quite certain”, an Indian official said.
If it does occur, that will be the first bilateral between the finance ministers in either country since September 2016, when the then incumbents, the late Arun Jaitley and Bill Morneau, met in Toronto.
The two ministers had also met in Toronto in September 2016, when Sitharaman was the Commerce and Industry Minister and Freeland was Canada’s Minister of International Trade.
Freeland will also mark the one-year anniversary of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. “In partnership with Canada’s allies, the Deputy Prime Minister will work to ensure continued support for Ukraine, and to hold Russia accountable for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s assault on the people of Ukraine,” the release said.
Freeland’s visit follows that of Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly to New Delhi earlier this month.
