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Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says mitigating against tariff increases on agricultural exports to India will be one of his goals while in the southeast Asian country on a trade mission.
“I would hope that we’re able to have conversations that would exempt or not have that tariff increased on the products that we’re currently exporting to India so that we could, on future engagements, actually look at having those tariffs removed,” Moe told reporters at the Saskatchewan Legislative Building on Wednesday.
“But the hope, I think, today is to not have them increased.”
The mission is scheduled to run Feb. 28 through March 6. Moe is accompanying Prime Minister Mark Carney to New Delhi and Mumbai.
The Saskatchewan premier also joined an Ottawa delegation to Beijing last month, which led to a thawing of the bilateral relationship with China. As a result, steep tariffs were eased against Canadian canola as well as Chinese electric vehicles.
Seeking economic partnership
Carney is set to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to negotiate a Canada-India Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that seeks to double two-way trade to $70 billion by 2030, according to a news release from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
The PMO added that the leaders will discuss partnerships on trade, energy, technology and artificial intelligence, talent and culture, and defence.
Moe will join Carney for two to three days of meetings, but says he doesn’t expect a signed CEPA at the end of the week-long trip.
Instead, it’s hoped there will be a “cumulative” effect in building the bilateral relationship and growing his province’s exports to India, which include agricultural products, potash and uranium, Moe explained.
Pitch for pulses
The NDP’s Sally Housser says the best way to gauge success for Moe’s trip will be whether he can get India to remove its import levies on pulse crops. Those include various dry, edible legumes like lentils, peas and beans.
“That’s (a) massive resource for us and very important to our farmers,” Housser told media on Wednesday. “We want to see tariffs off of pulses. I think that that’s a bare minimum for the India trip.”
Saskatchewan’s total exports to India grossed $1.4 billion in 2024, according to the most recent data from Statistics Canada.
While India has varied its tariff level on Canadian lentils in recent years, the product totalled $529 million in 2024 and remains the province’s top export to the southeast Asian country.
Worth $479 million, peas were Saskatchewan’s second-highest export to India in 2024. However, India has recently introduced a 30 per cent tariff on them.
Diversifying the export economy
The premier noted that top Saskatchewan mining industries, such as potash and uranium, are boosting production in the months ahead.
Moe said strengthening the trade relationship with India in these areas and others will help the province as it moves to diversify from the U.S. in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“If we’re truly serious about diversifying the exports of additional products that we’re going to produce in the years ahead away from the U.S., therein lies an opportunity” said Moe, whose government has a trade office in New Delhi.
“And therein lies, I think, some of the long-term fruits of the labour that Saskatchewan has been involved in for a number of years, which is engagement with these other international countries.”
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