 The right honourable, just intruder, Prime Minister of Canada, a very warm welcome again and a warm welcome to India. You know, you have a long trip here in India and everybody is really looking forward to knowing more about this visit. There's a lot of common things between the two countries because, you know, we are large democracies, we are multicultural societies and of course Canada is a home for many people from Indian origin. But, you know, beyond that there's business, there's trade ties and so on. But I think we should start by actually telling the audience why are we late here today. I look through this audience of business leaders which is obviously therefore mostly men and I point out that I spent the last hour and a half which was only scheduled for an hour but hour and a half speaking with extraordinary business leaders who happen to be women and sharing their stories and listening to the great ideas they had to bring forward, everything from bring your mother-in-law to work day to, you know, as a way of encouraging daughters-in-laws to be more respected in the workplace and at the home when they return from the workplace to dream gaps to a broad range of things. It was an extraordinarily important moment to recognize that there is much work to be done on gender equality and gender parity and opportunities for women in business. Canada, as you know, has done a lot on gender parity in my cabinet and we're putting forward lots of initiatives about supporting women in business. But we're doing so recognizing that Canada actually has a larger wage disparity between men and women than many other countries including the United States. So we have a lot of work to do and we're very conscious of that. Similarly, India with I think only 26 or 27 percent women in the workplace or women participation in the workforce is one of the lowest in the world and it's something that there needs to be a lot of work done on. So I was very, very pleased to really dig into it and if I came out with any real concrete recommendation it's that business leaders across the spectrum here in India and around the world should take the time to listen to the challenges and the barriers faced by the women who are successful in their organizations to know how to do a better job of empowering more women because getting women to be more successful in our businesses is not just a nice thing to do or a good thing to do. It's a smart thing to do. It leads to more economic success and it leads to better impacts on not just your workforce and your business but on the community that you serve. So that's why I was late. It was a very good reason but I'm very glad to be here with you all now. Yes and of course what I told our women colleagues there was that another reason why we were late was because we were supposed to talk only for an hour but here there was one man who listened to us patiently for more than one and a half hours. So you spend this morning actually also meeting a lot of business leaders. You know you would have heard from them as what even our Prime Minister, Narendra Modi says that India is reforming to transform and that there are a lot of business opportunities here. So you know what is your feedback about your meetings with these business leaders? Well first of all it was a very exciting morning of meeting as you say with a broad range of business leaders and talking about the tremendous connections between Canada and India whether it's in natural resources or in the tech sector in IT, in creativity, in biotech and pharmaceuticals there are huge compatibilities and complementarities between India and Canada so much so that coming out of the meetings this morning and a few other meetings that we've had we're able to announce today over 5,000 new jobs in Canada and over a billion dollars of investment in Canada. Of course on the other side of things we also talked an awful lot about Canadian companies investing in India in partnerships here in our pension funds and investors being extremely active in all the amazing things going on here in India. So this was really a win-win morning, a win-win day for all of us and I'm excited about the opportunities in the Canada-India friendship which as you said like any friendship between two countries is much more than just political although it's very good on the political side it's also people-to-people ties, it's also cultural, economic and business there's so many different ways we can engage and for all that I'm spending a week here I can spend three weeks and still not be connecting enough with all the different things going on. Yes as you said the business opportunities actually can be immense because just to put the perspective again I think India is also going through a huge amount of structural reforms whether it's in the form of formalization of the economy bringing in more transparency, the bankruptcy code, the GST and so on so those are the big structural reforms backed by a lot of changes in the financial system itself in terms of deepening of the bond markets and so on also backed by the huge opportunities which are one from the fact that India is a young country so the demographic opportunities but also all the infrastructure spends that would take place in the country including a wide range like affordable housing and so on and then the focus of the government on ease of doing business so it's opportunities business-to-business it's also a lot of opportunities for the large Canadian funds that exist because for them they can pick to participate in projects which are either new or which are under implementation or also which are completed and in a way offer a kind of set of annuity return so the trade that we talk of between the two countries which is maybe 8 billion dollars plus 2 billion dollars I think in a way pales into insignificance as you spoke about the US, Canada movement of almost 2 billion a day so I think if the two countries get together and focus there's a lot more that we can do I think one of the things you talk about business-to-business or government-to-government for me I like to think about people-to-people entrepreneurs working together employees, employers figuring out better ways to engage and also the student connections the fact that we have about 125,000 Indian students come to Canada every year number two in the world is a source of foreign students in Canada but rapidly on the way to number one hopefully later this year India will be number one and that means that there are tremendous opportunities to create dynamic outcomes in Canada and in India and I think for all the trade ties and business ties if we focus on those people-to-people connections and friendships the familial relations, the young people looking to discover the world wanting to expand in a country like Canada where we provide tremendous education, tremendous opportunities to them bring home some of that expertise and bring some Canadian investments with it those kinds of synergies are what I am most excited about so for me the Canada-India friendship as important as the business council is is always mostly and firstly about people Yes indeed I think you've shown this through just a few days into your trip as well I mean you visited India here of course as you said when you were 10-year-old with your father you are here now with your lovely children and your wife and of course in these couple of days you visited a place of historical importance like the Sabarmati ashram or a tourist interest like the Taj Mahal or a religious interest like the Akhrada temple and then of course you know the Charkha as well so who better than to talk about the people-to-people ties you know I would say that we also experience this even as we do business as you rightly said because it's about the employee connections it's about as we as a bank we you know open what we call the student connect program that before the students go from here to attend colleges in Canada they can actually put their fixed deposit here and everything online you know when they move there the money gets transferred paid to their college and life becomes much simpler so you know what are your thoughts about how your family is enjoying India and how are they mingling with the culture well I was incredibly fortunate as a kid to have been brought here as you mentioned by my father I spent a whole week here while he was working on a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting which meant when I went down to the Taj Mahal and to see Fattapur Sikri I went alone with a bodyguard so this time being able to bring my kids to the Taj Mahal and see it through their eyes as well was extremely important for me but more than that being able to share this extraordinary place where the future is being created every single day you see the potential here you see the activity of what's going on already and you know that in the coming years sharing with my kids and understanding myself an incredibly important evolution that's going on right here is very very exciting and the kind of thought leadership as well being led by folks like you and I wanted to mention this earlier I was talking about gender parity you're launching a really amazing initiative around a gender pledge that you want companies to make about hiring and powering more women can you tell us a little bit about that yes so we discussed in the round table just before this about how companies can actually pledge to increase the participation of women in the entire economic activity because as the Prime Minister said it's not just about a nice to have approach it's actually a more economic imperative now so you know we discussed about a lot of ease we said can we encourage the girls to dream can we educate the girls more because you know you educate one man you actually educate one person but actually you educate a woman you tend to educate many more people in the family and how do you empower women by creating an environment which is more enabling for them to grow so you know everybody around this table was so inspired with each other's stories that we said that we want to create a pledge to say that we would encourage more and more women participation in every field of activity that we are in that's just wonderful yes and I encourage all of you to take a look at signing that pledge it would be wonderful to have more companies do that but you mentioned my kids and the travel around one of the things that I really wanted to share with them is the extraordinary diversity of India being able to go to a beautiful Mandir to be able to go to the Golden Temple tomorrow to be able to go to a mosque later in the week to highlight the extraordinary diversity and pluralism of India which isn't without its challenges but to understand that diversity of views of background is an incredible source of strength a source of resilience in an organization in a community in a country to be able to listen to different points of view and learn from them and draw on them and not feel challenged well yes feel challenged but not threatened by them I think is a sign of maturity in a community and certainly a country like India can and should be leading the way on respect and diversity and I think highlighting this incredible diversity so my kids understand it's not just Canada that is diverse but other countries around the world that are working hard on it as well is a good thing it's because we as a country actually take a lot of pride in the rich heritage that we have and the kind of diversity that we have so thank you for acknowledging that and thank you for appreciating that moving a little bit again back to business you know you've actually expressed a lot of interesting thoughts on international trade and you know global order for trade so would you want to share that what you've done with other countries and how do you perceive this? well we've seen a narrative around the world in politics and in societies particularly across the western world where there is a worry about the impacts of trade the impacts of globalization on ordinary citizens on workers there's an anxiety that perhaps the success that we've created hasn't been contributing to well-being of individuals, of workers and of their families and at a time where the world in many ways is closing off and turning away from trade Canada is really proud that we've been signing big trade agreements we just signed a free trade agreement with the European Union that is market access to 500 million people and the second biggest economy in the world if you put it all together we just are still working on NAFTA but I can tell you it's doing well and we're very confident that we're going to continue to enjoy free trade with the United States and Mexico and we just signed on to the CPTPP which is a block of 11 Pacific countries representing also a significant share of the world economy we know that trade leads to growth but if we're able to keep public support for trade deals in Canada it's because we're also making very significant moves to make sure that the benefits of trade actually are shared with ordinary citizens that small businesses get to benefit from greater access to international markets that workers get opportunities that are indigenous peoples that marginalized communities also can benefit from these trade deals is what we need to look at as we continue to make a case for global trade similar things on immigration as a world is tending to close in and close off and worry about immigration Canada is increasing our amount of immigration and quite frankly the most common complaint I get from Canadians, from Canadian businesses from people in general is you're not bringing in enough immigrants and that's a rare thing in this world we know that we can do that because we have created success and we're going to continue to contribute to that success we've brought forward a global skill strategy that means a company can bring in top talent from around the world get a visa in less than two weeks because we know that when you bring in a senior person from overseas you're going to hire lots of local Canadian graduates and talent so understanding that openness to immigration openness to international talent is an incredibly positive advantage in the world stage are all different ways that we're looking at globalization as a real opportunity we understand that there's an anxiety in the world that everything's changing that AI, that automation that the global supply chains are a threat to the way things have been but instead of trying to hold on to the way things were as long as we can Canada is saying, okay let's leap forward with confidence into this transition and get more of our young people to study in STEM areas whether it's in universities or community colleges or trade schools let's make sure that we're investing in AI research Canada's leading on AI research right now across the country we're leading on automation on self-driving cars there's amazing numbers of tech innovations we're doing because Canada's decided we want to be part of the future not fighting the future and I see a very similar approach here in India that is very very exciting to be able to connect with what our two countries are doing and augment the impact that we can have in leading the entire world Yes, so as you talk of the ability of the two countries to connect actually when you met our Prime Minister Modi earlier he had in fact said that Canada and India are made for each other and I've also followed Canadian media that highlights four to five specific industries where India and Canada can co-operate with this visit in India do you have some two, three very specific results that you would want to see achieved? I think thinking about Canada more often as a place for investment as a place to draw investment from our pension funds our great partners in investment here in India but as you look to expand in the global marketplace the Canadian workforce, the Canadian diversity the Canadian opportunities to access global markets through our free trade deals are definitely there and I think in general if this visit can get people to reflect on the fact that we work together so well we are the two largest democracies in the world one by population, the other by surface area we should be doing better things together and to really highlight the close ties the incredible opportunities is what this trip is all about and it's not a trip a handshake and a photo op we are taking our time as a Canadian delegation I'm of course going across but we have a broad range of ministers who are traveling to all different parts of the country to really make sure that people realize that there is a tremendous potential as of yet undeveloped in the Canada-India relationship absolutely we have one more thing in common that is the fastest growing G7 country in the world and the fastest growing large economy in the world so I think if we can get together actually the business ties can be much bigger from where we are today and as I said even in India the fact is that the democracy itself is a huge dividend and offers a huge marketplace for the Canadian companies and it's not just that India is a young country the fact is that India is going to remain young for many years to come even as the rest of the world grows old and the second is that Yes and the second is that the infrastructure investment that we need to make in India going forward is such a huge opportunity and as I said today we have an opportunity even the projects that are completed which a lot of Canadian funds are actually buying into it's because once the projects are completed there's a continuous demand for the products that they produce and then there are all the new investments that would take place so there is indeed a huge amount of opportunity you know is there anything specific on any of the other industries that you would want to share one of the things that people often think of when you turn to Canada is you think about the natural resources and yes whether it's wood fibre, whether it's minerals whether it's energy sources Canada certainly is and will continue to be a great opportunity for high quality natural resources done responsibly, sustainably and in safe ways and in increasingly innovative ways and that remains India with the growing economy will always have a tremendous demand for reliably sourced natural resources but to think as well about what I think our greatest resources is our people and of course 1.3 million of our people which is a significantly larger proportion here in Canada than it is in India we're only 36 billion the proportion of South Asians or specifically Indo-Canadians is one of our great strengths where we are innovative in our high tech clusters like Kitchener Waterloo areas across the country where we are showing that investing in education investing in creativity investing in the knowledge economy is the path of the future we've just announced a super cluster strategy that's going to provide network opportunities for companies I often hear from Indian companies or foreign investors when they come in they're like okay we can come but we don't have networks to plug into we're looking for opportunities but we don't always know where the best opportunities are well the super clusters initiative will allow you to connect established large businesses working collaboratively small businesses and startups all plugged in around a thematic area that will create multiplier effects on innovation and economic growth there's a lot of exciting things that we're doing in Canada and I'm just very hopeful that more and more Indian investors, companies look at the opportunity that Canada provides yes thank you I think I can also give our example about the fact that we set up our bank there in 2003 but it's a full service bank there and again the ease of doing business that we saw there helped us grow and of course we've committed good amount of capital there but it's a 7 billion dollar business there where I think we play a role both ways Indian companies setting up businesses in Canada and the Canadian companies wanting to set up business in India and the entire trade flow between India and Canada that's the business side the people to people connection side as I was mentioning earlier we make life easier for students who migrate into Canada we participate in the diaspora that really exists in Canada and of course we also participate a little bit on the disability side the Helen Keller Institute and so on and so forth so as you said as Indian companies go there or Indian businesses go there similarly it's more than 400 Canadian companies who are already present in India and there are a thousand more who are looking to set up business in India and I think India is doing everything possible to improve that ease of doing business so that Canadian companies would be able to actually grow their businesses here in India as well so I know Prime Minister we are running short of time but you know it's what I would say is that it's such a pleasure to interact with you because you know the country that is India has been watching you for the last few days and I think they are really quite enchanted in the way you have tried to mingle not just with the business part of India but mingle with the culture of India with you yourself and your family and I mean who better to look up to on this respect when we've seen you participate in the Indian activities in Canada as well the Independence Day march and doing the Bhangra so it's really rare to come across a head of state who focuses so much on business at the same time spends so much time on topics like women empowerment and who takes time out to actually create the people to people connection and the cultural connection I've been very lucky that I used to be a school teacher and for me discovering the world about curiosity and I'm curious about what leads to business success I'm curious about what leads to personal success I'm curious about how people view the future, how they view their present how we want to work together to get there so I'm always asking questions and trust me there's a lot of things to ask questions about here in India and over these past few days and the coming few days I just look forward to learning all the different ways in which Canada can be a better partner to India where India can be a better partner to Canada and that we can work together to grow together to learn from each other and create a better say for more prosperous world for all I think there's a tremendous opportunity to continue to grow this Canada-India relationship and it's an extraordinary pleasure for me to be able to be here and share it with my family as well Thank you Thank you