Canada examining issues related to movement of IT workers

Canada is looking at India's concerns related with the former's temporary foreign workers entry programme, which has become more stringent over a period of time.
The programme has acted as a barrier for the domestic IT companies invested in Canada to source Indian IT professionals, as the norms for temporary entry have become more and more stringent, the commerce ministry said in a statement today.
The issue was discussed during a meeting of Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman with her Canadian counterpart Chrystia Freeland at Toronto.
"The Trade Minister of Canada assured that a Parliamentary Committee is examining these issues and some of the concerns are likely to be addressed," it said.

Sitharaman is in Toronto for the third India-Canada Annual Ministerial Dialogue.
Both ministers also discussed issues which have struck the negotiations of the proposed free trade agreement between the two nations.

It said that the Canadian side is looking into issues concerned with movement of professionals and provisions that could be built into the free trade pact officially dubbed as Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).
Both sides expressed strong commitment for taking forward the negotiations in CEPA and Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA) and expressed the desire for early conclusion keeping in view the mutual benefits to both the countries.

Further, the ministers deliberated upon ways to expand trade, having more B2B interface with constitution of CEO Forum by Canada.
This was the first high-level meet led by a ministerial level delegation from India after the new government came to power in Canada. The visit assumes significance on the back of the proposed visit of Finance Minister Arun Jaitely in the first week of October.
Canada also assured India of moving faster in constituting the Canadian side list of CEO Forum and work out modalities faster.
Both sides agreed to cooperate at the international fora on Trade Facilitation Agreement on Services in WTO as well as the unfinished agenda items of Doha Round, given the complementarity of both the nations on these issues.