Mark Carney's visit is about a vital reset in India-Canada ties |
In a world roiled by disruptions and disorder set in motion by US President Donald Trump, countries are looking to hedge their bets and seek new partners. India’s recent trade and defence agreements with the European Union (EU), completed in record time of a year, and its outreach to Germany, France and Brazil make ample sense against this backdrop. Another key partnership that seems to be shaping up, albeit quietly, is the one between India and Canada. Canadian PM Mark Carney’s visit to India this week is expected to place the bilateral relationship, which touched a nadir in 2023 with Ottawa accusing the Indian government of being involved in the murder of a Canadian national, on a more stable footing.
The geopolitical logic for the reset in India-Canada ties was outlined by Carney himself, in a speech in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in January. “The middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu” was the blunt warning delivered by Carney at the 2026 World Economic Forum. This has been flagged as an apparent end to Canada’s era of diplomatic passivity.
Amidst the rapidly emerging cracks in the global order, Ottawa has pivoted from a “laid-back” observer to a vocal protagonist, aggressively courting new alliances in the Indo-Pacific, to absorb the shocks delivered by US President Donald Trump to the once unified West. Carney’s message from Davos is clear: Canada is no longer accepting belligerence; it is pursuing all-around security with single-minded determination.
Canada’s transformation comes at a critical time for India as well, which is looking to diversify its partnerships. Carney’s March visit to New Delhi, therefore, presents the two countries an opportunity to reimagine and refashion ties completely, far beyond making it just a diplomatic thaw. Carney’s visit is a recognition that, for middle powers, isolation in the form of an ostrich approach is a luxury they can no longer afford.
What will prove helpful for Canada is Carney’s economic expertise. With Canada looking for new markets to replace the business opportunities lost in the US, Carney should look at India, with its middle class numbering the entire population of the US, as an economic opportunity, replacing surface-level bilateral engagements with deep-rooted linkages.
To understand where a new, reworked India-Canada relationship is headed, one needs to comprehend how deep the frost once ran. In September 2023, the relationship hit a historic low when then PM Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of involvement in the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an Indian origin Canadian Sikh national. The result was a total diplomatic freeze that lasted nearly two years. Visa services ruptured, High Commissioners recalled, diplomatic staff cut and once-promising negotiations for a free trade pact unceremoniously tossed out. But ahead of the visit, the Canadian government concluded that India was not involved in violent criminal activity on Canadian soil.
With Trump back in the White House in 2025, the cost of this estrangement had become impossible to ignore. Canada, facing economic headwinds and an extremely volatile relationship with its southern neighbour (Trump angered Canadians by calling it the 51st state of the US), decided it could no longer afford to continue relying on Washington while suspending relations with the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
Meanwhile, India, in its quest to become a developed economy and a global manufacturing and green-energy hub, looked west and saw potential in a Canada headed by Carney. Canada had all the resources India needed: Energy, critical minerals, funds and possibilities for technological collaboration. The value of a mutually beneficial economic relationship was a no-brainer.
A quiet, constructive meeting between PMs Narendra Modi and Mark Carney at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, in June 2025, followed by deeper and longer sit-down contacts at the G20 in Johannesburg in November 2025, set the stage for a calibrated and very intentional reset. The instructions to their ministers and officials were clear: Separate political differences from the essential economic logic of this relationship. The combined push by the two PMs gave the much-needed momentum to set this potentially pivotal relationship on a high-speed trajectory. Quick visits by several Canadian ministers, including Foreign Minister Anita Anand and Energy Minister Tim Hodgson, for the India Energy Week have started to reshape ties. India, one of the largest importers of energy, currently receives a mere fraction of its oil and critical minerals from Canada — a statistical anomaly that both nations are now moving speedily to correct. Incidentally, the bilateral goods trade grew to roughly $13.3 billion in 2024, despite the deep chill in relations.
During Carney’s visit, India and Canada can be expected to conclude a $2.8 billion deal for uranium supplies to India for a decade. For an India aiming to massively expand its civilian nuclear energy capacity, Canadian uranium is a timely necessity. The official reboot of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) negotiations is also on the cards. The CEPA has the ambitious goal of doubling bilateral trade to $60 billion by 2030.
The new agenda also focuses on Canada offering itself as an alternative to China for the sourcing of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt and copper required to boost India’s ambitious EV mobility and manufacturing plans. In return, India offers Canada a gateway to the Indo-Pacific’s booming consumer markets. This is the “Carney Effect” in action: using Canada’s natural resources not just as commodities, but as diplomatic leverage to build resilient partnerships with significant middle powers.
With the 2026 trade landscape in North America increasingly defined by protectionism and sweeping tariffs, Canada is learning a hard lesson in diversification. In continuation of the unrelenting tariff imposition on friends and foes alike (as of 30 January 2026), Trump had decertified Canadian aircraft and threatened 50 per cent tariffs on planes sold to the US by Canada. Pivoting toward India, therefore, makes ample sense.
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That being said, challenges remain. Security concerns and deep-seated disagreements that triggered the 2023 crisis have not vanished; they have simply been moved to a different track. But the diplomatic channels are back at work with the high commissioners reinstated. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s visit to Ottawa earlier this month ensured the delicate balance: Security dialogues run parallel to economic progress, rather than impeding it. Doval and his counterpart Nathalie G. Drouin agreed to a “shared work plan” to guide cooperation.
However, the real anchor of this relationship remains the people. With nearly 430,000 Indian students in Canada and a diaspora that is deeply integrated into the Canadian political and economic fabric, the people-to-people ties were always too strong to snap. They are the reason why, even at the height of the freeze, the two nations never stopped talking entirely. All in all, the India-Canada relationship seems to be entering a mature, interest-driven phase with a productive partnership built on the realisation that in a volatile world, middle powers cannot afford to be enemies. In this context, Mark Carney’s visit will likely be remembered for how the cold reality of a new geopolitical and geo-economic world forged a new and meaningful partnership between two estranged partners.
Naithani is research associate, CSDR, and Roche is associate professor, O P Jindal Global University