It was a moment with few, if any, parallels in Canada’s history. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau two and a half years ago publicly asserted that “agents of the government of India” had gunned down a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil in a politically motivated attack.
Yet when Mark Carney, Mr. Trudeau’s successor, met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India at a colonial-era palace in New Delhi on Monday, there was no mention of that charge or of the diplomatic rupture that ensued. Instead, the emphasis was on renewing the relationship, with a focus on business — including a resumption of uranium shipments to India.
“This is not merely the renewal of a relationship, it is the expansion of a valued partnership with new ambition, focus and foresight,” Mr. Carney said after the meeting.
Like Mr. Carney’s visit to China in January after years of tense relations, his rapprochement with India is the latest example of how Canada’s priorities have shifted amid a world order upturned by President Trump’s trade war and his threats to old alliances.
Aside from a vague reference about “transnational repression” in a Canadian government statement after the meeting, there was no mention of the diplomatic rift that followed the killing, in June 2023, of a Sikh activist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia. Nor was there any mention of past allegations by Canadian officials of extortion and intimidation campaigns from India targeting Sikhs on Canadian soil.
In the wake of the killing, both countries expelled diplomats and relations were largely frozen. But after a meeting between Mr. Carney and Mr. Modi at the Group of 7 summit in Alberta last June, relations began to thaw as Canada looks for new markets beyond a suddenly unreliable United States.
Mr. Carney said on Monday, “There has been more engagement between the Canadian and Indian governments in the last year than in the two previous decades combined.”
The immediate economic returns from Mr. Carney’s visit was a list of largely preliminary agreements mainly around energy, technology and education — some of which had been announced or outlined previously. The uranium deal, valued at about 2.5 billion Canadian dollars, or $1.8 billion, is set to run from 2027 to 2035.
Mr. Carney said that Canada hoped to conclude a broader trade deal by the end of the year and estimated that it would roughly double Canada’s trade with India to about $50 billion by 2030. (Trade between Canada and the United States is about $900 billion a year).
In several speeches, particularly his widely noted address to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January, Mr. Carney has said that the changes to the world order required a pragmatic approach to international relations.
“We’re engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes,” Mr. Carney said in Davos. “We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.”
There are about two million Indians in Canada, according to Mr. Carney, and the country is home to the largest population of Sikhs outside India. While the unfreezing of relations was largely welcomed by the Hindu community in Canada, who make up about half of that total diaspora, the renewed partnership has provoked criticism and dismay from many Sikhs and Muslims in the country.
India’s treatment of minority groups is not the only gulf between the two countries. While Canada has provided about $18 billion in aid to Ukraine to fight off Russia, Mr. Modi has embraced President Vladimir V. Putin as a key ally.
Prabjot Singh, legal counsel at the Sikh Federation, a Canadian group, noted that over the past three years, Canadian officials had said there was credible evidence of India’s involvement in targeting Sikhs in Canada. “Rather than taking steps to ensure public accountability of the Indian government officials who are involved in orchestrating this violence, they’re completely sweeping it under the rug in pursuit of trade ties,” he said.
While Canada has not taken any formal action against Indian officials, three Indian nationals have been charged in connection with Mr. Nijjar’s killing. Canadian government lawyers are seeking in court to withhold some evidence in those cases, arguing that its release “would be injurious to international relations and national security.”
India has long criticized Canada for failing to investigate Sikh nationalists who it contends are involved in organizing terrorist activities. Sikh nationalists were connected to Canada’s deadliest terrorist act: the 1985 bombing of an Air India Flight from Montreal that killed 329 people. A judge acquitted two Indian-born Sikh nationalists in Canada of murder charges 20 years later. A third man had earlier pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Indian officials deny any suggestion that India meddles with the Indian diaspora in Canada.
“There is a perception that India is taking action in Canada,” Dinesh K. Patnaik, the Indian ambassador to Canada said in Mumbai, which Mr. Carney visited before New Delhi. “We know we haven’t done anything.”
Anupreeta Das contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Vjosa Isai from Toronto.
Ian Austen reports on Canada for The Times. A Windsor, Ontario, native now based in Ottawa, he has reported on the country for two decades. He can be reached at [email protected].
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