How Carney’s visit has revived strategic convergence in Indo-Canadian ties

From a historical perspective, the impact of the Komagata Maru (1914) and the Ghadar Movement (1913) was seminal, as these major events fuelled intense anti-British sentiments among the Indian diaspora and its sympathisers in Canada, ultimately contributing to India achieving independence from British colonial rule. India and Canada established diplomatic relations in 1947. Both countries have adopted a federal structure in their constitutions as a cornerstone. India and Canada are members of several multilateral bodies, including the G20, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the UN. India had received financial assistance from Canada, including under the Colombo Plan in the 1950s.

Although relations have witnessed some downturns — such as following India’s 1974 Pokhran-I (‘Buddha Is Smiling’) peaceful nuclear explosion, the 1998 Pokhran-II nuclear tests and the subsequent economic sanctions imposed by Canada, and the 2023 announcement by then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons describing India’s alleged involvement in the killing of a Canadian citizen as a “credible allegation", which India termed “absurd and motivated” — India-Canada relations have moved towards closer partnership in recent times. Mark Carney’s assumption of office as prime minister in March 2025 marked another phase in this trajectory.

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The September 2025 G7 meeting, at which Prime Minister Mark Carney and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in Kananaskis, Alberta, helped foster a better understanding of each other’s perspectives and emphasised areas of convergence and deliverables. In this context, Prime Minister Carney’s current visit to India can be considered a positive step in the right direction.

Trade, Commerce

In 2024, India was Canada’s seventh-largest goods and services trading partner, with two-way trade coming to $30.4 billion, while more than 600 Canadian firms currently operate in India. Canada considers India to be a reliable trading partner given its status rising to the fourth rank just after the US, China, and Germany.

Canada, in sync with India, also has a similar ‘open, inclusive’ priority in the Indo-Pacific theatre in order to make the latter region Canada’s second-largest regional export market trading partner after the US. India can also tap into Canada’s vast trade potential, as Canada has consistently figured among the top ten largest economies in the world, with a projected 2026 GDP in the range of $2-4 trillion. Bilateral trade in services between India and Canada is approximately CAD 19.61 billion, with potential for immense growth in areas such as pharmaceuticals and textiles from India and energy, critical minerals, pulses and timber from Canada.

Two-way trade remains substantial, approx. CAD 30-33 billion in 2024/2025. The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) that is currently being negotiated between India and Canada is likely to give further fillip to multiple sectors, including infrastructure, clean energy, electricals and semiconductors, agri-food and automotive, electric vehicles, digital and fintech, etc. Further collaboration can expand across other areas as well, such as in crude oil, LNG, uranium, and hydrogen. Canada can also help India in India’s critical minerals value chain through joint ventures in exploration, battery manufacturing, sharing refining technologies, downstream industries and having a mutually beneficial resilient supply chain.

Role of the Indian Diaspora in Canada

India hosts close to 2 million persons of Indian origin (PIOs), and they make up 3 per cent of Canada’s population, one of the largest ethnic groups in Canada’s multiethnic and multicultural society. Although the immigration policy of Canada has tightened in recent years, a lot of students who study in Canada prefer to stay back and work in Canada, acquiring permanent residency and citizenship. There are several major cities in Canada, such as Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, etc, which have ‘Little India’ enclaves catering to the educational, community and cultural needs of the Indian diaspora residing in Canada.

There are several Canadian Indian ethnic associations in operation along with various immigrants hailing from various Indian states across religions and languages. In Vancouver, British Columbia, alone, some 800,000 Sikhs live, which by itself is the largest Sikh diaspora outside the Indian state of Punjab. A number of high-profile persons of Indian origin have excelled in the Canadian federal polity too, including the current foreign minister, Anita Anand.

Education Sector

In spite of some decline in the number of Indian students’ entry into Canada in recent years, India’s student population constitutes a major chunk of foreign students in Canadian universities and institutes. India is Canada’s largest source country for most immigration categories, including 392,810 study permit holders from India, including students graduating from various Canadian universities.

As per the April 2025 figure, 427,000 students from India have been enrolled in various universities in India. More than a quarter of new permanent residents arriving in Canada in 2024 were also from India. Indian academics have excelled in a diverse range of research arenas, including developing a record number of patents.

As part of India’s New Education Policy, NEP-2020, Indian universities, including IITs, will be inclined to set up campuses in Canada for greater synergy in education and cutting-edge research. The Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI, created in 1968) does play a significant role in enhancing the student-faculty mobility programme as well as in organising capacity. Building workshops in affiliated universities of both India and Canada.

Movement on the AI Front

In the field of artificial intelligence, Canada is considered one of the leading countries in providing technology. Canada hosts about 10 per cent of the world’s top-notch AI researchers, the second-highest concentration globally. Canada ranks first among the G7 group of nations in AI research publications per capita.

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), with major hubs in Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton, and which employs a number of researchers from India, is considered a major centre for AI-related research activities. Over the years, CIFAR has pioneered in the fields of health care, logistics for small ports, workforce training, intellectual property strategies, sustainability in greener manufacturing, etc.

India, too, is advancing rapidly as an AI hub through the India AI Mission 2024, which was allocated $1.6 billion over five years to build the world's largest AI dataset platform for providing access to create established centres of excellence in agriculture, healthcare, and sustainable cities. India is also developing BharatGen (a multimodal LLM), Sarvam-1 and Avatar-AI for India’s multilingual and governance applications.

AI is also being integrated into India’s digital public infrastructure, such as Aadhar and the Unified Payment Interface, enabling large-scale applications in governance and citizen services. In 2025, India co-chaired the AI Action Summit, underscoring its role in shaping international AI governance.

The India-AI Impact Summit of 2026 further reinforced India’s commitment to enhance all aspects of AI’s research and development. Challenges remain, though, in areas such as data privacy concerns, divergent digital governance models, cyber risks, sensitivities surrounding defence applications, etc. In this regard, Canada’s strengths in governance and sustainable infrastructure may provide an appropriate complement to India’s stride towards AI-related technology.

Critical Minerals

India endorsed the G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan in 2025, opening the door for deeper, more embedded bilateral collaboration in trade, research and technology in order to strengthen resilient critical minerals value chains. Of the 34 minerals identified by Canada as ‘critical’, 22 out of those also appear on India’s priority critical mineral list, including graphite, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper.

In this regard, Canada has to do a lot more, as Canada’s mineral exports to India account for just 2 per cent. Potash, Canada’s largest critical mineral export to India, has declined sharply in value from CAD 966 million in 2022 to CAD 571 million in 2023 and CAD 402 million in 2024. For both India and Canada, collaboration in critical minerals is essential for renewable energy techniques as used in solar panels and wind turbines.

The Road Ahead

As both India and Canada have so many commonalities and convergences on global, regional, and bilateral issues of concern, there is room for further consolidation and synergy in taking this relationship to greater heights. Although there will likely be global turbulence of one kind or another in the short to medium term, what is important is to have a more practical, doable, pragmatic and sustainable roadmap in both India and Canada, reaching out to one another for wider public good in enhancing their mutually beneficial relationship.

(Mohammed Badrul Alam is Director of Research; professor and former head, Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)