TORONTO — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is making his first trip to India this week in his latest effort to diversify trade away from the United States and restore relations with the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Carney was set to arrive in Mumbai on Friday after his plane left Ottawa on Thursday. He will also visit Australia and Japan next week.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been seen in Canada as a threat to the country’s economy and sovereignty, especially with his claims that Canada should be “the 51st state.”
“Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies are clearly pushing Canada to diversify its economic and trade relations, not only with other non-US Western countries but also countries like China and India,” said Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal.
India and Canada agreed to restore diplomatic services last year after Ottawa accused New Delhi in 2023 of alleged involvement in the killing of a Sikh separatist leader, which turned into a row that placed major strains on the relations between the two countries.
Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, shocked the world in September 2023 by announcing in Parliament that there were credible allegations about India’s link to the killing of Canadian Hareep Singh Nijjar near Vancouver. New Delhi vehemently denied the allegations and accused Trudeau’s government of harboring extremists.
The Sikh independence advocate was a prominent member of the Khalistan movement, banned in India, to create an independent Sikh homeland. He was seen as a human rights activist by Sikh organizations.
Relations between India and Canada reached another low point nearly 16 months ago when Trudeau and police officials went public with allegations that Indian diplomats were targeting Sikh separatists in Canada by sharing information about them with their government back home. They said top Indian officials were then passing that information along to Indian organized crime groups who were targeting the activists, who are Canadian citizens, with drive-by shootings, extortions and even murder.
“The whole episode led to a spectacular deterioration of Canada-India relations and Prime Minister Carney’s visit to India is part of a broader strategy to improve the diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries,” Béland said.
Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. In 2023, U.S. prosecutors said an Indian government official directed a failed plot to assassinate another Sikh separatist leader in New York. A man from India admitted earlier this month that he conspired to hire a hitman to assassinate the Sikh separatist leader.
Canadian Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree said there’s “a lot more work to do” to ensure agents of the Indian government are not coercing or intimidating people in Canada.
However, political scientist Nelson Wiseman at the University of Toronto said that the “attitudes of India and Canada toward one another have taken a 180-degree turn” thanks to Carney’s business orientation, an orientation quite unlike that of Justin Trudeau’s.”
Sikh community representatives see Carney’s approach as capitulation.
“We are deeply disappointed by this government’s absolute capitulation and appeasement and unprincipled approach when it comes to ties with India,” said Danish Singh, President of the World Sikh Organization of Canada.
“Activists are continuing to be harassed. We continue to see families get warnings for risks to their lives and yet we are supposed to believe this problem has been solved. We cannot accept that.”
Canada and India moved last year to advance a trade deal after years of mistrust. In 2024, India was Canada’s seventh-largest trading partner.
Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade, saying American tariffs are causing a chill in investment
Trump recently threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada over that country’s proposed China trade deal, intensifying a feud with the longtime U.S. ally and Carney.
In Davos at the World Economic Forum last month, Carney condemned economic coercion by great powers on smaller countries. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks, upstaging Trump at the gathering.
“Cordial relations with countries like India are at the heart of the Davos doctrine enunciated by Carney,” said Robert Bothwell, a professor of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto.
“India would at least be open to discussions given the effect of Trump’s tariff warfare on that country. There is a mutual interest in stability in contrast to the whimsical, capricious and aggressive use of tariffs as a weapon to bend other countries to Trump’s will.”
