Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to leave for India on Thursday on a visit focused on “elevating and expanding” ties and partnership on trade amid Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs, energy and artificial intelligence through a “massive” set of deals.
Carney is expected to depart at 10 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. EDT), according to the official statement from the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada. Karney’s visit to India concludes on March 2.
Carney’s trip will also include visits to Australia and Japan. However, the first leg of the visit will be in India, starting in Mumbai before the Canadian Prime Minister travels to New Delhi. Carney is scheduled to leave for Australia on March 2.
Carney will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi, where “leaders will focus on elevating and expanding Canada-India relations, with ambitious new partnerships in trade, energy, technology, artificial intelligence (AI), talent and culture, and defence,” according to an earlier HT report released by the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office on Monday morning.
Carney will meet with business leaders to identify investment opportunities in Canada and establish new partnerships between companies in both countries.
Why is Carney’s visit to India crucial?
Karney’s visit comes after nearly a year’s efforts to improve relations with Prime Minister Modi. Relations between India and Canada deteriorated after a diplomatic row erupted into the open in September 2023, when then Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau accused the Indian government of orchestrating the killing of Hardeep Singh Nigar, an allegation strongly denied by the Indian government.
Carney’s trip to India, Australia and Japan also represents his latest effort to diversify trade away from the United States, whose president — Donald Trump — has been threatening Canada’s economy and sovereignty with tariffs and, more audaciously, by claiming that Canada could be a “51st nation.”
Trump in January — ahead of a Supreme Court ruling that deemed the tariffs illegal — threatened to impose 100 per cent tariffs on goods imported from Canada over that country’s proposed China trade deal, intensifying a dispute with longtime U.S. ally and Carney.
Dinesh Patnaik, the country’s high commissioner in Ottawa, said Carney’s visit is expected to include a deal to expand Canadian uranium shipments to India, according to Bloomberg.
Towards the end of Trudeau’s term, relations between India and Canada began to improve. Diplomatic tensions saw Canada move to expel six Indian officials, alleging that government-linked agents were conducting a campaign of violence, intimidation and extortion against Canadian citizens. India responded with similar measures.
The first such step in easing tensions came when Carney met Modi on the sidelines of the G7 leaders’ summit in Kananaskis in June 2025. After the high commissioners were returned to their posts in the two capitals, they met again at the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November, where Modi invited Carney to visit India and the two countries announced that they would conduct new negotiations towards the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, or CEPA.
Carney’s visit to India will be the first bilateral visit by a Canadian Prime Minister to India in eight years. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then visited India in February 2018, but that 11-day trip proved to be a disaster, as not only was his official engagement scheduled for the final two days of that extended trip, but Jaspal Atwal, convicted of the 1986 murder of visiting Punjab minister Malkiat Singh Sidhu on Vancouver Island, appeared at an official reception hosted by the Canadian High Commission, as HT previously reported.
