Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Indian counterpart announced Monday what they’re a calling a “new partnership,” a series of multi-million dollar deals and a commitment to sign a free trade agreement by year’s end as the two look to turn the page on years of frosty bilateral relations marked by allegations of Indian foreign interference.
In a statement to reporters after a one-on-one meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the colonial-era Hyderabad House in Delhi’s diplomatic core, Carney said Canada is going all-in on diversifying trade. What’s been agreed to after these leaders’ talks is designed to more than double two-way trade to some $70 billion a year by 2030, he said, as Canada continues a push to reduce its dependence on the U.S.
Carney framed this new course as not just a return to how things were but rather an ambitious revisioning of what the two Commonwealth countries can do together in an uncertain era marked by instability. At the centre of this more robust relationship will be a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement — a free trade deal — that Carney said the two sides hope to sign by December, which will offer Canada exports relief from Indian tariffs that are quite high on some goods...
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, there has been more engagement between the Canadian and Indian governments this year than there has been in any year of the past two decades.
That paved the way for what Carney and Modi signed today: five memorandums of understanding expanding Canada-India partnership across energy and critical minerals, technology and AI, talent, culture and defence worth $5.5 billion in total.
Perhaps the most significant is a $2.6 billion deal between the Government of India and Saskatoon-based Cameco to supply nearly 22 million pounds of uranium for nuclear energy generation from 2027 to 2035. That’s a big boon for Saskatchewan, which sits on one of the world’s largest reserves of high-grade uranium...
This was excerpted from the 2 March 2026 edition of CBC News.