India, Canada seek trade reset as leaders push free trade talks

India and Canada are trying to turn a bruised political relationship into a trade-first reset, but both capitals are proceeding carefully. Piyush Goyal, India’s commerce and industry minister, said Mark Carney’s visit to India helped create the conditions for a “complete reset” of relations that were badly damaged after the 2023 killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.

The effort now centers on commerce. Goyal met Canada’s trade minister, Maninder Sidhu, in Ottawa before seeing Carney, and he traveled with more than 100 senior business representatives from India’s mining, energy, automotive and aerospace sectors, a delegation New Delhi described as its largest ever to Canada. The size of that group shows how deliberately India is linking diplomatic repair to commercial opportunity, not to a broader political reconciliation.

Canada and India formally launched negotiations on a Canada-India comprehensive economic partnership agreement on November 23, 2025, with Canada filing a notice of intent the next day. The talks are intended to cover goods and services, investment, agriculture and agri-food, digital trade, mobility and sustainable development. In 2025, two-way merchandise trade reached $13.6 billion, including $3.9 billion in Canadian exports, and Ottawa has said it wants to double trade with India by 2030.

The diplomatic thaw has already produced some concrete movement. Carney’s official visit to India from February 27 to March 2, 2026, was his first bilateral trip there as prime minister and the first by a Canadian prime minister since 2018. In their March joint leaders’ statement, the two sides said they would deepen cooperation in energy, critical minerals, education, innovation, artificial intelligence, defence and agriculture, and they invoked “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” as the guiding framework for a renewed partnership.

Yet the reset remains limited by the unresolved fallout from the Nijjar case. The rift widened in September 2023 after Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of involvement in Nijjar’s killing, an allegation India denied. The dispute escalated in October 2024, when both countries expelled six diplomats each, before they restored full diplomatic relations in 2025 by reappointing high commissioners.

On May 25, 2026, Canada said Sidhu and Goyal advanced discussions in aerospace, agri-food, energy and technology and reviewed CEPA progress with chief negotiators, reaffirming a commitment to conclude the deal in 2026. The commercial logic is clear, and the diplomatic language is warmer, but the reset still rests on a fragile bargain: grow trade, reopen channels and keep the most explosive political questions at arm’s length.