Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in New Delhi on March 2 for his first official visit to India since taking office, marking the most substantive engagement between the two governments in more than two decades and producing a series of agreements that span nuclear energy, critical minerals, defense cooperation, and a long-stalled free trade framework.

The visit came at a moment of deliberate strategic repositioning for both countries. Trump administration tariffs have rattled the Canadian economy, which remains heavily dependent on U.S. trade, while India is navigating its own recalibration following a pause in negotiations with Washington. Both governments arrived at the table with clear incentives to move quickly.

The Uranium Deal and Nuclear Partnership

The headline agreement from the talks was a C$2.6 billion uranium supply deal between the Indian government and Cameco Corp., the Saskatoon-based mining company that ranks among the world's largest uranium producers. The agreement, which runs from 2027 to 2035, will see Cameco supply nearly 22 million pounds of uranium to support India's nuclear reactor fleet.

"In civil nuclear energy, we have concluded a landmark deal for the long-term supply of uranium," Modi said during a joint appearance with Carney at Hyderabad House in New Delhi.

The deal feeds directly into India's broader nuclear ambitions. The country currently operates nuclear capacity of approximately eight gigawatts and has set a target of reaching 100 gigawatts by 2047 — an expansion that will require substantial and sustained fuel supply from reliable partners. Canada, as Carney framed it, is positioned to fill that role.

The two sides also agreed to collaborate on small modular reactors and advanced reactor development, extending the partnership beyond uranium supply into the engineering and infrastructure layer of nuclear power. Carney described the arrangement as part of a broader "strategic energy partnership with significant potential," one that he said Canada was well positioned to anchor given its resource base and existing industry expertise.

It was not a clean start, however. India's Ministry of External Affairs confirmed during the press conference following the talks that a previous uranium supply agreement signed between Cameco and India in 2015 was not fulfilled — a data point that introduced a note of caution into an otherwise forward-looking set of announcements.

Trade Targets and the Free Trade Push

Beyond the nuclear deal, the central economic commitment of the visit was a pledge to finalize a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement by the end of 2026. Negotiations on that agreement have drifted on and off for the better part of 15 years, making any conclusion this year a significant milestone if achieved.

Modi set an explicit bilateral trade target of $50 billion by 2030, up from approximately $9 billion in 2024-25. Carney put the figure slightly higher — roughly $70 billion Canadian dollars — but both leaders framed the goal in the same terms: substantially more than what exists now, driven by reduced barriers and deeper supply chain integration.

"Our target is to reach $50 billion in bilateral trade. This is why we have decided to finalize a comprehensive economic partnership soon," Modi said.

The visit also produced 10 commercial agreements valued at more than $5.5 billion in total, along with five memoranda of understanding covering critical minerals, energy, and supply chain diversification. One agreement, valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars, involves British Columbia-based coal producer Elk Valley Resources selling 1.2 million tonnes of metallurgical coal to India. Canadian pension and wealth funds have already invested $73 billion in India, providing a financial foundation that the trade framework is designed to build on.

Both governments are pushing the agreement in part as a hedge against U.S. trade uncertainty. Before Trump returned to office, more than 75 percent of Canadian exports went to the United States. Two-way U.S.-Canada trade in 2024 exceeded $900 billion. India, for its part, recently paused its own trade negotiations with Washington, waiting for greater clarity following the Supreme Court's invalidation of Trump's broad tariff authority. In that context, the India-Canada deal represents a mutual interest in developing commercial relationships outside the current orbit of American economic volatility.

Resetting a Damaged Relationship

The deals were announced against a backdrop of diplomatic damage that is recent enough to color any assessment of what was achieved in New Delhi.

Relations between the two countries effectively collapsed in 2023 when then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly accused the Indian government of orchestrating the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh activist and president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, who was shot dead in Surrey, British Columbia, in June of that year. India dismissed the allegations as "absurd." Both sides subsequently expelled senior diplomats, and trade negotiations were frozen.

The fallout was severe enough that the current visit marked the first time a Canadian prime minister had set foot in India in over two years. Carney arrived to underscore how much ground had been recovered on his watch.

"There has been more engagement between the Canadian and Indian governments in the last year than there has been in more than two decades combined," Carney said alongside Modi.

Four Indian nationals have been charged in Canadian courts with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in connection with Nijjar's killing, and that case remains before the courts. Canada's spy agency, in a statement released around the time of the visit, confirmed its threat assessment of India as a country engaged in espionage and foreign interference in Canada had not changed. Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand distanced herself from remarks made by a senior government official who suggested India had ceased all foreign interference activity, telling reporters in Delhi: "The words of the senior official are not words that I personally would use."

Carney did not hold a press conference during the visit — his office cited scheduling — and did not address the foreign interference question publicly, though his office's statement indicated he raised the issue of transnational repression directly with Modi.

What Comes Next

Analysts tracking the relationship described the visit as a meaningful but incomplete reset. Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia risk insight at Verisk Maplecroft, told reporters that a genuine reset would depend on whether the week's commitments translated into sustained working-level cooperation, noting that the Nijjar killing "remains the single biggest political constraint on the relationship" and is not resolved by a single productive summit.

The practical obstacles are real. Canada's LNG export capacity is still ramping up, and shipping to India from the west coast involves long transit distances that make pricing competitive against other suppliers difficult. India is a price-sensitive energy market, and any long-term LNG contract will have to work on commercial terms, not just political goodwill.

Carney departed New Delhi on the evening of March 2 for Sydney, Australia, the second stop on a four-day Asia-Pacific tour that will also include Japan. The broader trip reflects Carney's stated goal of doubling Canada's non-U.S. exports over the next decade — a target that requires building out exactly the kind of institutional framework his government spent the week constructing in New Delhi.

Modi accepted Carney's invitation to visit Canada, though no date was set.