Mark Carney's Asia visit begins with his arrival in India

Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in India on Friday to further his government's efforts to mend the strained diplomatic ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration.

Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in India on Friday to further his government's efforts to mend the strained diplomatic ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.

Carney and Modi are each looking to decrease their countries’ dependence on trade with the United States under President Donald Trump.

“Both for India and for Canada, the big picture is one of diversification and reducing overreliance on the U.S.,” Asia Pacific Foundation vice-president Vina Nadjibulla said.

Since becoming prime minister, Carney has been crisscrossing the globe in an effort to strengthen relations with other countries. His speech to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland last month — in which he urged middle powers to work together to counter great power coercion — earned headlines around the world.

Modi recently signed one of the largest trade deals in history. India’s trade pact with the European Union covers roughly two billion people.

“The same logic as what is driving Prime Minister Carney is also driving Prime Minister Modi,” said Sushant Singh, a lecturer on South Asian Studies at Yale University.

Carney will spend two days in Mumbai before flying to New Delhi on March 1, where he will meet with Modi.

The two leaders are working to rebuild a diplomatic relationship that came to a screeching halt in recent years.

There have been tensions in the bilateral relationship for decades over the activities of Sikh separatists in Canada who call for the creation of an independent country, to be called Khalistan, out of India’s Punjab region.

India has long accused Canada of not doing enough to quiet the separatist movement, while Canada has defended the freedom of those to express themselves while condemning any violence.

Those tensions clouded then prime minister Justin Trudeau’s first visit to India in 2018.

They erupted into a full-blown diplomatic dispute in September 2023, when Trudeau said Canadian security services were pursuing “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in the June 2023 murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and Khalistan advocate.

Shortly afterward, India forced Ottawa to send most of its diplomats home.

The conflict escalated in October 2024, when the RCMP accused New Delhi of playing a role in a network of violence linked to domestic homicides and acts of extortion.

Ottawa expelled India’s high commissioner and five other diplomats, saying India had declined to waive diplomatic and consular immunity to allow the RCMP to interview Indian diplomats. India denied the accusations and retaliated by ejecting Canadian diplomats.

The situation thawed when Carney invited Modi to the G7 summit in Alberta in June 2025, where the two agreed to reappoint high commissioners. The two met again at the G20 summit in November, where they agreed to launch formal trade talks to cover a wide range of goods and services, including agriculture and agri-food, digital trade, mobility, and sustainable development.

News.Az