New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Canadian counterpart Mark Carney on Monday (March 2) advanced what both sides described as a “renewed” India-Canada strategic partnership, announcing the launch of trade negotiations and a long-term uranium supply agreement while making no explicit reference in their public remarks to the Nijjar case that had brought relations to the brink over two years ago.Standing together in Hyderabad House at the conclusion of Carney’s four-day visit – the first standalone bilateral visit by a Canadian prime minister in eight years – the two leaders spoke of economic integration, energy security, defence dialogue and technology partnerships. Neither mentioned the June 2023 murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia or the allegation made later that year by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of “credible” links between Indian agents and the killing, an allegation New Delhi rejected.The omission was notable and stood in contrast to Ottawa’s separate written readout, issued after the meeting, which said Carney “underscored that Canada will continue to take measures to combat transnational repression”. This is the phrase Ottawa has consistently used to refer to the alleged Indian government targeting of diaspora members on Canadian soil.The Canadian note also said the “leaders agreed to advance bilateral cooperation on security and law enforcement”, which would include “issues of mutual concern to Canada and India, such as the illegal flow of drugs, particularly fentanyl precursors, and transnational organised criminal networks”.At a detailed post-summit briefing, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)’s secretary (east) P. Kumaran called the allegations “baseless, politically motivated and unsupported by credible evidence despite repeated requests”.His remarks came in response to a question about a report in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail on Monday, which claimed there was evidence linking officials at the Indian consulate to the Nijjar killing. The report named two Indian officials, one of whom was among the six diplomats expelled by Canada in October 2024.While reiterating India’s rejection of the allegations, his formulation differed in tone from the sharper exchanges that characterised the diplomatic freeze in 2023 and 2024.“We understand that the criminal investigation is proceeding as per established legal procedures,” he said, referring to the “voir dire phase”. “India has consistently maintained its commitment to the judicial process. Sensitive matters under judicial consideration are best allowed to proceed through established legal processes without public commentary.”During the height of the crisis, New Delhi had repeatedly criticised Ottawa for failing to provide evidence to substantiate the allegations. Monday’s emphasis on allowing the Canadian judicial process to run its course, while maintaining categorical denial, was in line with what India’s high commissioner to Canada has been telling the Canadian media in recent months – that Ottawa must now present any evidence supporting its allegations before a court of law rather than through diplomatic channels.The bilateral reset had gathered momentum after Carney replaced Trudeau in early 2025. Modi travelled to Canada for the G7 outreach summit later that year, where the two leaders agreed to restore their high commissioners and revive trade negotiations. Since then, foreign ministers have met five times, national security advisers have held talks in Delhi and Ottawa, and diplomatic staffing levels have been gradually restored.Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal and Canada’s international trade minister Maninder Sidhu on Monday. The two leaders signed the terms of reference for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement. Photo: MEAphotogallery/Flickr.On Monday, Carney invited Modi to visit Canada, an invitation the Indian prime minister accepted, signalling that both sides intend to sustain engagement at the highest political level.Even as the two sides signalled progress, their public messaging reflected the political pressures surrounding the visit, particularly for Carney, who faces scrutiny at home.Ahead of his departure from Canada, a Canadian official told journalists in a background briefing that Ottawa no longer believes India is engaged in transnational repression on Canadian soil and was confident the activity had stopped. The briefing drew a backlash from sections of the Canadian Sikh community and from some Liberal Party MPs, who said the threat environment had not changed.On Saturday in Mumbai, Canadian foreign minister Anita Anand declined to directly answer questions over or refute the current assessment. Rather, she said that “no country has a pass when it comes to Canadian public safety and security”.In New Delhi on Monday afternoon, Anand faced a fresh round of questions from Canadian reporters about expanding business ties with India amid allegations of transnational repression. She declined to comment on the Globe and Mail report, saying she would not speak “on an investigation that is occurring now and a trial that is also in process”.Asked again about the clean chit given by the unnamed official at a media briefing before the visit, she added that the “words of the senior official are not words that I would personally use”, while noting that “guardrails in place” remained.Anand pointed in particular to the joint statement, which carried a reference to a security dialogue at the level of the national security advisers. That mechanism, she said, was aimed at ensuring “the safety and security of the Canadian population”. “It’s extremely important to remember that diplomacy is not about retreating and hiving yourself off from having difficult conversations. It’s very much about ensuring that the written word is marking the path forward on national security,” she asserted.Meanwhile, Canadian spy agency CSIS’s spokesperson Eric Balsam said in a statement that the intelligence agency’s threat assessment about India “has not changed”.Because of scheduling delays, Carney did not hold a separate briefing for the travelling Canadian media and ultimately took no questions before he departed from India on Monday evening.These tensions were not made apparent in public when Modi opened the press appearance by welcoming Carney’s visit as “an important milestone” and credited his Canadian counterpart for injecting “new energy, confidence and positivity” into bilateral ties since their first meeting last year.“There are very few people in the world who have the central banking leadership of two countries,” Modi said, referring to Carney’s tenure at the helm of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England.Carney, in turn, framed the visit as more than a restoration of ties.“This is not merely the renewal of a relationship,” he said. “It is the expansion of a valued partnership with new ambition, focus and foresight.”He described his Delhi trip as the first bilateral visit in eight years and highlighted that foreign ministers had met five times over the past year and that multiple ministerial delegations had travelled between the two countries.The joint statement described the moment as a “renewed India-Canada Strategic Partnership” grounded in shared democratic values and “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity”.Carney has positioned his India visit as part of Canada’s broader trade diversification strategy at a time when Ottawa is seeking to reduce economic vulnerability to the United States due to renewed tariff pressure and provocative rhetoric from President Donald Trump. The Canadian PM has targeted a doubling of non-US exports in the next ten years.Canadian foreign minister Anita Anand said that the security dialogue at the level of the national security advisers was aimed at ensuring “the safety and security of the Canadian population”. Photo: PTI/Shahbaz Khan.In his remarks, Carney referred to a world in “profound transformation” and said traditional economic and security arrangements were being reshaped. “Like India, we recognise that the certainties that have structured trade, security, finance and diplomacy for more than a generation have been overthrown,” he said.At the core of the visit was the signing of a terms of reference, launching negotiations toward a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with a stated objective of concluding talks by the end of this year.Both sides expressed confidence that the agreement would significantly expand bilateral trade, which stood at approximately $23 billion in 2024. The goal was for the volume to increase to $50 billion in 2030.Canadian pension funds have invested more than CA$100 billion in India, a figure cited during the visit as evidence of deep financial linkages. Officials said 30% of Canadian pension fund investments in the Asia-Pacific region are currently in India.The India-Canada CEO Forum was reconstituted during the visit, and the two governments launched a new Finance Ministers’ Economic and Financial Dialogue focusing on payments modernisation, fintech cooperation, capital markets and financial stability.The headline deal in the energy section was a $2 billion commercial contract signed between India’s Department of Atomic Energy and Cameco for the long-term supply of uranium ore concentrates.Briefing reporters, the MEA’s Kumaran said the agreement extended beyond fuel supply and would cover cooperation “across the reactor value chain”, including small modular reactors and advanced conventional reactors. He said Carney had underlined Canada’s intention to be a “reliable and stable partner” in nuclear fuel sourcing and clean energy cooperation.The leaders advanced a Strategic Energy Partnership covering liquefied natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, crude oil, refined petroleum products and potash. Canada reiterated its goal of producing up to 50 million tonnes of LNG per year by 2030 and up to 100 million tonnes by 2040.The two sides also signed agreements on critical minerals and renewable energy cooperation, areas both governments framed as central to reducing supply chain vulnerability.Kumaran stated that recent geopolitical disruptions had exposed how critical mineral and energy supply chains could be “weaponised and used as sources of leverage”, arguing that diversification partnerships with countries such as Canada were increasingly necessary.Canada announced its intention to pursue membership in the International Solar Alliance and to upgrade its participation in the Global Biofuels Alliance.Both governments agreed to formalise an India-Canada defence dialogue at the senior official level to exchange assessments on regional and global security developments and explore defence industrial cooperation. Canada announced the appointment of a defence attaché to New Delhi, while India confirmed that its defence attaché in Washington would now be concurrently accredited to Canada.India also expressed support for Canada’s interest in becoming a dialogue partner in the Indian Ocean Rim Association, a step that officials said would align with Ottawa’s Indo-Pacific strategy.On people-to-people ties, Carney noted that 400,000 Indian students are currently studying in Canada, describing them as central to the bilateral relationship and calling educational exchange “the greatest, most enduring strength between Canada and India”. He pointed out that the number of Indian students in Canada is twice that in the US and four times that in the United Kingdom.The joint statement underscored “the central role of education and talent mobility in advancing people-to-people ties” and recorded the conclusion of 24 education-related memorandums of understanding.Despite the lofty language, the senior MEA official acknowledged the partnership was moving away from “volume-driven student mobility” toward more structured, innovation-led collaboration between institutions, with Ottawa having introduced limits on international student intake amid domestic pressures on housing and public services.“It is up to every country to decide how much student intake their systems can handle,” he said, adding: “Our aim is to try and take the benefit of high-quality Canadian educational institutions, find ways to partner with them”.