What led to the India-Canada thaw

When two countries that once celebrated warm people-to-people ties and booming trade suddenly stop talking, the silence itself becomes the story. For almost two years, the public soundtrack of India-Canada relations was a discordant loop of accusations, expulsions and mutual recrimination. This month, however, the music changed — not with a single dramatic crescendo, but through a series of carefully choreographed diplomatic steps that together amount to a reset of India-Canada ties. What was once frozen is now cautiously thawing. To understand these delicately crafted diplomatic maneuvers, it’s essential to look back at the period when ties had deteriorated sharply.

The rupture

The rupture that pushed relations to the brink began in the autumn of 2023, after the killing in British Columbia of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and Khalistan separatist. The then prime minister, Justin Trudeau, told Canada’s parliament there were “credible allegations” of Indian government involvement — an allegation New Delhi vehemently rejected as “absurd and motivated”.

The episode triggered tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats, the suspension and partial restoration of visa services, a freeze in many high-level dialogues and a deep chill in trust between two democracies with close diaspora links.

Even though the issue of Khalistani separatism may seem like a real source of problem for the withering India-Canada ties, a highly placed functionary within the Ministry of External Affairs seemed to differ. “I can only tell you that the Khalistani issue is one of the least problems that had soured the India-Canada relations,” the official told The Tribune, without offering any further explanation.

The turning point

Diplomatic ruptures rarely heal while politics is stuck; a change in government can create political space for a reset. In Canada, that change came in early 2025, when Mark Carney — the former central banker who had never previously held elected office — became prime minister. Carney’s pragmatic, economically focused foreign policy signalled a willingness to recalibrate Ottawa’s external priorities, including reviving quieter channels with New Delhi. That political opening allowed the two capitals to consider pathways back from confrontation to managed rapprochement.

The political shake-up in Ottawa did not occur in isolation. It unfolded against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025 — a development that jolted Canada’s political and economic establishment. Trump’s threats to impose sweeping tariffs and his inflammatory rhetoric about Canada’s sovereignty deepened divisions within the ruling Liberal Party and hastened Trudeau’s downfall. His successor, Mark Carney, took office amid mounting pressure to stabilise relations with key partners, diversify trade, and reduce dependence on the US market. India, with its growing economic weight and strong diaspora linkages, naturally figured among the first relationships to be rebalanced under the new leadership.

If there was a visible turning point, it can be clearly attributed to two things: the change in Canada’s leadership and the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his new Canadian counterpart Carney. The Canadian PM’s invitation to Modi to the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta — a notably public olive branch — brought the two leaders into the same space in June and set the tone for follow-up diplomacy.

While critics in Canada questioned the optics of hosting Modi amid unresolved grievances, the summit meeting nonetheless offered a pragmatic avenue to move from accusation to engagement. The outreach at the highest level gave officials on both sides the political cover to reopen security and foreign office tracks.

quiet work, heavy lifting

Much of the restoration that followed was mercilessly unglamourous: back-channel diplomacy, sustained contact between senior officials, and a series of technical meetings.

In late summer and early autumn of 2025, foreign office pre-consultations and senior official talks quietly reactivated previously frozen mechanisms — a classic example of diplomacy’s slow plumbing doing the heavy lifting.

“These sessions were not photo-ops; they were troubleshooting exercises to clear procedural hurdles, agree on security assurances and create a timetable for restoring normal functions at missions and consulates,” another senior officer said.

NSA-level confidence building

Security-to-security trust was the next indispensable step. In September, Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Adviser Nathalie G Drouin met India’s NSA Ajit Doval in New Delhi for discussions on counter-terrorism, non-interference and reciprocal mechanisms for information sharing. Those talks were significant because they moved beyond rhetoric to operational expectations: how to cooperate on law enforcement, what “non-interference” would mean in practice and how both sides would respond to future security concerns without letting political escalation follow.

The NSA dialogue helped underwrite the political decision to restore senior diplomatic posts.

Moves that mattered

Words mattered, but actions mattered more. In recent months, Ottawa took visible enforcement steps against individuals and groups that New Delhi has long flagged as problematic. The Canadian police arrested Inderjit Singh Gosal on firearms-related charges in Ontario, a move Ottawa framed as part of its domestic law-enforcement remit rather than as a bilateral favour. More consequentially for New Delhi’s security concerns, the Canadian government formally listed the Lawrence Bishnoi gang as a terrorist entity — a designation that gives law enforcement new powers to freeze assets and curtail transnational networks.

These were not symbolic gestures: they were operational moves that showed Canadian authorities were prepared to act where there was evidence of violent transnational crime and intimidation. Those steps eased one of India’s persistent anxieties: that criminal and violent networks were operating with impunity on Canadian soil.

foreign minister in Delhi

Against that backdrop, Foreign Minister Anita Anand’s October visit to New Delhi — the first Canadian ministerial trip of its kind in two years — was designed to convert private progress into a public, verifiable roadmap. Anand and India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar issued a joint statement outlining a “New Roadmap” to restore and reinvigorate institutional linkages: re-establishing high commissioners, relaunching ministerial dialogues across trade, energy and critical minerals, and restarting security and law enforcement cooperation.

The joint framework is deliberately modality-driven: it lists dialogues to be reactivated, sets expectations on exchanges between police and intelligence agencies, and commits both sides to people-to-people facilitation such as clearing visa backlogs. The visits, jointly signed communiques and the return of senior envoys converted the painstaking preparatory work into visible momentum.

What this reset is and is not

This reset is pragmatic, not sentimental. It rests on mutual interest: Canada’s desire to diversify economic partners and secure supply chains, and India’s wish to protect its diaspora and pursue trade and technology ties.

The India-Canada reset did not happen because of a single speech or a single arrest. It happened because leaders gave their officials permission to work the small things and because both sides agreed that the bilateral dividend of cooperation outweighed the costs of continuing confrontation.

For now, the thaw is real; but in international politics, thaws can re-freeze without steady, patient work. The next months will show whether this reset is the start of a durable re-engagement, or merely a fragile pause between storms.

Features