The $100 Billion Reset

Dear Friends,

We meet again against a backdrop of real, positive movement in the Canada-India relationship. This month I want to give you the full picture, not just the headline numbers, and put some real names and real words behind the story, because that is what will carry this relationship further than excitement alone.

Let’s start with what is genuinely moving. The Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) is in its final stretch. The fourth round of talks concluded this month, and a fifth round is scheduled for early October to close out what remains. Both governments say they intend to conclude the deal by year end, and there is no serious sign that intention has wavered. Indian Prime Minister Modi is expected in Canada in December, a visit Prime Minister Carney confirmed himself at the UN. It has yet to be formally locked in on either side, but the direction is clear.

For those who remember 2015, this is worth pausing on. Modi’s reception here that year, just a year into his first government, was one of the warmest the community has given any visiting leader. What followed in the years after was a hard fall, to the point where the two countries were barely speaking. The turn began quietly at the Kananaskis G7 summit in 2025, where Modi attended as Carney’s invited guest and the two leaders shook hands for the first time. Since then, it has been a steady climb back.

Now, the numbers, briefly, because they matter, and because getting them straight is part of what makes CIF worth reading and following. You will see two different trade figures in the press, and both are correct, they are just not measuring the same thing. Goods alone, what actually crosses the border as cargo, ran at about $14 billion in 2025. Add services, everything from IT to education to consulting, and the total comes closer to $30 billion. When you read $15 billion in one place and $30 billion in another, that is the goods-versus-total difference, not a mistake by anyone. Canada’s own stated target is to double that full total to $70 billion by 2030. The $100 billion figure in this newsletter’s title is our own framing of what is possible if this relationship is built right, not a number either government has committed to. And Prime Minister Carney’s Investment Summit, held September 14 to 16, produced pledges of nearly $500 billion against his own five year target of $1 trillion, but roughly $425 billion of that was Canadian banks and pension funds committing capital they already manage, not fresh money crossing the border. Real, but not yet the story of the world lining up to invest in Canada.

Here is the part that deserves your attention more than either headline number. Ed Jager, who leads Canada’s trade and investment programs in India and with whom I had a great lunch meeting on my last trip to Bharat, said publicly that Canada’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Tim Hodgson, has indicated Ottawa would match Indian investment in Canadian critical minerals projects dollar for dollar, out of a two billion dollar sovereign fund. That is not a talking point, that is money on the table today. Hodgson himself has been blunt about why Canada wants this. “We’re not going to live in a world where might make right,” he has said. “We believe in free trade and trusted relationships.” On why India specifically: “middle powers should work together to resist hegemony.” Read between those lines and you will see exactly what many of you have been telling me directly: Canada needs a market and a partner it can trust that is not its southern neighbour, and India needs supply chains it can trust that are not China’s.

The logic is simple and worth spelling out. An Indian company that invests in a Canadian lithium, graphite or rare earth metals does not just bring capital, it typically brings an offtake agreement that sends the output back to India’s own battery and EV supply chain. That single transaction moves the investment number and the trade number at once. The trouble is we are starting from close to nothing, Canada supplies barely two percent of India’s critical mineral imports today, and no bilateral investment in this sector has been publicly recorded. Canada still needs to prove its new fast track permitting process works on a real project, not just on paper, and owes Indian investors clarity on how their capital will be reviewed. India, for its part, still treats natural resources as a sector needing separate approval for outbound investment, and every rupee that goes abroad is a rupee not going into India’s own infrastructure build out. Real work, on both sides, not just an announcement.

If Indian Prime Minister Modi’s December visit produces one named deal in this space, that will tell us more about whether this reset is real than any number in a press release. And we would like to see some concrete deals when both Prime Ministers meet in December.

The same kind of clarity showed up last month in an unlikely place. When Mohan Bhagwat, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, spoke in Toronto, a visit that would have been unthinkable two years ago, he did not lean on the language of power. He talked about history. “They conquered no country, they converted nobody,” he said of India’s ancient travelers, as far as Mexico and Siberia. “Wherever they went, they gave knowledge, astrology, Yoga and Ayurveda.” On why that history still calls to Indians abroad, he put it simply: “Whenever Bharat has been asked for help anywhere in the world, it has never refused, and it extends a helping hand even without being asked.” He called this Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, the idea that the whole earth is one family, and said that is what he meant by Vishwa Bandhu, a friend to the world. In a moment when Canada and India are relearning how to trust each other, that is not a small thing to have said out loud, or to have been heard so calmly.

Our community remains the biggest asset either country has in making this relationship durable rather than another headline that fades. I would rather CIF be the organization that told you the real numbers, the real names and the real words, and pushed for the real deals, than the one that only celebrated the announcements. That is the case I am making to you this month, and it is the case I will keep making to Ottawa and Delhi in the months ahead.

Thank You