From Words to Action

The Moment Canada and India Have Been Waiting For

Dear friends

Something historic happened in the first days of March. For those of us who have spent years working toward a stronger Canada-India partnership – through diplomatic crises, broken trust, and what sometimes felt like an endless holding pattern – the images from New Delhi were not just news. They were vindication.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to India from February 27 to March 2 was the first bilateral visit by a Canadian Prime Minister since 2018. Eight years. Let that settle for a moment. Eight years during which the world changed, India rose to become the fourth-largest economy on the planet, and Canada and India allowed a relationship of enormous potential to drift – and then fracture.

That chapter is now closed.

What Actually Happened? And Why It Matters

This was not a diplomatic courtesy call. PM Carney arrived with senior ministers, provincial premiers, and a delegation of leading Canadian CEOs. The outcomes were concrete and consequential.

The CEPA Terms of Reference were signed. After fifteen years of on-again, off-again talks, formal negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement are now officially underway, with both leaders committing to conclude by end 2026. The bilateral trade target: CAD 70 billion by 2030, compared to approximately CAD 31 billion today. That is not incremental growth. That is a structural transformation.

Eight major agreements were signed, spanning clean energy, critical minerals, agriculture, space collaboration, defence dialogue, and cultural exchange. A landmark CAD 2.6 billion, 10-year deal on Canadian uranium for India’s nuclear reactors was among the most significant – a direct expression of Canada’s identity as a reliable, long-term energy partner.

Agriculture: Canada’s Defining Opportunity

The agri-food sector – Canada’s single largest export category to India – was explicitly named as a priority cooperation area. For Saskatchewan’s pulse farmers, Alberta’s canola growers, and Manitoba’s food processors, CEPA could be genuinely transformational. Pulse crops currently face tariffs of up to 30% entering India. Eliminating those tariffs alone could expand Canadian pulse exports by well over 100% within five years.

Canada produced a record 107 million tonnes of grain and oilseeds in 2025. India feeds 1.4 billion people and is the world’s largest pulse consumer. The complementarity here is not theoretical – it is almost embarrassingly obvious.

Critical Minerals: Locking in Canada’s Strategic Role

Canada holds the world’s third-largest proven oil reserves and is among the global leaders in lithium, cobalt, nickel, and uranium. India needs these inputs to fuel its electric vehicle ambitions, its manufacturing expansion, and its energy transition. A Ministerial-led Indian energy and industry delegation to Canada is committed for this summer. The PDAC mining conference in Toronto this month included an Indian presence at historical scale for the first time.

Celebrating The Women Who Are Building This Relationship

On March 8, CIF hosted its sixth annual International Women’s Day celebration in Brampton. Seeing that room – filled with accomplished, deeply rooted Indo-Canadian women- was a reminder that the bilateral relationship we are working so hard to rebuild is not built by diplomats alone. It is built, every day, by people like the ones in that room.

But we could not speak that evening without naming a painful truth. An independent and courageous Indo-Canadian woman – Nancy Grewal was recently killed in Ontario – not randomly, but for the act of expressing herself freely on politics and society. Her death forces a question every one of us must answer honestly: what is the meaning of a democratic society if women must live in fear for the right to speak their minds?

Hon. Charmaine Williams, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Women’s Social and Economic Opportunity, put it plainly: no woman should ever be afraid to raise her voice in Ontario. Ontario’s $1.4 billion commitment to the strategy against gender-based violence, and the over $50 million invested in helping women upskill and enter the workforce, are exactly the structural investments that turn commitment into reality.

Our IWD convener Sunita Vyas has led this event since its founding in 2021. Her insight – that when one woman rises, she lifts many others – is not just inspiration. It is an economic model.

Panellists Sarab Hans of Hans Dairy, Vasudha Seth of ArcelorMittal Dofasco, and Shalini Sheth of Surati Sweet Mart represent a generation of Indo-Canadian women who have built enterprises and earned seats at tables that once excluded them entirely. Their presence in Canadian business is one of this country’s greatest competitive advantages. Safety is not a separate agenda from economic empowerment – it is the precondition for it.

Canada’s National Interest – Delivered

The New Delhi visit demonstrated something important about how bilateral relationships actually work: they are advanced by capable people who show up, do the work, and deliver results for their country.

Canada sent exactly that. The agreements signed – on CEPA, critical minerals, uranium, agriculture, and clean energy – reflect Canadian priorities, Canadian resources, and Canadian commercial interests. The same voices that spent years using CIF’s name to discredit engagement with India were answered not by argument, but by results.

Two Indo-Canadians Trusted to Build Canada’s Economic Future

There is a story within this story that deserves to be told. Prime Minister Carney has entrusted two talented Indo-Canadians with Canada’s most consequential international responsibilities at the most critical moment in a generation.

On the foreign affairs front, Canada’s Foreign Minister Anita Anand carried the bilateral reset into New Delhi and delivered. On the trade front, Minister of International Trade Maninder Sidhu – another young Indo-Canadian from Brampton, the very heart of our community – is leading Canada’s CEPA negotiations with India while simultaneously building economic bridges across the Indo-Pacific and beyond. His mandate is not India-specific; it is global – and he is executing it with quiet competence and with Canada’s commercial interests at its centre.

That a Prime Minister would place this much trust on Indo-Canadians to represent Canada to the world is not something to pass over quietly. It is a signal of where Canada is heading – and of what this community contributes when given the opportunity to serve.

A Silver Lining Worth Acknowledging

Canada has always valued its relationship with the United States – our oldest ally, our largest trading partner, the country with whom we share the world’s longest undefended border. That relationship remains foundational and we want it to thrive.

But the trade pressures of recent months have had one unintended consequence worth acknowledging: they have accelerated Canada’s long-overdue diversification of its economic partnerships. The urgency now driving Canada toward India, the Indo-Pacific, and new global markets was sharpened by the reminder that no country – however close – should be Canada’s only option. The India reset, the CEPA momentum, Minister Sidhu’s expanding trade mission calendar: none of this would be moving at this pace without that strategic wake-up call. Sometimes the greatest catalysts for clarity arrive from unexpected directions.

For the two million Indo-Canadians who lived through three years of diplomatic rupture – the expelled diplomats, the cancelled galas, the accusations and counter-accusations – this reset carries deep personal significance. We were never the problem. We were always the bridge.

What PM Carney’s visit signals, perhaps more than any specific agreement, is that Canada now understands what we have always known: you cannot build a serious relationship with India by treating the diaspora as a liability. The two million Canadians of Indian origin are not a complication in the bilateral relationship. We are its most valuable resource.

The Work Ahead – Eyes Open, Optimism Grounded

CIF has always led with hope – but never with naivety. The signing of a Terms of Reference is a beginning, not an ending. Three things will determine whether this moment becomes transformational or another missed opportunity.

First, CEPA must be concluded, not just negotiated. An ambitious, comprehensive agreement that meaningfully opens agricultural markets, protects Canadian resource investments, and facilitates mobility will be worth the effort. A thin agreement that checks a political box will not be. CIF will be watching – and advocating – for the former.

Second, security cooperation must be matched by political courage. Both governments have agreed to deepen cooperation on violent extremism and organized crime. For the Indo-Canadian community, this is not abstract. The agreements signed in New Delhi must be backed by decisive enforcement action at home.

Third, the community must step forward. Every Indo-Canadian businessperson who has been watching from the sidelines should now consider how to participate in the commercial opportunities opening up. Every one of us who speaks to politicians, school boards, and newsrooms has a role to play in sustaining the positive narrative that makes this relationship possible.

What You Can Do Right Now

• In business: The Canada-India CEO Forum is being relaunched. Ensure your sector is represented.
• In food and agriculture: The CEPA agricultural provisions will be among the most consequential. Contact your provincial agricultural association and engage in the consultations.
• In clean energy or critical minerals: The summer Indian energy delegation to Canada and the 2026 Renewable Energy and Storage Summit are direct opportunities. Prepare now.
• In education: 21 Canadian university presidents visited India in February. Academic partnerships are being formalized. Get involved in your institution’s India engagement.
• As a citizen: Write to your MP. Tell them you support the bilateral reset and that women in public life deserve to do their work without fear.

Baisakhi is upon us – that ancient celebration of harvest, renewal, and the promise of what the new season will bring. For farmers across the Prairies, it is a time of preparation. Seeds in the ground. Weather watched carefully. Hope disciplined by experience. That is exactly where Canada and India stand today. The seeds are in the ground. The conditions are better than they have been in a decade. The harvest is not guaranteed – it never is- but for the first time in years, it is genuinely within reach. And as we look at the women who led our IWD celebration, the women building businesses across this country, and the women advancing Canada’s interests on the world stage -we are reminded that the best of what Canada can be has always been powered, in no small part, by those who refused to be sidelined.

The harvest ahead belongs to all of us. Let us bring it in together.

Jai Canada. Jai Hind.

Thank You!