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In First Major Test of His Davos Logic, Carney Visits India to Rebuild Trust

Two middle powers seek common ground after a prolonged diplomatic rupture

In his now-famous speech in Davos last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that middle powers must band together or risk ending up “on the menu.”

His pitch rested on a simple proposition: middle powers, like Canada and India, which sit between a volatile United States and an assertive China, need one another. They should build enough connective tissue to avoid being isolated when the big players turn inward or hostile. It was a neat idea that will face its first serious test when Carney meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, during his maiden official visit to India.

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The bilateral starting point is not promise but damage. The 2023 episode when then prime minister Justin Trudeau alleged Indian involvement in the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil tore through a relationship that was already fragile. Trade talks that had been presented as close to an initial agreement were quietly suspended. Political trust, already thin, snapped.

Carney inherited that landscape. In New Delhi, there is a settled view that Canada has been indulgent toward Sikh separatist outfits that violently target India, fundraise in Canada, and run noisy campaigns for the creation of Khalistan—an independent Sikh state—from a safe distance. In Ottawa, there is a firm belief that New Delhi overstates the terror threat and fails to accept the constraints of a liberal system on political campaigns. Each side questions the other’s good faith.

They have tried to bridge the gap with the understandings arrived at during the visit of the Indian national security adviser, Ajit Doval, to Canada earlier this month, when he met his Canadian counterpart, Nathalie Drouin. And on the eve of Carney’s visit to India, an unnamed senior government official said the Canadian government no longer believes India is still meddling in the country through foreign interference, transnational repression, or violence, though the official did not offer an explanation for how the government had arrived at the conclusion. Without retracting the official’s remarks, the Prime Minister’s Office later said the government will continue to combat transnational criminal acts on Canadian soil, noting that respect for the law is key to Canada’s efforts with India.

Mistrust still risks bleeding into every policy conversation, from visas to trade. If there was a deep, mutually beneficial economic relationship underneath, it might help carry the weight of these disputes. There is not. Bilateral trade in goods and services stood at just over $30 billion in 2024, a minuscule figure given the scale of both economies. India was only Canada’s seventh‑largest goods and services trading partner in 2024, according to Export Development Canada, and Canada sits well outside India’s top trading partners, including some European economies. Canada ranks seventeenth among India’s foreign investors, according to India’s Ministry for Commerce and Trade.

But the economic logic of co-operation exists. India is the fastest-growing large economy in the world and desperately needs energy, capital, and technology, while Canada is a resource-rich democracy that wants to........

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