In a Time of Change: Is India’s Calculated Rapprochement with Canada a Confirmation of Policy Continuity?

• The sustainability of the India-Canada roadmap is grounded in its intent to establish deep, structural cooperation based on mutual benefit, rather than a spur-of-the-moment policy framework.
• The new framework is notable for not just stating platitudes but identifying concrete sectors for long-term structural collaboration.
• The renewed momentum with Canada is not an overall shift in foreign policy but a practical implementation, to fit within the established structural framework of multilateralism and strategic autonomy.
• The India-Canada roadmap reflects less about a change in India’s underlying foreign policy direction and more about a thoughtful application of its existing policy of diverse engagement.

The recently unveiled “New Roadmap” for India-Canada relations represents a bilateral, intentional, and strategic attempt to de-escalate diplomatic tensions and re-establish the framework of their engagement on a solid foundation—trade, technology, and cooperation in strategic areas. This new initiative emerges out of a moment of significant diplomatic strain and is intended to leverage the substantial economic and geopolitical complementarities that the two sizable democracies share. This renewed energy does not signify an acceptance of a foreign policy change but represents a relatively normal and pragmatic adjustment in India’s long-term planning to deal with complex relationships while consistently placing priority on national interest and economic growth. The sustainability of this roadmap is grounded in its intent to establish deep, structural cooperation based on mutual benefit, rather than a spur-of-the-moment policy framework.

The Imperative for De-escalation and Re-engagement

The India-Canada bilateral relationship, which, historically, has been robust based on longstanding people-to-people ties and deep economic ties, suffered significant harm from politics that produced an important deterioration of high-level trust. The new roadmap seeks to look past these tensions by focusing on areas of clearly shared benefit. 

The rationale for de-escalation is threefold:

1. Both countries also understand that a strained relationship reduces opportunities for considerable trade and investment. Canadian pension funds have billions invested in India, and even in a tense environment, bilateral trade is significant. Resilience is necessary to protect those economic interests and generate additional growth.
2. Further, in an increasingly multipolar world characterised by the vulnerabilities of supply chains and geopolitical uncertainty, both India and Canada acknowledge that a strong and resilient partnership is valuable as they are both significant partners in other Indo-Pacific strategies being developed by their respective alliances. This context is useful for stability and is more important than ever to avoid consequences from ongoing shifts in the global alignment. 
3. The fact is that the large and influential Indian diaspora in Canada, as well as thousands of Indian students who contribute greatly to the Canadian economy, place considerable demands on both governments to keep a functional relationship.

A Roadmap for Structural Strategic Cooperation

The new framework is notable for not just stating platitudes but identifying concrete sectors for long-term structural collaboration, in this case, a forward-looking multisector approach. Trade is positioned as the principal driver of renewal, and the roadmap advocates for the recommencement of ministerial discussions over trade and investment at the bilateral level in light of economic realities.

Aspects of the commercial agenda are being revived or initiated:

• Resumption of the Canada-India CEO Forum: This will convene senior business leaders to identify practical recommendations to ensure business interests are aligned with the commercial agenda.
• Focus on Priority Sectors: Focus is now squarely on high-growth and strategically important sectors: clean tech, infrastructure, agri-food, and digital innovation. This sectoral focus provides a good basis for long-term and sustainable economic relationships insulated from day-to-day political disagreements.
• The most future-oriented aspects of the roadmap are in technology and resources, which address the strategic needs of both countries for the next several decades.

The decision to revitalise the Joint Science and Technology Cooperation Committee (JSTCC), as well as encourage Canadian participation in India’s AI initiatives, illustrates a commitment to pursue shared solutions through collaboration. Working together in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital infrastructure, and cyber security takes advantage of Canada’s significant research capacity and India’s large pool of talent and rapidly growing digital economy.

Re-establishing the Canada-India Ministerial Energy Dialogue (CIMED) is very important. It aims to diversify India’s energy basket through trade in LNG and LPG, as well as by cooperating on hydrogen, biofuels, carbon capture, and electric mobility. Importantly, the plan includes holding the first Canada-India Critical Minerals Dialogue. For India, securing a stable supply of critical minerals from Canada is essential for its energy transition and for the manufacturing of high technology and defence equipment and represents a hedge in the supply chain. For Canada, it represents a significant market for its resources and clean technology.

The New Roadmap Within India’s Framework of Strategic Autonomy

The renewed momentum with Canada is not an overall shift in foreign policy but simply a practical implementation, and some necessary recalibration, to fit within the established structural framework of multilateralism and strategic autonomy. The operation of India’s foreign policy is underpinned by the principle of Strategic Autonomy, which requires independent decision-making and good relations with any major power based on India’s own national interest, irrespective of their own alliances.

India can engage with Western powers like Canada in ways that further trade or technology relations, and also engage with non-Western powers (like Russia for defence or Iran for energy), and simultaneously normalise frameworks like BRICS and SCO, which evidence that independence. Engagement with Canada is a pragmatic deepening of engagement to further diversify partnerships in the context of avoiding reliance on the relationships of any single country or bloc, which is a basic principle of India’s more current foreign policy.

The significance placed on trade, resilience in supply chains, critical minerals, and AI are all consistent with the larger historical policy of India to conduct foreign relations on a commercially motivated economic basis for shared prosperity and strategic autonomy within a restrained technological underpinning (Aatmanirbhar Bharat). Any diplomatic tension, no matter how deep or serious (as with Canada), requires resolution in attention to a higher aim of economic stability and prosperity.

The move to renew relations with Canada should be regarded as a broader, more forceful engagement with the West more broadly (including reviving trade discussions and rebuilding some strategic ties to the US and Europe). It’s not a convergence to the West, rather a realisation that India needs to ground itself in a global order based on economies that continue to predominantly rely on Western economies and technology. 

The de-escalation showcases a practical approach to diplomacy. It faces the reality that while these political inequalities and security issues need to be addressed through the established law enforcement and security imperative, they also cannot be perpetually in place, freezing mutually beneficial economic and technological advancements. By ring-fencing trade and tech, both sides have formulated a path for talking that gives sides the framework to engage on sensitive topics, but has the following customary space for new, positive, shared premiums. 

Thus, the India-Canada roadmap reflects less about a change in India’s underlying foreign policy direction and more about a thoughtful application of its existing policy of diverse engagement. It reflects a thoughtful attempt at nestling national security interests between the imperative for development and a need to secure critical resources. Fundamentally, the roadmap’s longevity is assured by its structural emphasis on the long-range strategic challenges of the 21st century that underpin energy security, resilient supply chains, and technological sovereignty—all of which are elements being centred in India’s long-term geopolitical and economic calculus. 

Hridbina Chatterjee

Hridbina Chatterjee is a final-year postgraduate student in International Relations at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. She has written for newspapers and think tanks, with interests in South Asian politics, India’s foreign policy, and the Indo-Pacific. Views expressed are the author’s own.