Modi to visit Toronto, Ottawa Dec. 11 and 12, Carney says

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to visit Canada on Dec. 11 and 12, with stops in Toronto and Ottawa, as the two countries push to finish a trade agreement by the end of 2026.

Carney announced the dates Thursday morning at a Calgary restaurant, where he was campaigning ahead of Monday’s Alberta referendum vote. He said he had “just spoken” to Modi and that Ottawa would “see if we can broaden it out,” according to CP24.

Modi described the conversation as “warm and productive” and said both leaders agreed to build on the “positive momentum” in relations, the Press Trust of India reported in a story carried by Deccan Herald. Neither report said what Modi’s program in Canada would include beyond the two cities.

Trade is the stated focus. Both governments have said they want to double two-way trade to $70 billion a year by 2030. International Trade Minister Maninder Sidhu spent last week in India with a delegation of nearly 300 business people, which his office described as Canada’s largest in more than 30 years, as Canada News Media reported. Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand met her Indian counterpart, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, in New Delhi on Wednesday, according to CP24.

A leaders’ visit gives negotiators a natural deadline. Five formal rounds of talks on a comprehensive economic partnership agreement have now been held, and Global Affairs Canada has said both sides are aiming to sign by the end of this year, as we reported on Sept. 22. A December visit would leave only a few weeks between the leaders’ meeting and that target.

Nothing in the reports reviewed says a deal will be signed during the visit, and neither government has said which chapters of the agreement remain open.

The announcement comes after more than two years of diplomatic freeze. In 2023, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau told the House of Commons there were “credible allegations” that Indian government agents were involved in the killing of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C. India denied any involvement. In 2024, the RCMP accused Indian diplomats and consular officials of clandestine activity linked to serious crimes, including homicides and extortion. Canada expelled six Indian diplomats and India expelled six Canadian diplomats in response, CP24 reported.

Canadian officials have said India refused to cooperate with the investigation. RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme told CTV’s Question Period in March that he was “not seeing any connection right now with any foreign entity” in transnational repression files. The RCMP later clarified that it knows of intimidation and harassment by foreign states but cannot currently identify criminal links, CP24 reported.

For Canada’s Sikh community, the visit will land close to home. About 770,000 people identified as Sikh in the 2021 census, close to two per cent of the population and the largest Sikh community outside India, according to Statistics Canada figures cited in our earlier reporting. Many have family and religious ties to Punjab, and the Nijjar killing remains an open homicide investigation. The CP24 report contained no reaction from Sikh organizations or from the Indian government on the planned visit, and none was found in other coverage.

The business case is also concrete for western Canada. Canada has named fertilizer access, particularly potash from Saskatchewan, alongside liquefied natural gas, nuclear technology and agriculture as priorities in the talks, trade officials told the Free Press Journal, according to our earlier reporting. Several of those sectors have large footprints in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Whether the warmer tone survives public scrutiny of the unresolved security file is the open question for December. The reports reviewed do not say whether Carney will raise the Nijjar investigation with Modi.

If you find reporting like this useful, consider supporting Canada News Media, an independent Canadian newsroom with no corporate parent.

Sources: Carney’s remarks as reported by CP24 (Oct. 15, 2026) and the Press Trust of India via Deccan Herald (Oct. 16, 2026). Via CP24.