Canada and India Are Deepening Ties amid Global Geopolitical Frictions: Common Concerns and Possible Opportunities
A major shift towards more resilient, durable relationship than ever in their over 80 years of diplomatic ties.
“Arise, awake, and stop not, till the goal is reached”, is perhaps a timely quote articulated by Prime Minister Mark Carney, from the great Hindu philosopher and spiritual leader, Swami Vivekananda (1863-1904, spent few days in two Canadian cities of Vancouver and Winnipeg in July 1893 before heading for his milestone lecture at the Chicago Parliament of Religion, September 1893), during his first official visit with his Indian counterpart, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in New Delhi, March 2026. This bilateral meeting is another well-timed engagement for both Canada and India as they experience geopolitical and geostrategic threats, coupled with economic uncertainties from their respective interactions with the United States, their closest ally. Above all, the US assertions over Venezuela, Iran and Cuba, and her looming threats over Greenland and Canada necessitate concerted endeavours among middle powers to adjust themselves in this suddenly changed new world order that provokes unipolar hegemony over multilateral collectivism. Amidst such turbulent background, the geostrategic vulnerabilities of the Arctic and the Indian Oceans emerge as prime destinations for extra-regional contestations that demand maritime bilateralism between Canada, an Arctic State, and India, a littoral State of the Indian Ocean.
Today, both the Arctic and Indian Oceans are among the fastest warming regions and interspersed with both conventional state-centric security-military predicaments and non-traditional human-centric socio-environmental-climate-related consequences, wherein both Canada and India are integral parts. This commentary examines some of those vulnerabilities that generate convergence of interests to boost their bilateral relationship.
Canada and the Arctic ‘Great Game’?
As the second largest Arctic State after Russia, Canada’s forty percent landmass, seventy percent coastline and over 36,000 islands are located between the Arctic Circle and the North Pole. Sharing the Arctic borders with Denmark (through Greenland and Hans island), and the US (through Alaska), this vast Canadian Archipelago constitutes world’s largest High Arctic landmass, and is the symbol of national pride, identity and sovereignty that entail robust foreign and national policy priorities, which are embedded within her geography, people and natural resources. Hence, Ottawa has taken pride in protecting her ‘North, strong and Free’ from external encroachments. However, with the intention to extend the existing 200 nautical miles to another 150 (total 350 nautical miles) under Article 76 of the Extended Continental Shelf (ECS) of the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea, the Arctic is presently encountering overlapping claims from the four Arctic States of Canada, the US, Denmark and Russia. Additionally, Arctic thawing has exposed its critical resources, including hydrocarbons, diamond, gold, base metals, and rare earth minerals that were previously concealed under the generational ice-pack, which spawns race for resource extraction not only among the Arctic members but also from non-Arctic States like China, who is an Observer of the Arctic Council, and self-identifies as a ‘near-Arctic State’.
Above all, given its shortest flight/missile trajectory, the Arctic is fast becoming another probable front from Russia following the latter’s full-scale aggression over Ukraine. To heighten further consternation, both Russia and China have been transforming the Arctic Northern Sea Route as a viable alternative route for global shipping that would significantly reduce transit time unlike the conventional Indian Ocean routes, leveraging the global warming and consequent disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice. Beside modernizing her Arctic military base and deploying her advanced nuclear-powered icebreakers, Moscow has recently concluded a rare summer transit through the northern corridor from the Barent Sea in the west to the Bering Strait in the east (close to Alaska, US, and the Yukon Territory, Canada) in record number of days to supply her oil to China. Similarly, while China’s Arctic icebreakers are undertaking routine expeditions through the Arctic as part of her coveted Polar Silk Road, her surveillance buoys dispatched in the Canadian Arctic shores were recovered by the Canadian military later. All these Sino-Russian assertions, together with the US threats over Canada, reiterate and redefine the centrality of the Arctic as a profitable contesting site for unleashing a new ‘Great Game’ among major powers.
Likewise, accelerated global warming and the consequent loss of permafrost areas are bolstering international navigation through Canada’s once-impenetrable Northwest Passage, the ancillary water body of the Arctic Ocean. With the Arctic melt, icebreakers, naval ships, oil tankers, cargo ships, schooners, cruise ships, and fishing vessels, even from the distant southern hemisphere are marking their presence in this vulnerable geographic space of Canada as the resultant outcome. Being one of the widest and deepest shipping lanes with shortest travel time between Asia and Europe through the Arctic Ocean, dodging the Panama Canal, this passage could be a game-changer in the Arctic-race. This becomes further complicated when the US, European Union, Russia, China and New Zealand deny Canada’s territorial sovereignty over this historic route, by citing it as an international strait with right to international transit for a continuous journey.
Within this enormous geographical space lie the traditional territories of the Indigenous Peoples of Canada with the Inuit being the majority, who have been inhabiting the area for several millennia, and whose livelihood is inherently intertwined with the growing climatic-environmental-geopolitical and geostrategic transformations that the region is experiencing at present. The loss of Arctic habitat is compounding their multidimensional adversities, including their access to food, education and employment, affordable housing and healthcare. Moreover, environmental pollution from possible oil spill, waste disposal, and noise pollution from the Arctic vessels is equally proving detrimental to the security and stability of Canada’s High North.
To address such complex vulnerabilities amidst the swift changing geopolitical environment of the Arctic, Canada is redefining her focus with increased defence modernization, capabilities, spending, patrolling, and boosting infrastructure (including road networks, housing and Hydroelectricity projects) and empowerment of the local populace in concert with her Arctic Indigenous partners. With the appointment of Virginia Mearns, an Inuk from Nunavut, as the Arctic Ambassador, Ottawa aims to advance the Indigenous voices, both at home and abroad, monitor external encroachments in the Arctic, and consequently uphold a more inclusive Northern approach. Alongside, Ottawa seeks to provide comprehensive protection of her Arctic territory by restoring the strategic significance of Churchill (Manitoba) and Resolute (Nunavut) for fortifying her Arctic defence, alongside the Canadian Forces Station at Alert on Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, the closest base from the Russia’s remotest Arctic air force base at Nagurskoye. To address the ongoing Arctic militarization, Canada has also unveiled plans for purchasing Sweden’s advanced surveillance system, procuring sophisticated submarines either from South Korea or Germany, and diversifying her defence partnership with Australia, New Zealand and European Union, to reduce overarching dependence upon the US.
India and Power Dynamics in the Indian Ocean
Like her Arctic counterpart, the Indian Ocean is also situated in one of the critical geostrategic regions that joins the Far East, Southeast Asia, Australasia, Africa and thence to Europe and the Americas. Known for its diverse marine reserves, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is geoeconomically sensitive due to its possession of one of the largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world in its Persian Gulf. The Ocean’s strategic choke points (Malacca Strait, Suez Canal, Strait of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Mozambique Channel and Cape of Good Hope) and its marginal seas, that together called the geostrategic Sea Lanes of Communications (SLOCs), constitute some of the busiest international shipping lanes to transport over seventy percent of oil and natural gas, alongside the global cargo. Any attempt to block one of these arteries propels significant ramifications worldwide, just the way the world is encountering consequences from the recent blockade in the Strait of Hormuz (2026), that transfers a quarter of global sea-borne oil trade alone, or the accidental six-day blockage of the Suez Canal by the Panama-flagged container vessel Ever Given in 2021 that stalled $9.6 billion (estimated) worth of commodities each day. Especially, as the demand for international containerised cargo shipping is gaining salience today, being its critical transporter, the Indian Ocean is witnessing rapid surge in Ultra Large Container Vessels or mega-ships by doubling their capacity from 9,000 to 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) from 2014 for carrying more commodities and reducing shipping charge.
Within these critical geographic and geostrategic oceanic settings, India has had been playing a decisive role through her civilizational, maritime and commercial ties since antiquity. Since the Indian peninsula and its islands are perched in the middle of such international transit passages, she transfers majority of such cargo through her maritime boundaries, especially the Great Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal that serves as the first major Indian outpost overlooking the world’s busiest choke point, the Malacca Strait. Hence India is gearing for an International Container Transshipment Port at the geostrategically sensitive Galathea Bay of the Great Nicobar (it is closer to Indonesia than mainland India) to harness the region’s strategic value, monitor and contain any external infringement. The recent discovery of hydrocarbons in the Andaman Sea has further heightened the region’s geoeconomic significance that requires closer attention.
Simultaneously, China’s strategic encirclement of the Indian peninsula with military installations, expansive sea-and river-ports, paired with infrastructure-economic-and-defence-engagements with South Asian neighbours through her Belt and Road Initiative raises utmost concern to New Delhi’s strategic-security priorities in the Indian Ocean. Thus, India embarks on playing a dominant and meaningful role in the region by evolving herself as the ‘net-security-provider’ to prevent illicit maritime traffic, piracy, and disaster, and provide humanitarian assistance to the littoral States. Simultaneously, India-sponsored IORA (Indian Ocean Rim Association) and BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) from 1997, MAHASAGAR (the Sanskrit term for ocean and acronym for ‘Great Oceanic Security And Growth for All in the Region’) Initiative since 2015, are fostering socio-economic-strategic-humanitarian cooperation with the Indian Ocean countries.
Like Canada, India is also one of the frontliner States to bear the magnitudes of climate change. Since what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic, the Himalayas and mangrove vegetation of India are experiencing its tumbling impacts. The Himalayas and its neighbouring Hindukush and Karakoram Ranges are often referred to as the ‘Third Pole’ for being the largest storehouse of ice and freshwater outside the two Poles. Along with forceful anthropogenic and developmental intrusions in the Himalayas, rise in sea-level from the Arctic melt are some one of the rationales behind the rapid retreat of Himalayan glaciers and increased salinity in the mangrove forests of the Sunderban delta (world’s largest mangrove reserve at the Bay of Bengal, the largest Bay on earth) downstream.
Indo-Canadian Endeavours and the Indo-Pacific Rhetoric
All the adversities discussed above have significantly altered the maritime security equations that necessitate bilateral cooperation between Canada and India. Facing similar threats and experiencing consequences alike, both Ottawa and New Delhi have also demonstrated their deep interests in fomenting close partnership through their multilateral engagements and negotiating for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, while professing independent interests on each other’s shores, Canada in the Indo-Pacific, and India in the Arctic. Today, the Indo-Pacific (first identified by Prince Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan of India in 1655, appeared later in Karl Haushofer’s Deutsche Kulturpolitik in 1939, and remodelled thereafter by the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his visit to India in 2005) is Canada’s one of the leading areas of interest.
Being a Pacific nation, with consistent strategic and socio-economic-cultural ties with the Indian Ocean States, Canada’s Indo-Pacific is widely gaining prominence in her foreign policy priorities since its launching in 2022 by Ottawa. Under Prime Minister Carney, the region witnesses consistent surge in Canada’s defence spending, multilateral-multidimensional engagements and cooperative deployment, which is evident from the successful completion of the Halifax-class frigate HMCS Ville de Québec’s seven-month Operation HORIZON for an open, free, peaceful, and inclusive Indo-Pacific in 2025. Besides, Prime Minister Carney’s meeting with Prime Minister Modi at the successive G-7 Summits at Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada (2025) and at Évian-les-Bains, France (2026) are reaffirming more deepening and positive strategic relationship than ever, amidst domestic caution. Reiterating Canada’s visionary role in the Indo-Pacific, Prime Minister Modi has also expressed India’s support for Canada as the Dialogue Partner in the IORA.
Given the heightening Chinese presence in both the Arctic and Indian Oceans, the strategic analysts today are contemplating over the geostrategic superiority of the comparatively deeper international Straits of Ombai-Wetar in Timor-Leste, the link between the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. Beside their rich and pristine marine ecosystem, the Straits are also of great naval significance for being deep enough to allow undetected underwater passage for submarines. Incidentally, Canada has had a strong diplomatic presence in Timor-Leste since her dispatching a six-hundred-member team in the UN peace-keeping mission to assist in the latter’s transition to independence in 1999. While India maintains historic ties with the island nation for over five hundred years through commercial relations, and now one of the first to recognise the Timorese independence. Accordingly, Canada’s commitment towards a green sustainable Indo-Pacific and India’s effort to deter Chinese presence in the region could be leveraged for protecting the Timorese natural assets and prevent militarization (the Straits were previously patrolled by the US, now by China) of these critical Straits.
Correspondingly, India is also keen to reengage herself in the Arctic, an effort that was initiated with her conclusion of the Svalbard Treaty in 1920 independently as a British colony, but gathered momentum from establishing her first Arctic research station Himadri, at Ny-Ålesund (2008) and a multi-sensor observatory ‘IndArc’ in Kongsfjorden (2014) in Norway, while receiving an Observer status at the Arctic Council in 2013. India’s recent Arctic Policy (2022) calls for more scientific-environmental research in the Arctic to assess its impacts over the Himalayan melting. A recent Memorandum of Understanding (2025) with Norway’s Kongsberg company has given India an edge in building her first Polar Research Vehicle to counterbalance China in the Arctic, in addition to affirming her partnership with Canada in conducting scientific research at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut (2023).
Concluding Remarks
Though their formal diplomatic relations began with India’s independence in 1947, Canada remains historically closer to India since the age of maritime explorations four centuries before the Confederation of 1867, when John Cabot set his foot on Newfoundland in 1497 with a hope to reach India. Soon followed by Martin Frobisher, John Davis, John Lancaster and William Baffin in the 16th and 17th centuries, to find alternative routes to reach India through the mighty Northwest Passage. The connection was further strengthened by British colonialism from the 18th century onwards, when both Canada and India became prized possessions of the British Empire. Today, amidst the marked transformational shift in international relations and alarming ambiguities with their respective engagements with the US, Canada and India are switching gears for a closer partnership than ever. Lest overdependence on a single power for hegemonic unipolarity destabilizes reigning peace, affirming partnership in open, pluralistic, multilateral environs ensure durable peace and stability, and shall stop not until their goals are achieved.
Her recent article, “From the Frigid Arctic Waters to the Warmth of the Indian Ocean: Maritime Bilateralism between Canada and India,” is published in International Journal and available here.
