New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced he will travel to Canada for the G7 summit to be held at Kananaskis, Alberta, between June 15 and 17 after Canadian PM Mark Carney on Friday evening called him over the phone and invited him.The development indicates a rebuilding of India-Canada ties and India’s growing global influence as a major economic power under the leadership of Modi, given that he has now been invited to represent the country for G7 summits as a special invitee consecutively for seven years. There are also indications that almost all the G7 member nations were keen from the beginning to have India on board at the summit as a special invitee. This may have also played a major role ultimately in the Canadian decision to invite the Prime Minister, albeit at such a late stage. After the telephonic conversation with the Canadian PM, Modi said he looked forward to meeting Carney at the summit and added that the two nations will “work together with renewed vigour, guided by mutual respect and shared interests”. “Glad to receive a call from Prime Minister@MarkJCarney of Canada. Congratulated him on his recent election victory and thanked him for the invitation to the G7 summit in Kananaskis later this month. As vibrant democracies bound by deep people-to-people ties, India and Canada will work together with renewed vigour, guided by mutual respect and shared interests. Look forward to our meeting at the Summit,” Modi posted on X. India is not a member of the G7 grouping, which comprises seven of the “largest” advanced economies in the world — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, apart from the European Union (EU). All the G7 nations enjoy close and excellent ties with India currently, with the exception of the host, Canada, with whom ties had plummeted in the past two years. There is an upswing in the bilateral ties after Carney assumed office in March this year. Ties between India and Canada had deteriorated sharply from September 2023 onwards during the tenure of Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau after he, as then PM, had accused India of involvement in the killing of Canadian citizen and pro-Khalistan extremist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in June that year on Canadian soil. India had dismissed the Canadian allegations as absurd. Since Biarritz in France in 2019, Modi has attended the G7 summits in the past several years continuously. He was also invited to the G7 summit in 2020 in the US by President Donald Trump, but the summit was eventually cancelled due to the Covid pandemic then raging in the US. In 2021, in the midst of the second wave of the deadly Covid pandemic then raging in India, Mr Modi had attended the G7 summit only in virtual mode that was then hosted by Britain. He also subsequently attended the G7 summits in Germany in 2022, in Japan in 2023 and in Italy last year, just days after being sworn in for his third term in office. Just last month, an indication that ties between India and Canada will finally look up was seen after external affairs minister S. Jaishankar spoke on the phone with his Canadian Indian-origin foreign minister Anita Anand, with the two leaders discussing strengthening the relationship between the two countries. After Carney initially assumed office in March this year, the Canadian PM had said that there are opportunities to rebuild ties with India. New Delhi had also reciprocated the sentiment then and had said it hopes bilateral ties can be rebuilt based on mutual trust and sensitivity. Carney had also then signalled his intention to rebuild ties with India, raising hopes that the worst in bilateral ties was over. Responding to questions from the media, Mr Carney had then said, “What Canada will be looking to do is to diversify our trading relationships with like-minded countries, and there are opportunities to rebuild the relationship with India.” The Indian government had last year told Parliament that “India has had, and continues to have, a challenging relationship with Canada primarily because of the political space provided by the Canadian government to extremist and secessionist elements who advocate an anti-India agenda and have been misusing Canadian freedoms for carrying out violent activities that threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
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