Canada and India are finalizing a 10-year uranium supply agreement valued at approximately $2.8 billion, with Prime Minister Mark Carney expected to travel to New Delhi in early March to sign a broader package of trade and energy deals, according to India’s High Commissioner to Canada, Dinesh Patnaik.
The proposed deal would see Canada supply uranium to fuel India’s rapidly expanding civilian nuclear energy sector, which faces a mounting gap between domestic production and reactor demand. India’s domestic uranium output stands at roughly 600 tonnes annually, while reactor demand is projected to exceed 1,880 tonnes — a shortfall that officials say makes foreign supply agreements essential.
Canadian Energy Minister Tim Hodgson traveled to Goa in late January for India Energy Week, marking the first Canada-India Energy Dialogue in eight years. He outlined the conditions under which Ottawa would proceed.
“Canada is happy to sell uranium under the Canada-India nuclear cooperation agreement as long as India is prepared to abide by International Energy Agency safeguards,” Hodgson told reporters. “We know that India is a major nuclear country and it has major plans to grow its civilian use of nuclear energy.”
Hodgson stopped short of formally confirming the uranium agreement, saying Carney’s travel timeline remains tied to negotiating progress. “There are plans for the Prime Minister to visit at some point this year,” he said. “It will depend on the progress we make.”
The uranium deal forms part of a wider diplomatic reset between the two countries after relations deteriorated sharply in 2023 and 2024, when the Trudeau government alleged that Indian intelligence operatives were linked to the killing of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia. The dispute triggered mutual expulsions of diplomatic personnel and froze bilateral trade talks for nearly two years.
Carney met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November to begin repairing the relationship.
High Commissioner Patnaik said both governments now feel a sense of urgency, partly driven by shifting global trade dynamics. “Now we are living in a world where the natural rules-based order which gave certainty to the world is not functioning,” he said. “We should work together to have an agreement that protects us from the vagaries of the international order.”
Beyond uranium, Carney’s expected March visit could produce agreements covering crude oil, liquefied natural gas, critical minerals, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Both sides plan to formally launch negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, with a stated goal of more than doubling bilateral trade from its current $30 billion annually.
The deal faces scrutiny from non-proliferation advocates. India is a nuclear-armed state that has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the international framework designed to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons — a fact critics argue Ottawa has discussed with insufficient transparency.
Canada holds the world’s second-largest uranium reserves but currently produces only 13 to 15% of global output, leaving significant untapped export capacity that officials say India’s growing energy needs could help absorb.
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