A Background Note in support of APF Canada’s India–Canada Track 1.5 Strategic Dialogue: Assessing Potential and Priorities in Defence and Security Relations, March 5, 2026, in New Delhi, India. The Dialogue is a joint India-Canada Research Initiative from APF Canada in partnership with India’s Council for Strategic and Defense Research (CSDR).
Canada–India relations have shifted from diplomatic tension to pragmatic engagement, and the security channel has seen its own measured progress within the broader reset. The clearest signal came in early February 2026 when India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval visited Ottawa for two days of high-level talks. The two sides agreed to a shared workplan on national security and law enforcement. They also decided to post security and law‑enforcement liaison officers in each other’s capitals, and committed to formalizing co-operation on cybersecurity policy and information sharing. These steps have reopened institutional channels and established working mechanisms that can carry sensitive but practical co-operation.
The background work for this reset began in 2025 with the meeting of the two prime ministers on the margins of the G7 summit in Canada. As a follow-up, Ottawa and New Delhi reinstated high commissioners that August, and re-launched senior official dialogues and ministerial engagements that brought structure to a tentative thaw. In October 2025, the two foreign ministers also agreed on a “new roadmap” to continue the step-by-step rebuilding of ties and identified sectors for deeper engagement.
An inaugural Track 1.5 Dialogue convened by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and its Indian partner, the Council for Strategic and Defense Research (CSDR), in November 2025 captured the scope and pace of change in the relationship. Participants described the relationship as having moved “from hopeless to promising” since early 2024. The Dialogue set aside time to explore defence and security co-operation, following earlier Track 2 conversations that focused mainly on trade, critical minerals, and climate technologies. The discussion was candid about constraints in defence sector engagement, such as export-control frictions, divergent Indo-Pacific threat maps, and residual trust gaps from recent tensions. Participants in the Dialogue also sketched a practical pathway focused on areas of potential alignment rather than on rhetorical, ambitious agreements.
What follows is a focused assessment of the near‑term opportunity in defence‑industrial co-operation. The most credible path for bilateral co-operation in this domain is through tightly scoped partnerships in training and simulation, propulsion and sustainment, digital and cyber‑enabled systems, space‑based ISR tooling, and critical inputs in electronics and critical minerals (processing and exploration). These are the areas where complementarities exist between the two sides.
• Prepared by Zoraver Cheema, Research Scholar, South Asia, APF Canada; edited by Aditi Malhotra, Program Manager, South Asia, and Vina Nadjibulla, Vice-President Research & Strategy, APF Canada
