The Trudeau visit can help energise India-Canada Relations

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in India for a weeklong state visit that aims to enhance business and strategic ties between the two countries, including civil nuclear cooperation, space, defence, energy and education.

While India and Canada have a longstanding bilateral relationship based on shared democratic values, pluralistic societies and strong people-to-people contacts fostered by Canada’s vibrant Indian diaspora- which numbers around 1.4 million- this is a partnership that has so far not realized its full capacity. 

One factor has been the perceived support among the Sikh community for the establishment of a separate Sikh state. Allegations have also been levelled against certain members of the Canadian cabinet of supporting separatists in India, a charge that has been denied by the Canadian Government. 

While there may be some hardline element, their numbers are very few. On the whole, the matter is an attempt by the Sikhs in Canada to seek redressal for the 1984 anti-Sikh violence that saw thousands massacred in New Delhi alone. It is an emotive issue and the community, which with a strength of about half a million, constitutes nearly 40 per cent of the Indian diaspora, naturally enjoys political clout in Canadian politics, especially among Trudeau’s liberal party. 

India and Canada are industrialized democracies with considerable economic complementarities and as vibrant democracies, Canada has the potential to emerge as a partner for India’s modernization efforts.  In 2017 the two-way bilateral trade between Canada and India amounted to $8.4 billion, split equally between exports to and imports from India. While India was Canada’s eighth largest destination for merchandise exports, this does not reflect the full potential of economic links between the two countries. 

Specific Indian initiatives like ‘Make in India,’ ‘Affordable Housing for all by 2022,’ and ‘Smart Cities,’ offer significant commercial opportunities for collaboration between Canadian and Indian business houses and industries. 

For an energy-hungry India, energy security naturally ranks high in its list of priorities. Canada has surplus energy resources that India could tap. Current trends in supplies and price of oil and gas make Canada an economically attractive option for meeting Indian requirements. This is a subject of growing importance in Indo-Canadian dialogue and figures increasingly in the engagement between the private sector companies of the two countries. 

Indian Oil Corporation is also exploring possibilities to make an investment in Canada to secure shale-gas and liquefied natural gas from British Columbia. Inherent advantages while shipping gas from Canada include short transportation time to Asia via the Pacific, lower operating costs, vast Canadian gas reserves, stable and reliable jurisdiction and a strong regulatory regime. 

Canada had played a key role in India’s nuclear evolution by supplying uranium to India’s first nuclear reactor CIRUS in 1954. Canada as an energy superpower cooperated in developing the pressurized heavy water reactor technology with New Delhi. But India’s nuclear test in 1974, using Canadian technology, strained relations between the two nations, with allegations that India had broken the terms of the Colombo Plan. Following the signing of the historic US-India Civil Nuclear Deal in 2008, Canada has started collaborating with India once again in the nuclear domain. Being among the top two Uranium exporting countries in the world, Canada’s potential to be a partner in India’s economic transformation and to meet Indian quest for clean energy is indisputable. 

In a landmark event on 15th April 2015, then Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed a deal worth $350-million with Canada’s largest uranium producer, Cameco Corp, to supply 3,220 metric tonnes of uranium to power India’s reactors over the next five years. 

In the backdrop of western rebalance and ever-increasing homogenization of Asia and Pacific region, maritime cooperation becomes inevitable as the oceans are a vital link in Canada’s and India’s trade with the world. Ships carry about half of Canada’s trade and more than three-quarters of that of India’s. Canada has the longest coastline in the world at 243,000 km – which includes its islands - besides large navigable waterways and many ports of call in the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Great Lakes and the Arctic. Canadian vision for providing safe, secure and environmentally responsible navigation for all vessels converges well with India’s ambition to emerge as a ‘Net Security Provider’ in the Indian Ocean and now the Indo-Pacific. 

As India looks to extend its global footprint and move beyond the Indian Ocean to engage more actively in the Pacific region, both India and Canada can pool resources to build a stable security framework in the Indo-Pacific. Maritime security cooperation can, therefore, be an important driver of the India-Canada friendship. 

Canada also played an important role in getting a permanent observer status for India at the Arctic Council in 2013. With the Arctic gaining greater strategic prominence, collaboration between the two in that area is also poised to further increase. 

The author is Senior Fellow at the Vivekananda International Foundation