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Now the two countries have many reasons to draw closer together. Over half a million Indians have migrated to Canada and made it their home. Canada has become a center of high technology, which India desperately needs. Canada’s backing has already helped India in the international arena.

The late former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s brand of international diplomacy had cast a long and unpleasant shadow on Canada-India relations. Trudeau, as prime minister from 1968 to 1984 with a short absence in 1980, had set a hard-line tone with India.

After India conducted a minor nuclear test in 1974, Trudeau broke off nuclear cooperation with India. He ignored the fact that a belligerent China on India’s border had been conducting nuclear tests since 1964. As a result, Canada-India relations were left to freeze in cold storage.

Canada caused considerable trouble to India in withdrawing from nuclear cooperation. Having built one unit, it left a second 220-megawatt unit at the Canadian-designed nuclear power plant in Rajasthan unfinished. It took India seven long years to complete the unfinished Unit 2 in 1981. Two more units were completed in 2000. Unit 5 of the project attained criticality this week and will be in operation next month; Unit 6 will follow in another month’s time.

Trudeau – out of pique with India and sympathy for Sikhs supposedly oppressed there – unwittingly allowed Sikh terrorists to set up shop in Canada in the late 1970s. This resulted in one of the worst commercial air disasters in 1985, when a bomb planted on an Air India flight from Montreal to Mumbai exploded over Irish airspace, killing all 329 passengers on board.

A lax government and conniving security agencies did not realize the impending danger until too late. Later, Canada was unable to successfully prosecute the perpetrators, although their identities were well established. India could not forget this disaster, and relations thereafter remained lukewarm.

Current Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to re-establish dialogue and reset Canada-India relations. Canada took the first step toward India last year when, as a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, it voted for a waiver of the ban on nuclear trade with India, in relation to the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

Harper’s visit to India from Nov. 15-18 was another step in the right direction. His visit is expected to boost future trade and business relations that have been below par so far. Canada-India trade now stands at a mere US$4 billion, but there is room to triple it within the next five years.

Today India, a US$3.2 trillion economy and a center for information technology and business process outsourcing, is poised for big times ahead. Canada does not wish to be left behind.

India needs Canadian-designed Candu reactors and uranium to generate nuclear energy, which can help India achieve its targets for lower carbon emissions. Canada could sell two to three major power plants to India and keep its nuclear industry humming for two decades. The supply of uranium can relieve India of the shortage it faces and help diversify its energy sources.

Additional technology from Canada can make India a hub for auto parts, pharmaceuticals and food processing. In return, Canada can source a lot of specialized products in India, which are high-priced in Canada.

Unfortunately, although agreements on these issues had been negotiated and were ready to be signed during Harper’s India visit, this did not happen. They may be signed sometime next year when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Canada. The stumbling block is the changed attitude of the United States under U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration.

A few other stumbling blocks remain. Sikh terrorists who found Canada hospitable in the 1970s and its security lax could create another incident in the coming years. They have lain low following the shame of blowing up 329 innocent Canadian passengers on a civilian airliner, but from time to time they show their face when newspaper editors or local citizens wish them out of their midst.

Now, reformed security agencies are on top of these terror threats. Also political attitudes toward India have changed. There will be no sympathetic Canadian politicians at fundraisers organized by terrorists in civilian garb.

There is also much to be gained from a conjoined Canada-India policy in Asia. A key example is Canada’s military involvement and India’s civilian aid to Afghanistan. For the past 20 years Afghanistan has been under the influence of Pakistan, where the likes of Osama bin Laden have been allowed to set up shop to undertake terror activities.

Canada chose to help the United States in its war on terror in Afghanistan while India has provided more than US$1 billion worth of developmental aid to Afghanistan to build roads, schools and other basic infrastructure. These two policies complement each other and need to be pursued to the end.

India and Canada are also in a position to thwart moves by China and Russia to undermine the U.S. currency during bad financial times. China dropped a hint of its intentions to raise its financial influence during the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh last September.

The United States cannot stand up to the China, as it has borrowed too much money from it. As a debtor, it is letting China run its foreign policy. This effort must be thwarted. The U.S. currency and its economy will soon recover, but until then the combined influence of nations who are not China’s debtors is required to guard the world economic order.

India in the next seven years will be an economic powerhouse. Its gross national product will double to US$6-7 trillion. Canadians should not lose out on this bonanza. They have already made a big mistake by importing US$40 billion of consumer goods from China, and selling next to nothing back. If unchecked, China will soon be dictating terms to Canada like it does to the United States. It is in Canada’s interest to diversify its imports of goods and services.

The Canada-India re-engagement should not be allowed to slow down. Although it took 35 years, the current momentum should be sustained.

All issues on civilian nuclear re-engagement should be overcome and all possible trade avenues must be explored. Canada’s move to open trade offices in the Indian cities of Kolkata and Hyderabad are steps in the right direction.

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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)