The India-Canada relationship is on the mend. The Canadian foreign minister will visit India on October 13 and 14. Trump’s coercive tactics are only helping the two countries take charge of their bilateral relationship, which has been hitherto heavily overshadowed by what happens in Washington.
This was the backdrop for an India-Canada Track 2 Strategic Dialogue held in Ottawa last week by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and Council for Security and Defense Research.
My interventions in this meeting were to seed ideas for technology collaboration. Assuming that the politically sensitive issues can be isolated from the overall relationship, I proposed these ideas:
- An Indo-Canadian Tech Catalyst Grants Programme to offer grants for joint ventures between Canadian and Indian tech firms working on critical technologies. This could be modelled on The Australian Space Agency’s International Space Investment India Projects programme, which makes grants for partnerships between Australian and Indian space companies.
- An Indo-Canadian Bio-manufacturing Hub. A platform for co-development and joint clinical trials in mRNA vaccines, bioplastics, and agri-biotech, leveraging India’s BioE3 policy and Canadian bioscience expertise.
- Make Canada part of the ‘Open Tech Maitri’: The Maitri is envisaged as a principled alliance to promote open technologies (open-source software, open standards, etc.) to safeguard the techno-strategic autonomy of middle and small powers. This Maitri could seed a Joint Open Tech Fund to support critical open source projects and open standards for AI and internet infrastructure. For example, funding projects that can allow different AI chips to handle AI workloads without depending on CUDA could eliminate the over-dependence on one company for GPUs.
- Project RECLAIM: A joint initiative on “urban mining” to recycle and reclaim critical minerals from e-waste and batteries will align with India’s National Critical Mineral Mission, and take advantage of Canadian recycling technology.
- An Indo-Canadian Academy for AI Research and Innovation: A bilateral research academy focused on VLSI design and new semiconductor materials, leveraging India’s design talent and Canada’s materials science expertise.
- Canada-India Compound Semiconductor Fab Consortium (CSFC): – A joint venture linking Canada’s Photonics Fabrication Centre with Indian manufacturing for GaN and SiC semiconductors used in EVs and defence equipment like radars.
- ‘Pole-to-Pole’ Climate Research Alliance: A collaboration between Canadian Arctic and Indian Himalayan research institutions to study shared climate challenges like glacier melt and water security.
- Next-Generation Nuclear Partnership: A collaboration focused on the co-development and deployment of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), adapting Canadian designs to India’s energy needs and plans for five Bharat SMRs by 2033.
Australia, for example, has an An India Economic Strategy to 2035 report which identifies ten crucial Indian states for deeper engagement.
In terms of the collaboration’s mechanics, I argued that Canada should also adopt a ‘Provincial-State’ Engagement Strategy, empowering provinces to build direct partnerships with a few Indian states where economic and technological action is concentrated.