Abstract
From a cold era of nuclear disagreement to warmth of bilateral relations, Indo-Canadian relations have seen upward growth since 2006. This is the period when Conservative Party came to power under the leadership of Stephen Harper in Canada after a long Liberal rule. Since coming to power, Harper sought to change Canadian foreign policy so much so that scholars have branded it as big shift, transformative and un-Canadian. The big shift has been from liberal internationalism to neo-conservatism and from public diplomacy to economic diplomacy including militarization of Canadian foreign policy. The ballot box politics is said to be redefining the international orientation of Canada under Harper. Set in this context, this paper explores the factors responsible for change in orientation of Canada vis-à-vis India under Harper. This paper focus mainly on two core arguments: economic diplomacy and ballot box politics of Harper are the contributing factors for this change. This paper argues that the change witnesses Canada’s effort to diversify its economy on the one hand and to woo ethnic votes on the other hand. The present work further seeks to explore the potential areas of cooperation between the two countries and chart out a roadmap of such cooperation, as there has been change in Federal government in 2015.
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- 1.
W.M. Dobell quoted in Rubinoff.
- 2.
Canada’s first sale of a power reactor, in 1963, was also made to India: a 100 MW CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) reactor became the Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant (RAPP1).
- 3.
Taken from Rubinoff, p. 843.
- 4.
Quoted in Rubinoff, p. 843.
- 5.
- 6.
Peter Sutherland, Former Canadian High Commissioner to India in an interview to Anita Singh.
- 7.
- 8.
Uri Dadush and Bennett Stancil, The G20 in 2050 referred in “Canada-India: the way forward”, The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (2012).
- 9.
- 10.
The Komagata Maru arrived on Canada’s West Coast on 23 May 1914, anchoring in Vancouver's Coal Harbour. Nearly all of the 376 passengers were denied entry and the ship sat in the harbour for two months. It was ultimately forced to return to India and was met by British soldiers. Twenty passengers were killed and others jailed following an ensuing riot. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/komagata-maru-backgrounder-apology-1.3584372 accessed 17/05/2016.
- 11.
http://vancouver.24h.ca/2016/04/11/pm-to-apologize-for-komagata-maru-incident accessed 19/04/2016.
- 12.
*Indicate primary sources.
**Indicate dissertation.
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Mansi, K. (2019). Foreign Policy of Canada vis-à-vis India under Stephen Harper: From Cold Storage to Warmth of Billion-Dollar Trade. In: Gayithri, K., Hariharan, B., Chattopadhyay, S. (eds) Nation-Building, Education and Culture in India and Canada. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6741-0_9
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