The Hindu : Canada keen to assist Indian cos. under CDM

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, May 22, 2003

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Business

Canada keen to assist Indian cos. under CDM

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI MAY 21. Canada is interested in using the potential offered by India to earn credits for discharging its environmental obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, according to the Canadian High Commissioner, Peter Sutherland.

Canada has appointed an official in its embassy in Delhi exclusively to explore possibilities of assisting Indian companies under the CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) of the Protocol. "Such exclusive appointments have been made by us only in two other countries — Mexico and Poland", Mr. Sutherland said.

The High Commissioner said Canada was worried about competing with the U.S. in the world market in a situation where the U.S. had pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol and its industries did not have to incur the costs entailed by reduction of emissions to stipulated levels under the Protocol in the case of developed countries. Canada was hopeful of using the CDM to meet the environmental needs of Indian companies and enable Canada's own industries to earn credits for emission reduction.

Talking to presspersons here recently, the High Commissioner, who is expected to complete his stint in Delhi shortly, said Canada, which had a large population of Indian origin and Indian professionals, including Tamils, was set to enact a new law on immigration.

The essentially new element in the law would be that acceptability for purposes of immigration would not be decided on the basis of sponsorship from within Canada or any particular sets of skills that happened to be in short supply in Canada in any particular period but on the basis of the possibility of the aspiring high-skilled applicants to adopt themselves to the changing economic and technological environment in Canada.

The education level of the applicant, work experience and knowledge of English and French would be among factors that would be taken into account in deciding each case. This would help avoid the need to send back or render jobless those immigrant professionals whose services could suddenly face a fall in demand in the country.

Asked why the much-talked-about agreement with India on co-production of feature films and TV was taking a long time to finalise though Canada had reached such an agreement with about 50 countries, Mr. Sutherland said in India, the size of the film industry was quite big, unlike in the case of many other countries.

The standard agreement model could not be applied in the case of India and it would have to be `customised'.

He said a steering committee with R. Natarajan, Chairman of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), had been formed to implement the proposal to organise an all-India association of alumni of Canadian universities. The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, would exchange faculty and students with the University of Waterloo under an initiative taken by the two countries, he said.

The High Commissioner said while India and Canada shared a common view on preservation of cultural diversity (through exception for cultural products from the MFN principle of the WTO), they would both benefit if agricultural subsidies were brought down as demanded by the Cairns group of countries. However, Canada would like India to agree to take up `Singapore issues' (like government procurement, trade facilitation and investment) without insisting on solving `implementation issues' (of the Uruguay Round of the WTO) before expanding the negotiation agenda.

Canada did not agree that terrorism could be tackled without going into its root causes, though it was in agreement with the need to take immediate measures to combat international terrorism, Mr. Sutherland said.

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