Ontario minister flags nuclear liability concerns

Confident of significant benefits from India-Canada nuclear cooperation, a senior lawmaker from the North American nation feels the Indian nuclear liability law remains an issue and can adversely impact the investments.
"It could well be an impediment to investment," said Brad Duguid, the minister for economic development for Canada's largest province Ontario, when asked about the nuclear liability law.
Duguid however added that "this market (India) is going to grow and we need to be patient".
"We need to work through or give government the time," he told PTI here over the weekend.
Duguid was in India as part of a 170-member business delegation led by Ontario's Premier Kathleen Wynne. During the trip, they signed 65 agreements with Indian companies across sectors under which Indian companies will invest USD 240 million in Ontario.

Under a new pact signed in April last year, Canada will supply uranium for a period of five years.

The supplies will be under the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. "There have been unnecessary frosty relations for too long (between the two countries) and it is time to move ahead," the then Canadian PM Stephen Harper had said at that time.
Canada had banned exports of uranium and nuclear hardware to India in the 1970s.
However, the two countries turned the page in 2013 with the signing of the Canada-India Nuclear Cooperation Agreement, paving the way for the uranium deal.

However, concerns have been expressed in some quarters about the Indian nuclear liability law, passed after the Indo-US nuclear deal of 2008 to safeguard the domestic interests.
To critics of nuclear power, Duguid said nearly half of his state's energy needs are met by nuclear power. He called it a better alternative.
"By comparison, it is affordable, it is clean, it is safe, does not contribute to global warming in any way," he said.
Duguid also said there can be an increase in the investments from the Canadian pension funds if there is a stability in the way infrastructure projects evolve.

"The more stability and certainty that projects that get started will get completed, the more pension fund commitments you will see," he said, calling India as a "juggernaut economy" which will grow in the long term.