Punjabis work hard and do well wherever they go,’’ smiles Herb Dhaliwal, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, summing up his family’s three-generational Indo-Canadian saga.His grandfather’s migration from Punjab in 1907, and thence his own ascent in Canada’s public life — first his election in 1993 to the House of Commons and thence his passage through some key ministries as the first Asian Cabinet minister, and now a looming decision on whether or not to bid for the top job now that the current Prime Minister has announced he’s resigning.Natural resources is a key portfolio in Canada, delivering 12 per cent of the country’s GDP and almost 40 per cent of its exports. In the course of a week-long business development mission to India, beginning Monday, Dhaliwal hopes to tie up agreements on technology to improve energy efficiency and cut greenhouse emissions. The mission, the minister hopes, will create opportunities in areas like energy efficiency, development of natural resources, sustainable forestry, mining, non-polluting energy. Dhaliwal speaks of other areas for Indo-Canadian cooperation — terrorism, non-proliferation, landmines. And immigration.‘‘One of the challenges we face is that our population is going to start dropping,’’ he explains. ‘‘In order to maintain our population we have to have immigration. We’ve adopted as a policy that we would like to get one per cent of our population — that is, about 300,000 people — every year. India is an important source of immigrants.”‘‘It says a lot about Canada,’’ Dhaliwal emphasises, ‘‘that someone born in a village in Punjab can become a senior Cabinet minister. It is a multi-cultural country. In fact, in Toronto almost half of the population was born outside of Canada. We think people can be proud of their heritage and be proud to be Canadian citizens. We promote multi-culturalism that is different from our neighbour (the US).’’But in this political journey, he emphasises, Canada’s political system was key. Explains Dhaliwal: ‘‘I think we have a political system that allows people to contribute. Our local, grassroots workers through elections determine who they want as their candidate. In the Indian system, the party leaders actually decide who the candidates are.’’Other attributes of the system in India too continue to bother him. ‘‘India has to do a better job in dealing with social development — health, education, redistribution of wealth. The systems have to change, so people from the lowest level can rise to the highest,’’ he says. ‘‘India has come a long way but politicians here have to focus how they improve these things.’’India, however, will always beckon, he agrees. ‘‘The country you’re born in, you always have an attachment to it.’’
