Canadian Bazaar
TORONTO: Six Indo-Canadians – all Punjabis – were elected to the Ontario provincial parliament on Thursday.
All the winners are from the ruling Progressive Conservative Party (PC) which retained its majority by winning 83 seats in the 124-member provincial parliament.
Prabhmeet Sarkaria, 31, who became the first turban-wearing Sikh Cabinet minister in Ontario four years ago, retained his seat from Brampton South. He was president of the Treasury Board in the outgoing Cabinet of Premier Doug Ford. Sarkaia’s family moved to Canada from Amritsar in the 1980s.
Parm Gill, 48, who hails from Moga and was Minister for Citizenship and Multiculturalism in the outgoing ministry, was re-elected from Milton on the outskirts of Toronto.
Nina Tangri, who is Ontario’s Associate Minister of Small Business & Red Tape Reduction, also romped home from Mississauga-Streetsville. Nina’s family hails from Jalandhar.
Amanjot Sandhu of the ruling PC also retained his seat from Brampton West as did Deepak Anand from Mississauga-Malton. They both come from Punjab.
However, federal New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh’s brother Gurrattan Singh lost his seat in Brampton East to Hardeep Grewal of the ruling PC.
Other prominent Indo-Canadian losers were three women – Dipika Damerla and Harinder Malhi, both former ministers and from the Liberal Party, and Sara Singh of the NDP.
There were 22 Indo-Canadian candidates in the fray this time – seven each from the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party, five from the ruling Progressive Conservative Party (PC) and three from the Green Party.
In the last elections in 2018, seven Indo-Canadians – all Punjabis – were elected to the provincial parliament. But Gurrattan Singh and Sara Singh lost this time.
