Dr Singh to meet Indo-Canadian MPs

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who's is landing in Toronto Saturday morning for the G20 summit, is meeting 27 Indo-Canadian MPs, and members of the State Legislatures Monday morning.

The initiative for this meeting has come from Ontario Minister for Government Services Harinder Takhar.  He's the chair of Association of Parliamentarians of Indo-Canadian origin – all MPs and MLAs (from Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta).

"I was in India in January and met the officials at the prime minister's office in New Delhi and followed it with another message to them and to the Indian High Commission," he told rediff.com.

"I am delighted that the Honorable Prime Minister has agreed to meet with us and this is the real honor."

Their interest is to talk with Dr Manmohan Singh "how the Indo-Canadian community has done in Canada, to talk about how can we improve bilateral trade relations with India and also we will try to have a discussion on what role we can play in improving trade relations and  partnership.

"We also want to raise the issues that the NRIs face in Canada – issues of property, marriage, etc.," Takhar said.

"We can all learn a great deal from him (Dr Singh), as we have over one million people of Indian origin who call Canada their home.  Our community has done extremely well."

The meeting will take place at Toronto's Royal York Hotel early in the morning. The meeting is scheduled to start at 8.15 and will last for over an hour.

Takhar said invitations have gone to all 27 law makers and "I believe most of them will come."

They will include Conservative MPs Deepak Obhrai, Neena Grewal, and Liberals MPs Ujjal Dosanjh, Ruby Dhalla, Navdeep Bains, Sukh Dhaliwal, Gurbax Malhi,  Member of British Columbia Legislature Dave Hayer and  others.

Media may not have any access to Dr Singh after the meeting but surely law makers at the federal and provincial levels may do the talking – on record or off record.

After that meeting, before he leaves for the airport for his return flight to India, Prime Minister Singh is likely to briefly visit the Air India monument in Toronto to pay his personal homage to 331 victims of the Air India tragedy.

Image: Dr Singh and Harper at Copen Hagen.