::IMC::

Canada attracts Indian students, offers security, citizenship
Date: 2-Feb-2010

Mr. Jean Charest, Premier of Canadian province of Quebec has invited Indian students to Canada for pursuing higher studies, and offered citizenship of his country to them.

“We will offer speeding up the process of obtaining Canadian citizenship to every Indian student graduating in our county,” he said addressing a luncheon meeting organised in his honour by Indian Merchants’ Chamber at Hotel Trident in Mumbai on February 2.

Premier Charest said that India had a huge population and his country had vast land and other natural resources. It made a lot of sense to complement these natural resources with India’s population resources for mutual advantages.

“Every year, India adds 30 million people to its burgeoning middle class population. This annual increase is equal to the total population of Canada. In view of this, the two countries must join hands to optimize the benefits by complementing each other’s resources. I would call this humanization of the globalised world,” he asserted.

Premier Charest was leading a 115-strong official-cum-business delegation from Quebec to India. The delegation’s members included Mr. Pierre Arcand, Minister of International Relations, Mr. Clement Gignac, Minister of Economic Development, Mr. Joseph Caron, Canadian High Commissioner in India, Mr. Benoit-Jean Bernard, Consul and Director of Bureau du Quebec in Mumbai and a large retinue of CEOs representing scores of economic sectors.

IMC President, Mr. Gul Kripalani, who welcomed and felicitated the dignitaries individually, recalled that Premier Jean Charest led Quebec’s first official mission to India between January 15 to 21, 2006. “This mission resulted in the signing of a joint declaration concerning cooperation in the fields of the economy and education by Québec and Maharashtra,” he pointed out.

Mr. Kripalani said that both India and Canada had their distinct economic strengths, “and together they can join hands to become a world class repository of business ideas and proven technological skill sets that could be expanded for mutual benefit.” Among these promising sectors were : education, life sciences and technology, energy, environment and aeronautics.

Responding to him, Premier Jean Charest said that India, among the developing countries, had been recording robust growth, in spite of the severe impact of the global crisis. As India had a large domestic market consisting of its middle class, it depended on overseas markets for only upto 20% of its GDP. “But, Canada depended heavily on exports to overseas markets – about 50% of its GDP - because its domestic market was small.

“Therefore, Canada has decided to make large investment in many growth sectors and develop a market in India. We also want to make Canada a “knowledge economy” and for this, we need educated, young Indians to settle in our country,” he said.

Premier Charest also said that Prime Minister Harper of Canada and the Prime Minister of
India had signed an omnibus agreement last year for promoting trade, investment, technology flows, culture and environment. “Under this agreement we must work out concrete projects in various sectors within the next six months and implement them within the next two years,” he said.

Arvind Pradhan
Director General