Toronto, Oct 11 (IANS) Canada's new High Commissioner
to India Nadir Patel is an Indo-Canadian, one who was born in Prime
Minister Narendra Modi's state of Gujarat and speaks Gujarati at home.
Patel
is barely 44. His appointment was announced Friday by Foreign Affairs
Minister John Baird and International Trade Minister Ed Fast.
Patel's
appointment follows the appointment of Richard Rahul Verma, an Indian
American, as the country's next ambassador to India.
"We are
pleased to announce the appointment of Nadir Patel as Canada's new High
Commissioner in the Republic of India," said the two ministers. "Patel
brings a wealth of experience and will strengthen even further the
Canada-India relationship, including on bilateral trade and
international security."
Parliamentary Secretary to Baird,
another Indo-Canadian Deepak Obhrai is also with the two ministers, all
on board Air Canada that's heading to India.
"I am delighted
Nadir Patel is our new high commissioner," Obhrai said. "He will join
other distinguished Canadians who have had a strong hand in
strengthening our relations with India, especially when my government
has put relations with India as a priority.
"I am looking forward to working with him."
Patel
was born in Gujarat. He was rather young when his parents decided to
emigrate to Canada. Patel went to Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo
(Ontario) where he finished his under-graduate in 1993 with political
science as his major subject. After graduating, he joined the Federal
Public Service and one after another he kept on incessantly moving in
the rank.
Till three years back, Patel was Canada's
consul-general in Shanghai. On returning to Ottawa, he became assistant
deputy minister for corporate planning, finance and information
technology, and chief financial officer at Foreign Affairs, Trade and
Development Canada.
In the meantime, Patel also finished his MBA
from New York University and London School of Economics and Political
Science and HEC Paris in 2009.
While the two federal ministers,
along with Parliamentary Secretary Obhrai, will introduce their new High
Commissioner at the highest levels of government, their hands would
also be full discussing with their Indian counterparts the question of
security and trade.
Minister Fast will continue on his course,
starting Oct 12 leading a 17-man trade delegation and will visit Mumbai
and Chandigarh. "This will be the third business delegation I am leading
to India," Fast said sitting on the 24th floor of the Sun Life
Financial, in the heart of downtown Toronto.
The current
bilateral trade is $6-billion which's a far cry from what the two prime
ministers in their summit in New Delhi in November 2009 pledged - $15
billion by 2015.
"The key to increased investment and trade is the singing of the Foreign Investment Protection Agreement," said Fast.
It
was in fact supposed to have been signed last year, certainly early
this year when Fast met his then Indian counterpart, then Commerce
Minister Anand Sharma in New York.
"But suddenly something happened and that hasn't been explained to us and the fact is FIPA hasn't been signed."
He's
optimistic under leadership of pro-business Prime Minister Narendra
Modi the file on foreign trade and investment would move quickly up the
bureaucratic ladder on to the prime minister's table.
Photo: Nadir Patel (left) with Prime minister Stephen Harper in Shanghai