Canada wants more immigrants

The rise of Indian billioniare(s) in Canada

Steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal's rise to become the richest man in Britain has aroused considerable interest in Canada which has many multimillionaires among its more than one million Indian population.

Who is Canada's Indian billionaire?

First things first. Two timber tycoons -- Asa Johal and Herb Doman -- in British Columbia province were the first Indian multimillionaires in Canada. The latter was on the way to becoming the first Indian billionaire when his fortunes suddenly dipped. However, Asa Johal's business is still on the upswing.

Over the years, dozens of Indians have joined the ranks of multimillionaires. Much of the Indian wealth in Canada is rising in the central and eastern parts because most of the 25,000 Indian immigrants to Canada each year prefer to settle in eastern and central Canada -- Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Calgary.

Here, the community has been quick to make political gains. Indians serve as MLAs, MPs and ministers in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta. Deepa Mehta, Lisa Ray, Kamal Sidhu, Ruby Bhatia, Rohinton Mistry, and Shauna Singh Baldwin have left their imprint in the entertainment and literary fields.

Back to money matters. Indian businessmen are making big strides in the Toronto area. Daily gala shows, fund-raisers, beauty pageants, exhibitions, concerts and business conferences are an indication of the growing influence and affluence of the Indians in Canada.

Toronto's Kuldip Rai Sahi is probably the richest Indian in Canada. From trucking to real estate to golf courses, his business empire is worth more than $ 2 billions. Known as the king of golf, Sahi owns more than three dozen golf courses.

Steve Gupta, president of the Easton Group of Hotels, is worth millions. His Comfort Suites City Centre was named the International Hotel of the Year in 2003. Prem Wats and Kash Sood are other big Indian businessmen in Toronto.

Every year, the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce salutes a hero, feting him as the Business Person of the Year. This year, the award went to young Bob Dhillon of Calgary whose Mainstreet Equity Corporation is one of the biggest real estate companies in this country. Worth more than $250 million, the company has been trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange since 1998. Toronto's top newspapers -- The Globe & Mail and the Financial Post -- say Mainstreet is "one of Canada's fastest growing companies.''

And the 40-year-old Bob is too in the race for the billion-dollar mark. "Within five years, I want to cross the billion-dollar mark,'' he says. Not many in the Indo-Canadian community doubt him.

Jokingly referred to as Bob the Builder, he started from scratch. Born in Japan, educated in India and Canada, he belongs to a family that did business in Hong Kong, in Japan and then in Liberia, West Africa. But a coup there ruined their business and the family fled to Canada for safety.

At school, Bob started a trading company called Pan Pacific Mercantile Group to import electronic goods from Hong Kong. "Pan Pacific is thriving, focusing on venture capital and exports to south Asia,'' he says.

At 19, Bob bought two houses, renovated them and then sold them for a cool profit of 20,000 dollars. "That was a heck of money which took care of my college education,'' he says in interviews.

For fifteen years, he slogged for 70 hours a week. Having done $150 miillion worth of real estate business, he unveiled Mainstreet Equity Corporation in 1997. A year later the company was listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Funnily enough, as his business was booming, he dropped out to do an MBA from the elite Richard Ivey School of Business in Ontario. "It was just to learn a bit more. I was the first multi-millionaire student in the School,'' he laughs

Today, Bob is the youngest and the biggest Indian landlord in Canada. He owns more than 2,700 properties across Canada -- from Vancouver to Calgary to Edmonton to Toronto to Missisauga. Top-notch corporate honchos sit on his board of directors, including Toronto Stock Exchange ex-CEO Rowland Fleming and Ivey School former dean Lawrence Tapp.

A yoga freak, he is also busy setting up one of the biggest tourist spots in central America on a 2,300-acre island in Belize. The multimillion-dollar project will have casinos, golf courses, hotels, and much more. To reward him for generating a huge amount of economic activity in their country, the government of Belize has appointed him as their honorary consul general in Canada.

"Once I am well established in the hospitality business, I am going to concentrate on venture capital.''

Fresh from raising $33 million from the market to plough into his businesses, he says mother India is his next destination. "We have already some investment in India. Like China, India has a huge potential. I have been part of many business teams to India,'' says the man who donates liberally to pro-Indian causes, charities and politicians.

Being savvy in political matters pays and the Indians abroad know this very well, says the young Indo-Canadian who hosts every leader visiting Calgary. Sure, he knows the route to his billion dollars. (Source: The Hindustan Times)

Muslim vote is anti-Bush, not pro-Kerry

Washington, Oct 27: The American Muslim vote is going overwhelmingly to Kerry though he has done little, if anything, to earn it.

Kerry has made no effort to woo the Muslim vote to date, although it is now widely known and reported that the Muslim-American community is going to vote for him, 10 to 1. “It is not so much for Kerry who has just ignored us and who has taken a hard position on the Middle East, not qualitatively different from that of President Bush, but because we consider Bush and his administration to be dead set against Muslims. He has made war on Muslim countries and the treatment meted out to the Muslim community in America itself since 9/11 has been discriminatory, if not racist” one Muslim political activist told this correspondent.

New York Times columnist William Safire, one of the leading apologists for Israel and all causes Israeli, wrote on Monday, “You have to give credit to Arab-Americans, and to the overlapping category of American Muslims, for knowing what side they are on in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - and for voting for those they believe would address their concerns.

Four years ago, they voted almost two to one for George W Bush, thinking he would act like his father. Today, according to the Zogby poll, American Muslim voters are going 10 to 1 in the opposite political direction - for John Kerry over Bush. Not only do they see Bush’s Patriot Act as discriminatory, most of these Americans dislike the president’s unwavering support of Israel -including his backing of Ariel Sharon’s security fence and the diplomatic isolation of Yasir Arafat.”

Safire noted that “this stunning reversal of opinion” within a growing voting bloc is having an impact. For example, about a half million Arab-Americans live in Michigan, according to the Arab American Institute; most have turned strongly anti-Bush. That’s why pollsters are counting Michigan, with its 17 electoral votes, as “leaning toward Kerry.” He notes that in the last election, 20 percent of the American Jewish vote went to Bush, but this time he was going to receive no more than 20 percent of that 20 percent. This was despite the fact that this “President has firmly backed Israel’s vigorous self-defense - and time and again vetoed or denounced lopsided UN votes to ostracize Israel - 8 out of 10 Jewish American voters will still vote as a bloc to oust him.”

Safire argued that most Jewish Americans quite properly base their vote on issues like social justice, civil liberty, economic fairness and not primarily on what may be good for Israel.

Most Arab-Americans and US Muslims, as is their right, disparage Sharon’s Gaza plan. But in getting out of Gaza, the national interests of the US and Israel are in accord, he added, and urged American Jews to go for Bush rather than Kerry who, he implied, was “most likely to help gain a secure peace in the Middle East.”

Another report appearing in the Washington Post on Monday also stressed that Muslims were going to vote in large numbers for Kerry, when they voted for Bush in election 2000. Absar Chowdhury from Bangladesh said he would vote for Kerry next week because President Bush has disappointed him in several ways. In particular, Chowdhury cited an erosion of civil liberties, including the continuing use of secret evidence, and the war in Iraq, which has left thousands of Iraqis and more than 1,100 Americans dead.

Chowdhury, the report noted, “is emblematic of a dramatic switch among Muslim voters. Four years ago, 42 percent of them voted for Bush. But in this year’s race, they are expected to vote overwhelmingly for his Democratic opponent, with one recent poll showing 76 percent of the Muslim vote going to Kerry and 7 percent to Bush. ‘For American Muslims, there has been a sea change in political alignment and outlook since 9/11,’ said Zahid H Bukhari, director of Georgetown University’s Project MAPS, a long-term research project on American Muslims, which commissioned Zogby International to conduct the recent poll. ‘No matter what Bush says to Muslims right now, it doesn’t matter because he’s broken so much trust with our community,’ said Nabil Yousef, 21, of Arlington, a Georgetown University senior who started a Muslim website in August.”

Mukit Hossain, another Muslim, told the Post, “Voter registration is in the 90 percent range, and I would be very surprised if almost 80 percent of those people don’t come out to vote.” He said his committee counted about 10,000 newly registered Muslim voters in the Washington area in recent months: 1,000 in the District, 4,000 in Maryland and 5,000 in Virginia. He pointed out that this had brought the number of registered Muslim voters to 3,700 in the District and 48,000 in Virginia, with no statewide figure available in Maryland.

According to one estimate, there are at least 700,000 registered Muslim voters nationwide, but little hard data from independent sources are available. African Americans, who make up about 30 percent of the Muslim American population, traditionally vote Democratic by an overwhelming margin. But Democrat Al Gore received the votes of only 55 percent of African American Muslims in 2000, and Bush drew votes from 49 percent of South Asian Muslims and 54 percent of Arab Muslims in that election, according to Georgetown’s Bukhari. Polls also show a move away from Bush among the country’s 1.7 million to 2 million registered Arab-American voters, 46 percent of whom voted Republican in 2000. Three-quarters of the US electorate is Christian, and they have similar concerns as Muslims on racial profiling, the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to pollster John Zogby, head of Zogby International.

Among Arab Americans, “the issues of civil liberties and racial profiling tend to impact Muslims and immigrants more,” Zogby said. “But it is still cited as a problem - less acute but still a problem - among Christians and American-born” Arabs. The anticipated swing to Kerry could be crucial in some battleground states with significant Muslim and Arab populations, analysts said.

The Washington Post report said that Florida, where Bush won by 537 votes in 2000, has 120,717 registered Muslim voters, according to an analysis of state voter rolls by Hossain’s Muslim American Political Action Committee and the District-based Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

In addition, the Arab American Institute in Washington estimates a likely turnout of 515,000 Arab American voters in four key states: 235,000 in Michigan, 120,000 in Florida, 85,000 in Ohio and 75,000 in Pennsylvania. In a September survey of 502 Arab American voters in those states, 49 percent said they intended to vote for Kerry, and 31.5 percent said they would support Bush. (Source: The Daily Times)