Scholar, lawyer, researcher, and mother of four children, Anita Indira Anand, from the riding of Oakville in Ontario, is now the first Hindu to be a federal minister in Canada.

Anand, a lawyer, takes over as Minister of Public Services and Procurement, replacing Carla Qualtrough, who became Minister of Employment and Workforce Development.

She has also been closely associated with the Indo-Canadian community in the Oakville region and was also the earlier chairperson of the Canadian Museum of Hindu Civilisation.

Anand also conducted research for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182.

“It is an honour to have been appointed Minister of Public Services and Procurement. I am looking forward to working hard for Canadians while representing Oakville in the 43rd Parliament of Canada,” she said on twitter.

A professor of law at the University of Toronto, Anand was born in the town of Kentville in the province of Nova Scotia. Her parents, both medical professionals, are from India. Her late mother Saroj Ram was from the Amritsar area in Punjab and her father SV Anand is a Tamilian.

Anand’s busy portfolio will include high profile defence procurements such as the acquisition of a new fighter jet fleet estimated to cost taxpayers up to $19 billion. It is part of Canada’s surface combatant project which is tabbed at between $60 billion and $65 billion.

Anand will have to deal with include shipbuilding programs for the Royal Canadian Navy, as well as new icebreakers for the Canadian Coast Guard.

The rookie Liberal MP, is listed as a member of Canada India Foundation (CIF), advisory board, which some critics say works aggressively to defend the interests of the Indian state, especially because of its opposition to efforts by Canadian Sikhs to get the 1984 Sikh massacre, recognized as a genocide.

The 1984 anti-Sikh riots, also known as the 1984 Sikh Massacre, was a series of organised pogroms against Sikhs in India in response to the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

Anand is one of the seven newcomers to the cabinet for the new Trudeau government. As in 2015 when he formed his first Cabinet, half the appointees now are women.

Half of ministers in Trudeau’s government are women and afte ..

In the Canadian general election held in October, the Liberal Party bagged 157 seats, the opposition Conservative 121, Bloc Quebecois 32, Indian-origin Canadian Jagmeet Singh-led New Democratic Party (NDP) 24, Green Party 3 and one Independent.

The other three South Asian-origin ministers in Trudeau’s cabinet are:

Harjit Sajjan, Minister of National Defence

Harjit Singh Sajjan. He was born in Bombeli in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, and was a five-year-old when he came to Vancouver with his older sister and mother in 1976.

Sajjan is Member of Parliament from Vancouver South in British Columbia, a constituency he won for the second time in the 2019 elections. He held the Defence portfolio for the entirety of the first cabinet, and continues to hold the position.

His father, Kundan Singh, had been a police officer in India who immigrated to Vancouver.

Prior to entering politics, Sajjan has had a decorated career as a police officer and as a combat veteran. He was a member of the Vancouver Police Department for 11 years, based primarily in South Vancouver, where he completed his career as a detective with the gang crime unit. He took a break from the Police service to join the British Columbia Regiment of the Canadian Army in 1989 as a trooper and from there, rose to the position of Lieutenant-Colonel.

As a reserve Lieutenant-Colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces and a member of the British Columbia Regiment, he participated in four operational deployments.In the 2015 general elections, his nomination had been backed by prominent Sikh leaders of the World Sikh Organization (WSO), which led a large number of Punjabi-Sikh Liberals (nearly 4000) from British Columbia to quit the party in protest. The resigning contingent had alleged that the Liberal Party was being “hijacked” and Trudeau “manipulated” by fundamentalist Sikhs under the banner of the WSO.

During his visit to India as Defence Minister in 2017, Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh accused Sajjan of being a “Khalistan supporter” and refused to meet him. The Canadian High Commission termed Amarinder’s remarks “disappointing and inaccurate”. Sajjan has said in a statement to the Vancouver Sun, “I don’t support the breakup of any country. I’m a Canadian. I want to focus on Canadian issues”.

Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

Navdeep Bains is a long-term friend and advisor of Prime Minister Trudeau, and has served as his Parliamentary Secretary.

Bains represents Mississauga-Malton in Ontario, and has been a Member of Parliament twice before. Born in Toronto to immigrant parents, Bains has worked as a financial analyst and was a visiting faculty at Ryerson University.

In May 2018, Bains made headlines when he was asked to take off his turban at an airport in the US during a security check, prompting senior US officials to apologise.

Bardish Chagger, Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth

Bardish Chagger won re-election from the Waterloo seat in Ontario during the 2019 election.

Chagger was born and raised in the Waterloo region, and attended the University of Waterloo where she was the president of the Young Liberals. The 39-year-old won re-election from the Waterloo seat in Ontario during the 2019 election.

The Sikh MP served as the Minister of Small Business and Tourism in Trudeau’s previous cabinet from 2015 to 2018. In 2016, she was named as the new Leader of the government in Canada’s House of Commons, becoming the first woman to hold the post in the country’s history.