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| ICCC Board of Directors with MPs Hon. Ruby Sahota and Hon. Bob Saroya |
The federal government is working to ensure that the fiscal deficit will stay manageable and will not adversely affect the common taxpayer in future, said Hon. Ruby Sahota, Member of Parliament (Brampton North) recently at the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) program.
Sahota was among a group of Canadian Members of Parliament that included Robert Fonseca (Mississauga East – Cooksville) and Bob Saroya (Markham-Unionville) who participated at an interactive session organised by the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce (ICCC) on May 15 for small and medium enterprises.
This is the first occasion when the ICCC has organised a non-partisan event where Members of Parliament from both the parties participated. Sahota and Fonseca are Liberal MPs and Saroya is a Conservative MP.
Sahota reassured the participants at the session that the federal government was conscious of the decisions it was implementing and was focused on providing a growth impetus to the economy. She emphasized that it was through deficit financing that the government had been able to ensure rapid recovery of the economy after the slump that the Canadian economy had experienced in the last decade and the early years of this decade.
Speaking on the occasion, Hon. Peter Fonseca, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on International Trade, said that the Canadian federal government is focused on assisting small and medium businesses. To that effect, the government has taken several significant measures to alleviate the pressures of fiscal and monetary contraction in an economic regime where the interest rates are likely to rise steadily.
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| Peter Fonseca, MP, Mississauga East-Cooksville & Member, Parliamentary Standing Committee of International Trade |
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| Naresh Chawda and Ruby Sahota |
Pradyuman Jhala & Pranav Patel with Bob Saroya |
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| Pramod Goyal with Bob Saroya |
Devika Penekelapati, Peter Fonseca,
Kanwar Dhanjal & Ruby Sahota |
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| Gursharan Kandra, Bob Saroya and Rakesh Joshi |
Sanjay Brahmbhatt and Peter Fonseca |
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| Pawan Chankotra, Bob Saroya, Rakesh Joshi and guest |
Renu Chauhan, Kanwar Dhanjal, & Peter Fonesca |
He expressed confidence that the ongoing negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would be concluded satisfactorily and to the benefit of all the three nations that are signatories to the treaty. Fonseca informed the participants that NAFTA had been revised on several occasions since it was signed in 1993, adding that it needs modernisation to reflect the transformation the global economy had undergone in the last two decades.
Bob Saroya, the Markham-Unionville MP, said that small businesses are the backbone of the Canadian economy and the mainstay of newcomers to Canada. He said immigrants became small entrepreneurs and contributed strongly to the economy by creating employment opportunities for other Canadians.
In his remarks, Kanwar Dhanjal, President, ICCC, said, the growth of small businesses is dependent upon the following six factors: Regulatory Framework, Market Conditions, Access to Finance, Knowledge Creation and Diffusion, Entrepreneurial Capabilities, and finally the entrepreneurial culture. The session had a prolonged Q&A session where participants who were mostly small and medium business owners, asked questions pertaining to their own operations as well as questions on policy matters. The questions pertained to financing, globalisation, taxation, innovation and skilled labour shortage.
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| Participants at the interactive session |
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