I was honored to be the KEYNOTE Speaker at the annual gala dinner of the “Network of Indian Professionals (aka NetIP)” in Canada’s capital city Ottawa.

Premier of Ontario, Ms. Kathleen Wynn was the Chief Guest. Other dignitaries included Attorney General of Ontario, Senior VP of TD Bank, CEO of Ottawa Hospital and Who-is-Who of the Canadians of Indian origin. It was an excellent event organized by NetIP President Siddhartha Kumar, who exceeded all the expectation of the attendees.

I was humbled with the positive comments I received after my keynote speech.

My keynote speech had two main themes:

Canada India bi-lateral trade is dismal compared to the potential and I put forth the argument and need that the successful professionals of Indian origin (through organized platform like NetIP) play an out of the box approach in helping with trade focused public policy formulation at the level of the government (which has been very timid so far), change the “Trading Post” mind-set of big Canadian businesses, act as “Sherpa” for the large number of SMEs in Canada and be the “Trust & Comfort” factor for Indian businesses looking at Canada for their global business expansion.

The second theme I presented: there is increasing tension in the western world and for us to help maintain the “Social Calm” in Canada with continued major increase in immigrant population, we need to change the definition of “Multiculturalism” from what Canada does for the different cultural groups to what mulit-cultural groups can do for Canada.

It was an incredible evening and my deep appreciation to the NetIP team.