Meet Anita Indira Anand, a law professor who became Canada’s first Hindu minister

• PM Justin Trudeau’s new cabinet features a Hindu Minister for the first time ever.
  
• Indo-Canadian Anita, who is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, was named the new federal minister of public service and procurement in Canadian government.
  
• She sworn at Rideau Hall on November 21 after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled the new cabinet portfolio, reported Hindustan Times.
  
  

It’s not uncommon to see Indian MPs or Cabinet Ministers in Canada. In fact, the Canadian government appointed as many as twenty Sikh MPs in 2015 and four of them became Cabinet Ministers under PM Justin Trudeau. But the country set another diversity record again as a Hindu Indian became a cabinet minister.

Indo-Canadian Anita, who is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, was named the new federal minister of public service and procurement in Canadian government.

She sworn at Rideau Hall on November 21 after Trudeau unveiled the new cabinet portfolio, reported Hindustan Times. Anand who will represent Oakvillem was born in Kentville, Nova Scotia. Both of Anita’s parents are from India her late mother was from Punjab and her father is from Tamil Nadu.

Anita Anand is an expert on capital market regulations, and specialises in governance, enforcement, capital raising techniques and systemic risk. She is also a senior fellow at Massey College and former academic director of the Centre for the Legal Profession.

She also carried out extensive research for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182 — where 329 people, including 280 Canadians died on June 23, 1985 after a bomb planted on the plane exploded.

The new cabinet has three other Indo-Canadians and Anita is among the seven newcomers. As many as 14 of the 18 Punjabi candidates fielded by Trudeau's Liberal Party registered won, mostly in the suburbs around Toronto and Vancouver. This time, Canada set a record as half-a-dozen Sikhs will sit in the House.