Amarjeet Sohi, Canada’s Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, on Tuesday spoke of his country’s Smart City Challenge, something that has been inspired by India, from where he migrated in 1981.
“IT companies are of particular interest. We want to see how we can help with Smart City challenges of major urban centres. Problems of transportation, social laws, etc. If we partner, we can find innovative solutions to these issues. The way the challenges work is we call municipalities to identify problems and then technology is used to solve these problems. We then fund viable projects. This is something that is inspired by Indian Smart City challenges,” Mr. Sohi said. The Minister in Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet was delivering the keynote address at the Canada-India Mumbai Business Forum in the city on Tuesday. “Economic growth is top on the agenda of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Growth that helps everyone as businesses and individuals. The same values are also shared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” he said.
“Each time I come to India, it gives me an opportunity to reflect on the time when I was a young man and went to Canada and built my life there,” said Mr. Sohi, a Sikh who was born in 1964, in Sangrur district of Punjab.
Mr. Sohi explained that Canada’s Smart Cities Challenge aims to find the city that possesses the boldest, most experimental, inclusive, empowering, and digitally transformative ideas in the country. “As a former city councillor, I know first-hand that local leadership understands best what their communities need,” the minister said. “When talented people come together in pursuit of a common goal, they can come up with inspired solutions that will have a real and tangible impact. We are calling on everyone to step up and give us their best ideas on how technology can make our cities even better places to live.”
