Politics
Harinder Takhar was elected to the Ontario Legislature as a Liberal in the 2003 provincial election, and was appointed Minister of Transportation on October 23, 2003, by Premier Dalton McGuinty. He is the first Indian-Canadian to hold a cabinet post in Ontario.
In June 2005, Takhar faced criticism after he was caught visiting his company despite it having been placed in a blind trust when he joined the cabinet. Cabinet ministers are required to keep an arms-length relationship with any business they own to avoid a conflict of interest. Premier McGuinty admitted that Takhar had shown poor judgement. Takhar claimed that he was visiting the company only to speak with his wife, who is the company's CEO.
The matter was sent to the province's Integrity Commissioner which issued a decision on January 4, 2006, that Takhar had violated the province's integrity guidelines by failing to maintain an arms-length relationship with the trustee of his blind trust. Following the release of the decision, McGuinty issued a statement that he would not fire Takhar. Takhar was reassigned to the new position of Minister of Small Business and Entrepreneurship on May 23, 2006. Donna Cansfield was assigned Takhar's Transportation portfolio.
In May 2006, he was appointed as the minister of the newly-created Ministry of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. Takhar was re-elected to the Ontario Legislature in October 2007 for the redistributed riding of Mississauga-Erindale for a second term. In July 2008, Takhar was appointed as Minister of Small Business and Consumer Services. In June 2009, Takhar‘s mandate was again changed and he was sworn in as the Minister of Government Services.
Read more about this topic: Harinder Takhar
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Political organizations have slowly substituted themselves for the Churches as the places for believing practices.... Politics has once again become religious.”
—Michel de Certeau (1925–1986)
“We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know how one copes with it except through politics.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“There is a place where we are always alone with our own mortality, where we must simply have something greater than ourselves to hold onto—God or history or politics or literature or a belief in the healing power of love, or even righteous anger.... A reason to believe, a way to take the world by the throat and insist that there is more to this life than we have ever imagined.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)