Tamil business community celebrates 25 years of success in Canada, now eyeing global growth
This year is turning out to be one of significant milestones for Canada's Tamil community and its burgeoning business sector.
Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Canadian Tamils' Chamber of Commerce (CTCC) is hosting a landmark gala event that will pay tribute to its past and a global business conference looking forward to its future.
The commemoration comes just weeks after Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion paid an official visit to Sri Lanka, signalling a re-engagement with the land from where so many of Canada's Tamils fled a brutal 26-year civil war that ended only seven years ago. These milestones are more then symbolic. Canada's Tamil business community has made impressive strides since a quarter century ago, and now reconciliation and re-engagement present new opportunities for the sector to reach out, both to Sri Lanka and abroad.
The community intends to seize these opportunities, says Ajith Sabaratnam, CTCC's president. "We will focus our efforts to establish trade routes and provide support to Canadian businesses seeking to enter the Northern and Eastern provinces of Sri Lanka."
The business community, which two decades ago worked simply to gain a foothold in Canada, is poised to reach out to international markets, including Sri Lanka. In 2015 Canada exported nearly $313-million worth of goods to Sri Lanka and imported nearly $334-million, according to data published by Industry Canada in March 2016. These exports represented a mere 0.06 per cent of Canada's total world trade; the imports 0.07 per cent.
Most of Canada's exports (nearly 27 per cent) were vegetables, roots and tubers. Trade has been tiny for value-added goods such as electrical equipment (1.89 per cent of the total), optical and medical instruments (0.31) and chemicals (0.23). It's precisely in these value-added areas where there are opportunities for Canadian Tamil–owned businesses, notes Ravi Gukathasan, CEO of Digital Specialty Chemicals Limited, which is in Scarborough, Ont.
"We're under-represented [in the wider Canadian business community] in construction and in knowledge-based businesses," he points out. This scenario is changing, however, as the next generation of Canadian Tamils graduate from post-secondary schools and more and more of its members enter new business sectors and professionals.
"I am in the chemical business," he says. "I have 77 people in my company; 24 of them are PhDs. We sell knowledge and expertise."
Many Tamil Canadians are already excelling in science but, Mr. Gukathasan says, "not yet in the context of their own businesses." This too will change, as the younger generation assumes leadership within the business community.
Conditions are aligning to ease the way for the Canadian Tamil business community to reach out toward more global export markets, including Sri Lanka.
During his official visit to Sri Lanka at the end of July, Foreign Affairs Minister Dion made a point of recognizing the healing that has taken place since the end of the civil war that had propelled Tamils to flee persecution and come to Canada.
"I witnessed promising signs of progress and I urged that much more be done in the areas of constitutional reform, human rights and reconciliation for all peoples of [Sri Lanka]," said Dion. "I was also deeply moved to hear first-hand from people who have suffered from this civil war."
To help boost the Canadian Tamil business community's worldwide outreach, as part of its 25th anniversary commemoration, the CTCC is holding a Global Business Expo on September 9. It will feature presentations by experts and panel discussions from business and finance professionals, as well as vendors on-site.
"The Global Business Expo is targeted to aspiring and established entrepreneurs, businesses and professionals," Mr. Sabaratnam says. "It will serve as a platform to connect, educate and motivate local aspiring entrepreneurs on global business trends, barriers and opportunities."
Kanish Thevarasa is the co-founder of Kanish & Partners LLP, a chartered accountant and business advisors organization on Bay St.
"With the evolution of the Tamil businessperson in Canada, via joint ventures and raising capital for expansion and the like, they're expanding their horizons abroad," says Thevarasa.
"Our firm has provided strategic guidance to entrepreneurs within the Tamil community as their businesses grow — transformational thinking from being Toronto-centric to going global."
One such established Tamil Canadian entrepreneur is Stan Muthulingam. With his brother, Monty, Mr. Muthulingam is co-founder of The Cableshoppe Inc. (CSI), which repurposes, services and distributes cable and electronic equipment to some of the biggest digital and digital and communications firms in Canada and overseas. The 180-employee company, which is based in Scarbrough, Ont., already repairs and redistributes more than 1 million units of equipment a year.
Canadian Tamil businesses aspire to reach out not just to Sri Lanka, but to markets around the world, according to Mr. Muthulingam. He sees particular opportunities for growth in the U.S. market and in engineering consulting to customers around the world who seek to extend the lives of their equipment.
Canada's Tamil community now is estimated to be comprised of at least 300,000 members. There are Tamil communities as well in Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton and the Vancouver area, and the largest Tamil groups are in the Greater Toronto Area.
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