Music, Personal Tech & Human Rights since 2005

Canada, Civil Rights, Federal Government, Human Rights, NJN

Harper Appoints Disability Advocate to Senate

Newly minted Senator Vimal Kochhar

Conservatives now outnumber Liberals 51-49 in Canada’s Senate. Not bad for a Prime Minister who wanted to abolish the Senate

Newly minted Senator Vimal KochharVim Kochhar, from Ontario, is a businessman. He is the President of Vimal Group in Toronto which manufactures and retails quality pine furniture and home furnishings. Vimal Group is said to work for InterContinental Hotels and Howard Johnson Hotels.

He was responsible for project management of major hotels around the world. He is an entrepreneur and a professional engineer, and, for over 20 years, was associated with the construction industry in Canada and abroad.

The company has no internet presence so it was hard to verify the standard biographical that is published and most of what we found was press releases related to his charitable work.

Senator Kochhar has a life long dedication to charitable works and disability advocacy. He was a Rotarian.

For the past 30 years, Mr. Kochhar has played an active role in the community by creating the Canadian Foundation for Physically Disabled Persons.

Through this foundation, Mr. Kochhar has created the annual Great Valentine Galas, Variety the Children’s Charity, the Terry Fox Hall of Fame, Rolling Rampage for elite wheelchair athletes, the Canadian Helen Keller Centre, Rotary Cheshire Homes for the Deaf-Blind, and the WhyNot Marathon for the Paralympics.

He is currently serving as Board Member for the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and as Chair of the Canadian Paralympic Foundation.

Among many other distinctions, Mr. Kochhar was chosen by India Abroad as one of the 30 most influential Canadians of Indian origin. Born in India, Mr. Kochhar received his engineering degree at the University of Texas and immigrated to Canada in 1967, becoming a Canadian citizen in 1974.

From the list of organizations Mr. Kochhar supports or is a member of, he would appear to follow the “charity” model of disability reform. Essentially that model ignores the human rights of people living with disabilities in favor or charity drives, auctions and fund raising dinners. The human rights of people living with disabilities is the principal of the UN Declaration on Persons with Disabilities that Canada is yet to ratify. It holds that people with disabilities should not be marginalized but granted full citizenship, something they have yet to achieve in Canada.

We’ll write him and get his views on the human rights of people with disabilities.

1 Comment

  1. Garth

    PM Harper much to the chagrin of liberals is bright and strategically minded. Having a man of Mr Kochhar’s
    community spirit in the Senate is another move forward.

    Of course a liberal had to take a swipe in the headline abt abolishing the Senate. The the plan is simple —-elect it or abolish it . A very simple concept that Liberals don’t want to grasp. My gawd they would lose power and entitlements!

    The Senate is in for major changes. Get on board or get out of the way.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.