This news has got us doing the Bhangra! Punjabi just became the third official language of Canadian Parliament after English and French! It’s been four years since Punjabi was figured to be the third most common language to be spoken in Canada. And its finally official, after the election of 20 Punjabi-speaking candidates of the House of Commons took over the mantle of Commonwealth’s legislature.

 

 

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Out of the 20 Punjabi-speaking MPs, fourteen are men and the remaining six are women. Also, 18 out of those MPs, 12 are Liberals and 2 are conservatives.

  

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 “The voice of the Indo-Canadian community will now be very well represented in the Parliament. In the overall aspect of it, the South Asian community won,” said MP Deepak Obhrai of the Conservative Party.

According to the 2011 National Household Survey taken by Statistics Canada, there were 430,705 Canadians who referred to Punjabi as their mother tongue, which made Punjabi the third most common language after English and French. That basically means, 1.3% of Canada’s population communicates in Punjabi. Another really cool thing, the 20 Punjabi-speaking MPs represent the six per cent of the House of Commons.