A.J. Sengupta

From JSC Archives
Jump to navigationJump to search

Ahmet Jaipour Sengupta (b. 10 January 1971 in Mumbai) is a Canadian politician who has served since 2016 as Cabinet Secretary of Canada. He is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada.

While born in India, Sengupta emigrated to Canada at the age of seven with his parents and three elder sisters. Originally living in Montreal for about one year, the family soon settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, where Sengupta's parents opened a Himalayan-style buffet. Sengupta became involved with federal politics at a young age, joining the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist–Leninist) (CPC–ML) in 1990 at age 19. By his mid-twenties, Sengupta had graduated from the University of British Columbia with a master's degree in political science, minoring in anthropology, and was also a senior member of the CPC–ML's labour organising and agitprop committees on the West Coast.

Sengupta joined the Canadian Public Service Commission (CPSC) as a regional administrator in 2000, which became his daytime job in while working nights for the CPC–ML. In late 2005 he was promoted to regional superintendent, which involved organising the provision of civil servants to various federal government agencies' offices in Western Canada. This position allowed him to fill much of the federal apparatus in Western Canada with communists; when he was promoted to national administrator in 2008, Sengupta was able to repeat this process at a nationwide level; this was a significant help toward the CPC–ML's coming to power in September 2010.

Following the election of the first Communist Party-led government, Sengupta was quickly promoted to Deputy Director of the CPSC, the de facto head of the federal civil service, a role at which he excelled for the next five-and-a-half years. In 2016, Sengupta was promoted to Director of the CPSC, the CPSC's de jure head, but which also holds the ex officio senior cabinet position of Cabinet Secretary of Canada.