Bill Blair.docx

Bill Blair (politician)

Early life and education

Blair was born in Scarborough, Ontario. Blair's father had served as a police officer for 39 years. Blair considered pursuing a degree in law or finance, when he initially enrolled at the University of Toronto Scarborough in the mid 1970s. Blair initially studied economics at the University of Toronto. He left to follow his ambition of being a police officer, but returned later and completed a Bachelor of Arts in economics and criminology.

Police career

Blair joined the Toronto Police Service while in university to make money and began taking courses on a part-time basis. Blair walked a beat near Regent Park and later worked as an undercover officer in Toronto's drug squad. After Blair earned his bachelor's degree in criminology, he advanced his career in the police service in the late 1980s, taking part in drug busts involving the seizure of millions of dollars of cocaine. Chief David Boothby assigned Blair to improve the poor community relations between the officers of 51 Division, which patrolled Blair's old beat near Regent Park. Blair normalized police relations with the community by measures such as sending cops to read to kids in local elementary schools and engaging with local businesses and churches. In 1999, Blair was considered as a candidate to replace outgoing chief Boothby, but mayor Mel Lastman, with the support of Premier Mike Harris, chose to hire Julian Fantino, then head of

the York Regional Police. After reorganization of the senior ranks after Fantino's ascension as police chief, Blair became head of detective operations.

Chief of the Toronto Police Service Blair was selected in a 4–2 vote of the Toronto Police Services Board in early April 2005, and formally appointed Chief of the Toronto Police Service on April 26, 2005. He succeeded Mike Boyd, who had served as interim chief after the expiry of Julian Fantino's contract. Prior to his appointment as chief, Blair worked for approximately 30 years as a Toronto police officer, with assignments involving drug enforcement, organized crime and major criminal investigations. Blair served as president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. In the spring of 2009, Tamil Canadians in Toronto upset by civilian deaths in the Sri Lankan Civil War, which included an overnight artillery bombardment that killed 378 civilians and wounded 1,100, allegedly perpetrated by government forces, staged a series of protests in Toronto including shutting down the northbound and southbound lanes of University Avenue for four days while protesting in front of the US Consulate, and illegally blocking traffic on the Gardiner Expressway. Blair and the police faced pressure to crack down on the demonstrations, arrest and deporting the protesters. Instead, Blair used his experience in community policing to ensure that minimal force was used, spoke respectfully of the protesters' rights to expression, and negotiated the peaceful resolution of the events. The Canadian Tamil Congress would later award Blair an inaugural "Leaders for Change Award" for his leadership during the protests

Federal politics Blair declined to comment on his future plans while he was still police chief. The Liberal Party of Canada recruited Blair to be its candidate in Scarborough Southwest for the federal election held October 2015. A poll conducted by Forum Research suggested Blair would receive 39% of the vote against 29% for incumbent Dan Harris of the New Democratic Party and 27% for the Conservatives.

Karina Gould

Early life and care Gould was born in 1987, and grew up in Burlington, Ontario. After she graduated from high school in 2005, she spent the next year volunteering at an orphanage in Mexico, where she met her husband, Alberto Gerones. After returning to Canada she attended McGill University, earning a degree in political science and Latin American studies. While there, she helped organize fundraising for humanitarian aid for Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, and served as president of the arts undergraduate student council. In 2010, she took a job with the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. as a consultant on migration to work with their Migration and Development Program. She subsequently completed a master's degree in international relations at Oxford University. Upon moving to Burlington, she worked as a trade and investment specialist for the Mexican consulate in Toronto prior to her candidacy in the 2015 election.

Political career During the election campaign, she attracted minor attention for deleting a three-yearold tweet expressing opposition to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines – eventually not approved by the Trudeau government – and to the development of the Alberta tar sands in general. She defeated Conservative incumbent Mike Wallace, who had represented the riding since the 2006 federal election, by winning 46% of the vote to his 42.5%.

On December 2, 2015, Gould was named the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of International Development and La Francophonie within the Liberal government. During Barack Obama's July 2016 state visit to Ottawa, he gave a shoutout to Burlington, where his brother in law lives, during his address to Parliament, prompting Gould to wave for the cameras, in what Macleans called her most high-profile moment. On January 10, 2017, she was named Minister of Democratic Institutions, succeeding Maryam Monsef. She also became the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. These appointments made her the youngest female cabinet minister in Canadian history.

Personal life Gould is married and lives in Burlington, Ontario. She gave birth to her first child Oliver on March 8, 2018. She is the first sitting federal cabinet minister to give birth while in office

Ahmed Hussen Early life and education

Hussen was born and raised in Mogadishu, Somalia. He has five older siblings and his father was a long-distance trucker. Hussen learned to speak English there from a cousin. He and his family left Mogadishu after the Somali Civil War reached their neighbourhood. They lived for a period of time in Kenya, in a camp in Mombasa and several apartments in Nairobi. Two years after leaving Mogadishu, Hussen's parents bought him an airplane ticket to Toronto, where two of his brothers had already moved. He initially resided with a cousin in Hamilton, and moved to Toronto in 1994, where he settled in Regent Park in 1996. Hussen completed secondary school in Hamilton. Due to a Canadian government policy that delayed granting permanent residency status to emigrants from Somalia, he had to decline three athletic running scholarships to universities in the United States. Hussen eventually attended York University, where he earned a BA in History in 2002. Having received a law degree from the University of Ottawa, and passed the bar exam in September 2012, he specialized in the practise of immigration and criminal law. Hussen is married to Ebyan Farah, a fellow Somali-Canadian refugee. Together, they have three sons.

Early career Hussen began his career in public service and politics in the fall of 2001. He started out doing volunteer work in Legislative Assembly of Ontario. He was hired the following year as an assistant to Dalton McGuinty, the leader of the province's official opposition. Hussen worked in this capacity until November 2003, when he was promoted to Special Assistant, concurrently with the Liberal Party's election victory. He held this new post for two years, during which he was in charge of issues management, policy and communications. Hussen later worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Youth Engaged in National

Liberal Party In December 2014, Hussen presented himself as a candidate for a Liberal Party of Canada seat in the riding of York South—Weston for the 42nd Canadian federal election. He won the nomination in a field of six aspirants, which included the Green Party's John Johnson. The victory makes Hussen the first Somali-Canadian elected to the House of Commons.

Immigration Minister On January 10, 2017, Hussen was appointed Minister of Immigration as part of a cabinet shuffle by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The nomination makes Hussen the first Somali-Canadian to serve in the government cabinet.

Steven Guilbeault Early life and education When he was five years old in his hometown of La Tuque in Haute-Mauricie, Guilbeault refused to get down from a tree that he had climbed, in an effort to block a land developer from clearing a wooded area behind his home. The tree was felled a few days later, but the event stands is cited by Guilbeault as the genesis of his environmental activism. After taking computer science in CEGEP, he enrolled in industrial relations at l'Université de Montréal in 1989. A year later, he switched his major to political science. He minored in theology, exploring questions of international morality, liberation theology, poverty and the environment Guilbeault became president of his faculty’s student association and also took part in activities organized by Equitas (known at the time as the Canadian Human Rights Foundation). He was also active in the Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec (FEUQ), where he made the acquaintance of François Rebello and Nicolas Girard, who would later enter the world of politics

Career After the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1993, Guilbeault, Laure Waridel, Elizabeth Hunter, Patrick Henn, François Meloche and Sidney Ribaux founded Action for Solidarity, Equity, Environment and Development (ASEED). It acquired not-for-profit status in 1995. In 1998 it was rebranded as Équiterre. The organization's goal is to propose concrete solutions to make Canada a society where sustainable development and social economy would be central to the actions and concerns of its citizens, organizations and government. Steven Guilbeault was a member of Équiterre's board of directors for many years. In 1997, Guilbeault joined Greenpeace Canada. He was put in charge of its climate change division and he managed the climate and energy campaign before being the organization's Quebec Bureau Chief in 2000. In 2005,

Government work Guilbeault sat on the board of the Agence de l'efficacité énergétique from 2007 to 2009 and chaired the Committee on Emerging Renewable Energy from 2009 to 2011 for the Government of Quebec. He also sat on the climate change advisory committees of three successive Quebec governments: Jean Charest’s Liberals, Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois, and subsequently cochairing the committee formed by Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government starting in 2014

Bardish Chagger Early life and career Chagger's parents immigrated to Waterloo from Punjab, India in the 1970s. Her family is Sikh. Her father, Gurminder "Gogi" Chagger, was active in Liberal Party politics and an admirer of Pierre Trudeau, and Chagger's first involvement in politics came in the 1993 federal election as a 13-yearold volunteer for Andrew Telegdi's successful campaign in Waterloo. She attended the University of Waterloo, with aspirations to become a nurse, but she subsequently became an executive assistant to Telegdi, who represented Waterloo in the House of Commons for the Liberals from 1993 to 2008. Chagger graduated from the University of Waterloo with a bachelor's degree in science.[6] After Telegedi's defeat in 2008, Chagger became a director of special events for the Kitchener-Waterloo Multicultural Centre.

Federal politics

Chagger volunteered for Justin Trudeau's 2013 party leadership bid, and subsequently became the Liberal Party's candidate in the newly reconstituted Waterloo riding. She took 49.7% of the vote and defeated two-term Conservative incumbent Peter Braid, who had earlier ousted her former employer Andrew Telegdi.