Gerard Kennedy

Elected to the House of Commons in 2008 as the MP for Parkdale-High Park, Gerard Kennedy presently serves as the Critic for Infrastructure, Cities and Communities with responsibility for housing. He has served as Intergovernmental Affairs Critic from outside parliament, Industry Critic and as a member of the Standing Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Prior to his change into federal politics with the 2006 leadership race, Gerard served as the Minister of Education for Ontario and as a member of the Planning and Priorities Board of Cabinet. As Minister, he led a widely acknowledged province-wide turnaround in the $19 billion, 2 million student publicly-funded education system. His accomplishments included dramatically improved public confidence, increased reading and math scores and lowered high school drop-out rates following a decade of conflict, cutbacks and turmoil. Gerard is also credited with innovative advances in labour peace, collaboration within the sector, teacher training, francophone education, healthy schools, school repairs, and special education among others.

First elected as a Member of Provincial Parliament in a 1996 by-election, Gerard won the riding of York South for the Ontario Liberal Party for the first time in the riding’s 70-year history. Gerard quickly became one of the Legislature’s most effective Critics covering key areas such as housing and consumer relations, health, education and gaining important wins for seniors, consumers, patients and students. Re-elected in 1999 and 2003 for the newly redistributed riding of Parkdale-High Park, Gerard was the vice-chair of the successful 2003 Liberal election campaign.

In 1986, Gerard was recruited from his role as first executive director of Canada’s first food bank in Edmonton to take up a similar position for Toronto’s Daily Bread Food Bank, where he served until 1996. Gerard worked with social service organizations, religious groups, and corporate CEOs to eliminate hunger. Without a dime of government money, he became responsible for distributing $30 million worth of food annually, reaching over 150,000 people every month. He created the national system to distribute industry surplus food across the country based on need, “brown paper bag” public food drives, a Canada-wide “hunger-count”, detailed research surveys of families on the margins, and successful advocacy to governments. Gerard was the national spokesperson for food banks and assisted local initiatives to develop food banks and approaches to solving poverty both in Canada and in several countries abroad.

In 1992, Toronto Life Magazine named Gerard one of the year’s Top 50 Influential People. He was also named “Newsmaker of the Year” by the Toronto Star in 1993 and recognized as one of the city’s “Torontonians of Distinction” in 2002.

Gerard served as Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Ted Rogers School of Business at Ryerson University in 2007-08 and has guest lectured at several universities and colleges.

Born and raised in The Pas, Manitoba, Mr. Kennedy lives with his wife Jeanette Arsenault-Kennedy, a childcare director, and their two children in west Toronto.

Timmins-James Bay federal Liberal candidate Marilyn Wood and Parkdale-High Park Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy — his party’s critic for infrastructure, cities and communities — wanted to assure them, however, that their views still count.

Gerard Kennedy has written directly to every community organization in the riding, asking for their help to save national gun control by expressing their support and he appealed to area residents to do the same.

Regina – Federal Liberal Housing Critic Gerard Kennedy called on the Harper government today to increase funding for the Saskatchewan programs to prevent and reduce homelessness in the face of rising rents and a tight housing market.

Conservative Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has a different bottom line on his refugee reform bill after all. After having his “last, best, take-it-or-leave-it” offer rejected by the Liberal Party last Thursday, the Minister blinked and moved the yardsticks much closer to fair territory.