Art Eggleton
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Senator The Honourable Arthur (Art) C. Eggleton, PC (born September 29, 1943, Toronto, Ontario) is a former Canadian Cabinet minister and Mayor of Toronto, and is currently a Senator representing Ontario.
Eggleton, an accountant by profession, was first elected to Toronto city council in 1969. He was initially a reformer, serving as budget chief in the reform council elected in 1973, however, he became more conservative as time progressed.
He was the Liberal Party of Canada's candidate in a 1978 by-election in the Toronto riding of Parkdale, but was defeated. In 1980, he ran against left-wing mayor John Sewell, and was elected. His administration was generally pro-development and conservative. In 1985, he withstood a challenge from reformist city councillor Anne Johnston, who ran against Eggleton for the mayoralty in that year's civic election. He retired from municipal politics in 1991 as the longest serving mayor in Toronto history.
He ran in the 1993 election in the suburban Toronto riding of York Centre, again as a Liberal, and won election. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed him to the position of President of the Treasury Board and Minister for Infrastructure in the new Cabinet.
From January 1996 to June 1997, he served as Minister for International Trade. Eggleton retained his seat in the 1997 election, and was appointed Minister of National Defence.
He was re-elected again in the 2000 election, but ran into trouble two years later when it was revealed that he gave a government contract to his ex-girlfriend. The contract that he rewarded to his ex-girlfriend was related to with a mysterious illness that had fallen upon many soldiers that served in the Gulf War. Eggleton's ex-girlfriend was an employee for Health Canada and was given the responsibility of formally writing a report on the mysterious illness that she herself had suffered from. The illness was presumed to be caused by depleted uranium. Shortly after Eggleton rewarded the contract to his ex-girlfriend, which she completed in full, a newspaper entitled The Ottawa Citizen ran a dated picture of Eggleton standing next to his ex-girlfriend. Next to the picture was a ridiculous claim that the contract had been awarded under a "Sex Scandal". On May 26, 2002, Eggleton was dismissed from Cabinet as due to the "scandal".
As a backbencher, he became critical of Chrétien, and expressed his support for Paul Martin. Despite this, he was not returned to cabinet when Martin became Prime Minister in December 2003. On May 13, 2004, Eggleton announced he would not be a candidate in the 2004 federal election making way for the nomination of Ken Dryden as the Liberal candidate in York Centre. He was appointed to the Senate by Paul Martin on March 24 2005.
See also List of Ontario senators.
| Preceded by: John Sewell 1978–1980 | Mayor of Toronto 1980–1991 | Succeeded by: June Rowlands 1991–1993 | |||||||||||||||
| Preceded by: Bob Kaplan | Member of Parliament for York Centre 1993-2004 | Succeeded by: Ken Dryden
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