Bill Siksay
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Bill Siksay (born March 11, 1955, in Oshawa, Ontario) is a Canadian politician, the Member of Parliament who represents the British Columbia riding of Burnaby—Douglas for the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Prior to running for elected office, he was constituency assistant to Svend Robinson. He also ran in the 1997 election in the riding of Vancouver Centre, but lost to incumbent Hedy Fry.
When Robinson resigned the Burnaby—Douglas seat in April, 2004 due to a controversy around his theft of a piece of jewellery, Siksay won the nomination to replace Robinson as the NDP candidate in the upcoming election, and won the riding in the Canadian federal election, 2004 on June 28.
With his election, Siksay became Canada's first Member of Parliament to be elected to his first term in the House of Commons while already openly gay. All of the previous MPs to come out as gay — Robinson, Libby Davies, Réal Ménard and Scott Brison — came out only after they were already sitting as MPs, and Mario Silva officially came out in a Toronto Star profile shortly after the election.
In the NDP Shadow Cabinet, Siksay is critic for Citizenship and Immigration, Canadian Human Rights and Western Economic Diversification.
In May 2005, Siksay introduced a bill to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act so as to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. (NDP) (http://www.ndp.ca/page/1344)