Reg Alcock
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Reginald B. Alcock (born April 16, 1948 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a Liberal MP in the Canadian House of Commons and a cabinet minister in the government of Paul Martin. Since 1993, he has represented the riding of Winnipeg South.
Alcock holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Simon Fraser University, and a Master's Degree in Public Administration from Harvard University. He is the former director of Manitoba Child and Family Services, and was for a number of years a member of Management Information Systems, a private consulting firm. Alcock was also a director of Manitoba Child and Family Services from 1983 to 1985. He is currently a member of the Harvard Policy Group, which studies the effects of Information Technology on the public sector.
His political career began at the provincial level. He was elected for the riding of Osborne in 1988, a year in which the Manitoba Liberal Party rose from one seat to twenty under the leadership of Sharon Carstairs. He was re-elected in 1990, and served as the party's house leader from 1991 to 1993, when he crossed over to federal politics.
In the federal election of 1993, Alcock defeated incumbent Progressive Conservative MP Dorothy Dobbie by almost 20,000 votes. He has been re-elected in every federal election since that time (1997, 2000 and 2004), always by a significant margin.
Alcock was appointed to the Cabinet of Canada on December 12, 2003, after Paul Martin become Prime Minister. He serves as President of the Treasury Board and is the minister responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board. He is also a former Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
In May 2005, Alcock became involved in a controversy with an opposition MP named Inky Mark. Mark initially claimed that a Liberal cabinet minister tried to bride him with the promise of a government appointment, a charge which the Alcock personally denied. Alcock later joked that, if he were to appoint any opposition member to such a position, he would have chosen someone "higher in the gene pool". Alcock seems to have made this comment with reference to Mark's low-profile in the Canadian House of Commons. Mark, who is a Chinese Canadian, interpreted the comment differently and accused Alcock of being a racist. Alcock has denied this allegation, claiming the comment had nothing to do with Mark's ethnic background. Nonetheless, he offered an apology for the phrase two days after making the statement.
| Preceded by: Dorothy Dobbie | Member of Parliament for Winnipeg South 1993-present | Succeeded by: Incumbent |