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Home | Office Holder | Donna Cansfield
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Before entering provincial politics, she was a school trustee, and served as trustee of the former Etobicoke Board of Education and Chair of the Toronto District School Board. She has also served as the Vice-Chair of the Toronto Foundation for Student Success, and as a Director of Beatrice House, a homeless shelter. Cansfield was first elected to the Etobicoke board in 1988, and became a Chair of the TDSB in 2002. In the 2000 trustee's election, she successfully fought off a challenge from Ihsam El-Sayed, who was part of a group that opposed Cansfield's endorsement of the school board's gay-inclusive policies. Cansfield's political identity has been the source of some controversy in recent years. Until recently, she was a member of the now-defunct Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. Notwithstanding her commitment to social liberalism, she was generally regarded as being on the conservative wing of the Etobicoke Board of Education. She was also regarded by some as supportive of Paul Christie, who was appointed by the provincial government of Ernie Eves to oversee and reduce expenditures in the Toronto District School Board. Shelley Carroll, who led the faction of left-leaning trustees opposed to Christie, waged a successful campaign to oust Canfield as chair of the TDSB. Carroll then replaced Cansfield as TDSB chair. Notwithstanding this, her involvement in the education community led her to oppose the policies of the Mike Harris and Ernie Eves governments, and to run for the Ontario Liberal Party in the provincial election of 2003. She was initially seen as a long-shot candidate against high-profile Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Chris Stockwell. Following Stockwell's retirement amid scandal in mid-2003, however, she emerged as the frontrunner and eventually defeated replacement PC candidate Rose Andrachuk by about 4500 votes. She was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to Energy Minister Dwight Duncan on October 23, 2003. Cansfield was appointed as Minister of Energy on October 11, 2005, when the former minister Dwight Duncan was named as Minister of Finance. She was reassigned as Minister of Transportation on May 23, 2006, when Duncan returned to Energy. After the 2007 election, Cansfield became Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources, where she served until January 18, 2010. Premier McGuinty appointed Cansfield as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Housing) after the January 2010 cabinet shuffle. |