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Home | Office Holder | Lorenzo Berardinetti
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Mr. Berardinetti was born and raised in Scarborough, and is a lawyer. He attended the University of Toronto and the University of Windsor Law School, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1988. Berardinetti was a councillor in the pre-amalgamation Scarborough Council from 1988 to 1996, and represented Ward 37 (Scarborough Centre) on the amalgamated Toronto City Council from 1997 to 2003. In 1997, he served as chair of Toronto's administration committee, which created the framework for a unified civic administration in the amalgamated city. Berardinetti was generally regarded as an ally of Toronto mayor Mel Lastman during his years on the Toronto council. In the provincial election of 2003, Berardinetti defeated incumbent Progressive Conservative Dan Newman by about 6,000 votes in Scarborough Southwest. The Liberals won a majority government under Dalton McGuinty in this election, and Berardinetti was appointed the deputy government whip on October 23, 2003, a position he held until the 2007 election. He became prominent for his private member's bill, introduced in 2004, to outlaw what he called "gender-based pricing," whereby prices for equivalent or similar products and services, such as clothing, dry cleaning and haircuts, may vary between women and men. He contended women were charged much more for many products and services, the extent of which he had only discovered when he went shopping with his new wife Michelle. The bill reached second reading on December 8, 2005 and is currently waiting to be discussed before the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. On December 6, 2006 Berardinetti was appointed chair of the Standing Committee on Justice Policy. Berardinetti has been a member of the Committee since March 27, 2006 and before that he had been chair and a Member of the Standing Committee on Government Agencies. In the 2007 election, Berardinetti was re-elected with 15,119 votes, or 46.17 per cent of the vote. On January 25, 2010, Berardinetti was named Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of Labour. On October 25, 2010, Berardinetti's wife Michelle won election as a Toronto City Councillor. |