Ed Broadbent

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Hon. John Edward Broadbent
Member of Parliament for Oshawa—Whitby (1968-1979); Oshawa (1979-1990); Ottawa Centre (2004-2006) On
In office 1968 election – February 1, 1990
Preceded by	Michael Starr
Succeeded by	Mike Breaugh
In office 2004 election – 2006 election
Preceded by	Mac Harb
Succeeded by	Paul Dewar
Born	March 21, 1936 (1936-03-21) (age 72) Oshawa
Political party	New Democratic Party
Spouse	Yvonne Yamaoka (1961-1967, div.) Lucille Broadbent (1971-2006, desc.)
Residence	Ottawa
Profession	Professor

John Edward "Ed" Broadbent, PC, CC (born March 21, 1936 in Oshawa, Ontario) is a Canadian social democratic politician and political scientist. He was leader of the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) from 1975 to 1989. In the 2004 federal election, he returned to Parliament for one additional term as the Member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre.

Broadbent's father Percy Edward was a General Motors clerk, his mother Mary Welsh an Irish Catholic homemaker. Ed, is the middle of three children. He studied philosophy at the University of Toronto, graduating in 1959 first in his class. In 1961, he married Yvonne Yamaoka, a Japanese Canadian town planner whom he divorced in 1967. He was a university professor when he ran and won election to the Canadian House of Commons from Oshawa-Whitby in the 1968 general election, defeating former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Michael Starr by fifteen votes. In 1971, he ran for the leadership of the party but lost to David Lewis at the NDP leadership convention. That year, he married a young Franco-Ontarian widow, Lucille Munroe; he had no children with her but did become the stepfather to Lucille's son Paul Broadbent, who is a defence policy specialist with the Ministry of Defence in London, England; the couple also adopted a baby girl, Christine. He has four grandchildren. He won the 1975 contest to succeed Lewis, and led the party through four elections.

In his early years as leader of the party, Broadbent was criticised for his long and complex speeches on industrial organisation, but he came to be known as an honest and charismatic politician in person. He was one of the first Canadian politicians to stage a large number of political events in the workplace.

The NDP finished with 30 seats in 1984 campaign, just ten behind the Liberal Party led by John Turner. Several polls afterwards showed that Broadbent was the most popular party leader in Canada. Broadbent was the only leader ever to take the NDP to first place in public opinion polling and some pundits felt that the NDP could supplant Turner's Liberals as the primary opposition to Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives.

Nonetheless, he was not successful in translating this into an election victory in the 1988 federal election since the Liberals reaped most of the benefits from opposing free trade. However, the NDP elected a party record 43 seats.

On the international front, while Willy Brandt was President of the Socialist International, Broadbent served as a Vice-President from 1979-1989. When he stepped down after 15 years as federal leader of the NDP in 1989, he was succeeded by Audrey McLaughlin. In the decade following Broadbent's retirement from politics, the federal NDP declined in popularity.

Broadbent was director of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development from 1990 to 1996. In 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2001.

Broadbent spent a year as Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, in 1996-7. At the invitation of the new federal NDP leader, Jack Layton, he returned to politics in 2004 (with the aid of a humorous and popular video clip) to successfully run for Parliament in the riding of Ottawa Centre, where he now lives. He easily defeated Liberal Party of Canada candidate Richard Mahoney, a close ally of Prime Minister Paul Martin.

In the NDP shadow cabinet, Broadbent was Critic for Democracy: Parliamentary & Electoral Reform, Corporate Accountability as well as Child Poverty.

On May 4, 2005, he announced that he would not seek re-election in the 39th Canadian federal election in order to spend time with his wife, Lucille, who was suffering from cancer. She died on November 17, 2006.

He has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Toronto (1965), is a former member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and is currently Fellow in the School of Policy Studies at Queen's University, Canada.

[edit] External links

• How'd They Vote?: Ed Broadbent's voting history and quotes
• Order of Canada citation
• Political Biography from the Library of Parliament
• CBC Digital Archives - Ed Broadbent: A Voice from the Left
• Rick Mercer Report segment (February 2004)
• CBC News INDEPTH: Ed Broadbent