Richard Mahoney
Encyclopedia
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
lawyer, specializing in public policy and regulatory law. He is also a prominent member of the Liberal Party of Canada
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
, known as a strategist and advisor to former Prime Minister Paul Martin
Paul Martin
Paul Edgar Philippe Martin, PC , also known as Paul Martin, Jr. is a Canadian politician who was the 21st Prime Minister of Canada, as well as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada....
. He ran as the Liberal candidate in the riding of Ottawa Centre
Ottawa Centre
Ottawa Centre is an urban federal electoral district in Ontario, Canada, that has been represented in the Canadian House of Commons since 1968...
during the 2004
Canadian federal election, 2004
The Canadian federal election, 2004 , was held on June 28, 2004 to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 38th Parliament of Canada. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin lost its majority, but was able to form a minority government after the elections...
and 2006
Canadian federal election, 2006
The 2006 Canadian federal election was held on January 23, 2006, to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 39th Parliament of Canada. The Conservative Party of Canada won the greatest number of seats: 40.3% of seats, or 124 out of 308, up from 99 seats in 2004, and 36.3% of votes:...
Canadian federal elections, losing both times. He has appeared numerous times on radio and television as a political commentator.
Early life
Raised in Toronto, he attended the Jesuit-run Brebeuf College SchoolBrebeuf College School
Brebeuf College School is a Roman Catholic all-boys' high school in Toronto founded by the Jesuits in 1963 and associated with the Presentation Brothers since 1984...
and then received his B.A. in political science in 1982 from the University of Western Ontario
University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers of land, with the Thames River cutting through the eastern portion of the main campus. Western administers its programs through 12 different faculties and...
. After graduating, he enrolled at the University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
's law school. While studying to earn his LL.B., he served as the President of the Young Liberals of Canada
Young Liberals of Canada
The Young Liberals of Canada is the national youth wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. All members of the Liberal Party, who are aged 25 and under, are members of the Commission of the Young Liberals. The Young Liberals of Canada are the largest political youth organization in Canada...
and worked in the offices of Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...
John Turner
John Turner
John Napier Wyndham Turner, PC, CC, QC is an English Canadian lawyer and retired politician, who served as the 17th Prime Minister of Canada from June 30 to September 17, 1984....
and Finance Minister
Minister of Finance (Canada)
The Minister of Finance is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible each year for presenting the federal government's budget...
Marc Lalonde
Marc Lalonde
Marc Lalonde, PC, OC, QC is a retired Canadian politician and Cabinet minister.Lalonde was born in Île Perrot, Quebec and obtained a Master of Laws degree from the Université de Montréal, a Master's degree from Oxford University, and a Diplôme d'études supérieures en droit from the University of...
. He graduated with a law degree in 1985.
Politics and government
A longtime organizer for the Liberal Party of CanadaLiberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
and media commentator, Mahoney is strongly associated with the fiscally moderate and socially progressive neoliberal
Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
movement that characterized Canada's political state for the better part of two decades under the direction of then Finance Minister
Minister of Finance (Canada)
The Minister of Finance is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible each year for presenting the federal government's budget...
Paul Martin
Paul Martin
Paul Edgar Philippe Martin, PC , also known as Paul Martin, Jr. is a Canadian politician who was the 21st Prime Minister of Canada, as well as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada....
. Mahoney was executive assistant to Martin during the latter's unsuccessful 1990 leadership campaign. He was elected president of the Liberal Party of Ontario from 1992 to 1995. After the 1995 provincial election resulted in a Progressive Conservative victory, Mahoney traveled the province on what he "wryly called the Hugh Grant
Hugh Grant
Hugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César. His films have earned more than $2.4 billion from 25 theatrical releases worldwide. Grant achieved international stardom after appearing in Richard Curtis's...
apology tour'".
He returned to full-time legal practice in the early 1990s after serving in numerous capacities within Liberal governments as a strategist, executive member, advisor, and minister's aide. His position as party president led Mahoney to wide media exposure in the Ontario press, and saw him acting as a political commentator for many years on TVO's Studio Two, CTV, CBC, 580 CFRA News Talk Radio, and other television and radio networks. After his term a Liberal Party president expired, he remained a close confidant of many federal and provincial politicians and was and advisor to Martin during his term as Canada's finance minister from 1993-2002. In 2003, the two worked closely on a successful Liberal leadership campaign, ultimately leading to Martin's election as Liberal leader and appointment as Canada's 21st Prime Minister.
After incumbent Liberal MP Mac Harb
Mac Harb
Mac Harb is a Canadian Senator and former Member of the House of Commons.-Life and career:Harb was born in Chaat, Lebanon and immigrated to Canada to study at the University of Ottawa. He subsequently worked as an engineer at Northern Telecom and a professor at Algonquin College in Ottawa...
was appointed to the Senate in 2003, Mahoney garnered the party's nomination in Ottawa-Centre. Expecting to run in a by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
, he and his opponents were thrust into a national election when one was called for the early summer of the following year. The riding was captured by New Democratic Party
New Democratic Party
The New Democratic Party , commonly referred to as the NDP, is a federal social-democratic political party in Canada. The interim leader of the NDP is Nycole Turmel who was appointed to the position due to the illness of Jack Layton, who died on August 22, 2011. The provincial wings of the NDP in...
candidate Ed Broadbent
Ed Broadbent
John Edward "Ed" Broadbent, is a Canadian social democratic politician and political scientist. He was leader of the federal New Democratic Party 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.-Life...
, one of the most formidable and respected politicians in Canada's recent political history. After a short-lived minority parliament, Mahoney ran as the Liberal candidate again in the election of 2006, but the riding was carried by Broadbent's NDP successor, Paul Dewar
Paul Dewar
Paul W. Dewar is a Canadian politician currently serving as the Member of Parliament for the riding of Ottawa Centre.Dewar is a member of the New Democratic Party and was first elected to the House of Commons in the 2006 federal election...
.
In April 2007, Mahoney announced that he would seek the Liberal nomination in the riding of Pontiac
Pontiac (electoral district)
Pontiac is a federal electoral district in south-western Quebec, Canada, that has been represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1949 and since 1968....
, then held by Transport Minister
Minister of Transport (Canada)
The Minister of Transport is the Minister of the Crown in the Canadian Cabinet who is responsible for overseeing the federal government's transportation regulatory and development department, Transport Canada...
Lawrence Cannon
Lawrence Cannon
Lawrence Cannon, PC is a Canadian politician from Quebec and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former Quebec lieutenant. On October 30, 2008 he was sworn in as Minister of Foreign Affairs...
. This came as rumours circulated that Liberal Leader
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
Stéphane Dion
Stéphane Dion
Stéphane Maurice Dion, PC, MP is a Canadian politician who has been the Member of Parliament for the riding of Saint-Laurent–Cartierville in Montreal since 1996. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and the Leader of the Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons from 2006 to 2008...
had encouraged Mahoney to run and gave the candidacy his blessing. On April 15, however, Farrelton farmer Cindy Duncan-McMillan won the nomination and was the Liberal candidate for Pontiac in the 2008 federal election.
Professional and community interests
Early in his legal career, Mahoney directed much of his energy towards practicing refugee law, in front of the Immigration Refugee Board and the Federal Court of Canada. After his law practice evolved into other areas, he remained involved as a volunteer, assisting a number of refugees including as volunteer counsel to the SOS Viet Phi, who remained stateless in the Philippines until 2005, Vietnamese refugeesBoat people
Boat people is a term that usually refers to refugees, illegal immigrants or asylum seekers who emigrate in numbers in boats that are sometimes old and crudely made...
after fleeing their country in the wake of the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. He also worked, for seven years, as a director of the Royal Ottawa Hospital's fundraising foundation.
Mahoney has pursued a number of personal interests at the professional level as both a lawyer, sometime lobbyist and business executive. He was a senior vice president and of Borealis Capital, an investment firm owned by the OMERS pension fund. He practises business, public, regulatory and immigration law at Fraser Milner Casgrain, one of Canada's "leading business law firms" and recently sat on the board of the Canadian-American Business Council. Mahoney has represented numerous clients, including Rogers Cable
Rogers Cable
Rogers Cable Inc., a subsidiary of Rogers Communications Inc., is Canada's largest cable television service provider with about 2.25 million television customers, and over 930,000 Internet subscribers, in Manitoba, Southern & Eastern Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.The...
. He represents corporations from sectors such as "telecommunications, broadcasting, transportation, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, high technology and financial services."
Mahoney's role as a lawyer and lobbyist while simultaneously hoping to become an MP was, at times, controversial. An article in the Ottawa Citizen reported Mahoney successfully lobbied the Liberal government to lower Canadian content requirements for Canadian Satellite Radio prior to obtaining his lobbyist license. However, Mahoney attended the event in question as a Liberal Party donor and the nonpartisan Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists ruled there was no wrongdoing and that he had not, in fact, lobbied the government. Mahoney, also, resigned his position at Borealis in 2004 to prevent a conflict of interest during his turns as a candidate in general election campaigns.
Mahoney plays in an Ottawa-area band called The 20th Century Boys. The seven-member group includes Warren Everson, who had a decade-long career in the Mulroney government, bass player Darrel Reid, deputy director of policy and research for the Prime Minister's Office and Scott Bradley, director of business development at Bell Canada. Fluently bilingual, Mahoney has been a resident of Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
and Denholm, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
for over twenty years. He is married and the father of three children.