David Soknacki

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David Soknacki is a city councillor in Toronto, Canada. He represents one of the two Scarborough East wards.

He moved to eastern Scarborough in 1963, and founded the Densgrove Park Community Association. He first ran for Scarborough city council in 1991, but lost to Frank Faubert. When Faubert chose to run for the mayor's job in 1994, Soknacki tried for the seat again. This time he was successful, defeating Glenn De Baeremaeker and Zephine Wailoo.

When Scarborough was amalgamated with the City of Toronto and four other municipalities in 1997, ran for a seat on the new Toronto city council, but came in third, losing to Faubert and Ron Moeser. In June 1999, however, Faubert died of cancer and a by-election called to replace him. Soknacki won by a considerable margin in a field of seven candidates.

During his first term on city council, one of his accomplishments was the creation of a position of poet laureate for the city. He is seen as a centre-right member of city council, but also has links to the left. Unusually for a right winger, he was endorsed by the left-leaning NOW magazine in the 2003 municipal election, and was appointed to the important position of budget chief by leftist mayor David Miller in 2003, despite Soknacki's support for Miller's rival John Tory in the election.

On August 22, 2006 Soknacki announced that he was retiring from politics. He gave no reasons for leaving city council but said he was returning to run his spice importing business. He said he would leave after finishing the current term of council which ends on November 30, 2006.^[1]