Dennis Drainville
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Dennis Paul Drainville (born February 20, 1954 in Joliette, Quebec) is a Canadian priest and politician. He was a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1993, and later taught Humanities and History for 12 years at the Cegep College de la Gaspesie et des Iles.
Drainville was educated at the University of Toronto's Trinity College, and became an Anglican priest after his graduation. He worked as a parish priest in Ontario from 1982 to 1984, and was the executive director of STOP 103, a multi-service agency in Toronto where he raised the profile of poverty issues and entered into public debate on social policy with both the Federal Conservative Government and several Provincial Governments from 1984 to 1986. He Chaired the first National Conference on Hunger in Canada in 1987. He has served as a priest in the Anglican dioceses of Ontario, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec.
He first ran for the Ontario legislature in the 1977 provincial election. Drainville was a member of the Liberal Party at the time, and campaigned in the downtown Toronto riding of Riverdale. He finished a distant third against the winner, Jim Renwick of the New Democratic Party.
Drainville himself later joined the NDP, and in 1989 was arrested for protesting the province's clearcutting practices in the Northern Ontario forests around Temagami. He also stood with Chief Gary Potts and the Teme-Augami-Anishinabai people in their 60 year legal battle to claim their lands in Temagami. He was fined and sent to jail in North Bay for a week in March of 1991. Drainville was NDP candidate in the riding of Victoria—Haliburton in the 1990 provincial election. This east-central Ontario seat was not regarded as winnable – indeed, no NDP candidate in the riding had ever finished higher than third place, behind the Liberals and Progressive Conservatives. However, the NDP under Bob Rae won an unexpected majority government in the election, and Drainville won the riding by 6,520 votes over his nearest opponent.
Drainville served as a parliamentary assistant from 1990 to 1992, and as a Deputy Speaker from 1992 to 1993. Drainville's most high profile role in the NDP Government was as Chair of the Select Committee on Ontario in Confederation. He oversaw a massive constitutional consultation process during the Charlottetown Accord negotiations. Eventually his loyalty to the Rae government became increasingly tenuous. Drainville emerged as an ally of Peter Kormos in the NDP caucus, and frequently opposed the policies of the Rae government from a left-wing perspective. On April 28, 1993, he resigned from NDP caucus to protest the Rae government's decision to bring casinos into the province. He continued to sit in the legislature as an independent. Later in the year, he voted against the Rae government's Social Contract legislation.
Drainville resigned from the legislature on September 27, 1993, and declared himself an independent candidate in the 1993 federal election. He finished a distant fourth against Liberal John O'Reilly in the federal Victoria—Haliburton riding, though he did outpoll the official NDP candidate by over a thousand votes.
Drainville later realigned himself with the federal NDP, and worked within the Quebec wing. He ran as an official NDP candidate in the 1997 election in the Quebec riding of Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok, but again finished a distant fourth with only 649 votes. It may be noted that the NDP has long been relatively weak in Quebec, particularly since the emergence of the Bloc Québécois, and such a finish was not uncommon.
Drainville was elected to the City Council of the Ville de Perce for two four year terms representing sector 7 of that municipality from 1994-2002. He also served as President of Seacoast Publications which publishes the only English Newspaper East of Quebec City from 1994 to 1995. In 2004 he founded and is a Trustee of the Gaspe Ecumenical Chaplaincy Foundation established to respond to the social health and spiritual needs of seniors on the Gaspe coast.
Drainville was elected to the Council of the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada in 2004, at a meeting in St. Catharines, Ontario. At the same meeting, he seconded a successful motion for the Anglican Church in Canada to "affirm the sanctity and integrity of adult same-sex relationships". In 2006 he was appointed by the Council of General Synod to The Canadian Council of Churches as one of their representatives.
He is presently employed as Archbishop's Missioner in the Diocese of Quebec. He continues to live in Gaspe with his family.
