Ruth Grier
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Ruth Anna Grier (born October 2, 1936 in Dublin, Ireland) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. She was a New Democratic Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1985 to 1995, and served as a high-profile cabinet minister in the government of Bob Rae.
Of Anglican background, Grier was educated at both Trinity College in Dublin and the University of Trinity College at the University of Toronto. She has a degree in Political Science and Economics. She served as an alderman for the City of Etobicoke from 1969 to 1985, and was a member of numerous social service and community organizations during this period. Her husband Terry Grier was a New Democratic Party member of the Canadian House of Commons from 1972 to 1974.
Grier was first elected to the Ontario legislature in the 1985 provincial election, defeating Liberal Frank Sgarlata by 2,037 votes in the riding of Lakeshore (incumbent Progressive Conservative Al Kolyn finished third).
The Liberals won a landslide majority in the 1987 provincial election, although Grier actually defeated Sgarlata by an increased margin (Kolyn was again third). From 1985 to 1990, she served as her party's Critic for the Environment. Grier was known as a supporter of party leader Bob Rae within caucus during this period. She considered a leadership run in 1989 when it appeared that Rae would run to succeed Ed Broadbent as federal NDP leader, but abandoned this when Rae announced that he would remain at the provincial level.
The NDP won an unexpected majority government in the 1990 provincial election, and Grier was appointed as the Minister of the Environment on October 1, 1990. As Environment Minister, Grier cancelled plans to ship Toronto's garbage to a waste site in Durham, and vetoed a similar plan for the northern community of Kirkland Lake. The government eventually authorized the creation of three new landfill sites near Toronto, one of which was located on prime farmland. Grier also set limits on the amount of chlorine that pulp and paper mills could dump into rivers and lakes, and rejected one particular downtown Toronto housing project on the grounds that removing industrial waste from the region was prohibitively expensive. She also introduced an Environmental Bill of Rights. Grier's decisions were accurate reflections of NDP environmental policy, and may have been justified under the circumstances, but nonetheless made several enemies in both the business community and among some NDP supporters. On February 3, 1993, she was transferred to the Ministry of Health.
As Health Minister, Grier supported the listing of general drugs over large pharmaceutical companies. In 1993, her government made a generous settlement with the province's doctors via an Interim Agreement of Economic Arrangements. Despite strong personal objections, she also introduced user fees for some drug coverage in the summer of 1993. Her government also introduced midwifery as a profession, targeted resources toward community health centres, created a Task Force on the Prevention of Cancer and introduced the Trillium Drug Plan.
Notwithstanding her efforts to pursue some traditional NDP policies while in government, Grier generally supported Bob Rae in his efforts to move the party to the political center. She was sometimes considered as one of the most important ministers in Rae's cabinet, though she actually had less influence over government decisions than Floyd Laughren, Frances Lankin and Dave Cooke.
The NDP were defeated in the 1995 provincial election, and Grier finished third in her bid for re-election in Etobicoke—Lakeshore, losing to Progressive Conservative Morley Kells. She has not sought a return to politics since this time. For many years after her defeat, she was a regular panelist on Fourth Reading, on the TV Ontario program Studio 2.
In 2000, she received an honorary doctorate from Ryerson University. Grier was named Visiting Environmentalist at the University of Toronto in 1997, and remains involved in environmental concerns. She is also a member of the Cancer Prevention Interest Group and the Canadian Cancer Society.
Grier endorsed Tooker Gomberg for Mayor of Toronto in 2000.
