Joe Borowski

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For the Major League Baseball pitcher, see Joe Borowski (baseball player).

Joseph P. (Joe) Borowski (December 12, 1933-September 23, 1996) was a Canadian politician and activist. From 1969 to 1971, he was a cabinet minister in Manitoba Premier Edward Schreyer's New Democratic Party (NDP) government. Subsequently, he gained national fame for his opposition to abortion.

Borowski was born in Wishart, Saskatchewan, and was educated at Birchcreek School in that province. He subsequently moved to Sudbury, Ontario, and Thompson, Manitoba, to work as a miner and steelworker. Borowski was Vice-President of the United Steelworkers of America Local 6166 in 1964-65, and helped to win municipal incorporation for Thompson at around the same time. He retired from manual labour in his 30s, and became the owner of a gift shop.

Borowski became a public figure in the late 1960s by camping outside the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba for several months in extremely cold weather. His protest was meant to draw attention to the rights of northern Manitobans, to protest the province's low minimum wage in relation to the high salaries given to cabinet ministers, and to protest the provincial sales tax of Dufferin Roblin's government. His presence was a nuisance to many in government, and cabinet minister Stewart McLean eventually had him ejected from the legislative grounds.

Borowski had not been directly involved in politics prior to this experience. He had supported of John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives for a time at the federal level, but was not directly involved in partisan politics, and does not appear to have contemplated running for public office. He had become a local celebrity through his protest, however, and was drafted by the Manitoba NDP to campaign in a February 1969 by-election in the northern riding of Churchill. He defeated independent candidate Blaine Johnstone by seven votes (confirmed by a recount), and joined the NDP caucus on the opposition benches of the legislature.

Borowski endorsed Sidney Green for the party's leadership in May 1969, and made some enemies for his intemperate attacks on Edward Schreyer, who defeated Green on the first ballot.

He was easily re-elected in the province's general election of 1969 (held in June), defeating Progressive Conservative Thomas Farrell by almost a thousand votes in Thompson.

When the NDP formed a minority government following the 1969 election, Schreyer surprised many by appointing Borowski as his Minister of Transportation. Borowski represented northern interests in the cabinet, and was also seen as an important populist link between the NDP and working class voters. Russell Doern, who joined cabinet in 1970, later claimed that Borowski's popularity rivalled that of the Premier during this period. On September 3, 1970, Borowski was given the additional position of Minister of Public Works.

There are conflicting views as to Borowski's performance in cabinet. Some claim that he was a committed Public Works Minister, who often conducted personal inspections of road renewal projects and demanded efficient results. Others allege that he treated provincial bureaucrats with contempt, and ran his ministries in a highly centralized manner. Assessments of his job performance, however, were soon overshadowed by controversies wholly unrelated to his ministerial duties.

On February 17, 1971, Borowski made derogatory comments about aboriginal Canadians, veterans and people with disabilities during an address to NDP supporters in Winnipeg. Former party leader Russell Paulley openly criticized his remarks, and Borowski was nearly dropped from cabinet before agreeing to a public apology.

Borowski was known for his rigid social conservatism on subjects such as pornography and abortion, and frequently expressed his views on these subjects in public debate. He was dropped from cabinet on September 8, 1971 after making several intemperate remarks on the subject of abortion, which included mocking a group of protesters who had arrived on the legislative grounds to support abortion services. As a backbencher, he tried to prevent public funds from being spent on hospitals which provided out-of-province abortion referrals.

Borowski finally left the NDP caucus on June 25, 1972, arguing that the Schreyer government's new film censorship board would not adequately prevent pornographic movies from entering the province. He initially sat as an "independent New Democrat", and later left the NDP entirely.

In the provincial election of 1973, Borowski ran as an independent candidate in the north-end Winnipeg riding of Point Douglas, and lost to NDP incumbent Donald Malinowski by more than 2,500 votes. Borowski's campaign was based almost entirely on a pro-life platform. He never ran for public office after again this loss. After briefly supporting Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government in the mid-1970s, Borowski abandoned partisan politics entirely. In later years, he criticized all major parties as ineffective on issues such as abortion.

Shortly before the 1977 provincial election, Borowski placed a large advertisement in the Winnipeg Free Press which purported to describe the views of several MLAs on the subject of abortion. Not all of his information was accurate. MLAs whom Borowski believed were supporters of abortion were listed as "pro-death". Schreyer was described as ambivalent.

In addition to his activities as a pro-life spokesman, Borowski also became an insurance salesman and a proponent of health foods in the late 1970s. In 1977, he published a work entitled The Borowski Cookbook.

He withheld his income tax for five years in the 1970s, to show his opposition to Canada's federal abortion policies.

In 1981, Borowski went on an eighty-day hunger strike to protest the absence of a provision for the unborn in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Three years earlier, his lawyers had put forward a case arguing that abortion was illegal under Canada's 1960 Bill of Rights, in that it robbed the unborn of their right to life. The case was not brought to trial until 1983, and was not completed for several years after that. The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear Borowski's case in 1989, on the grounds that his motion had become irrelevant when Canada's abortion laws were struck down in 1988.

Borowski also published a series of works in the late 1980s that were criticized as homophobic. In 1988, he released a document that called for "all known gays" to be quarantined from the rest of society until the AIDS epidemic had subsided. He also published a work entitled Child Molestation and Homosexuality, the front page of which showed a middle-aged man attempting to lure a child for sexual purposes. Winnipeg AIDS activist and future mayor Glen Murray became a vocal opponent of Borowski during this period.

Borowski died of cancer in 1996. In August 2004, author Lianne Laurence published a biography entitled Borowski: A Canadian Paradox, funded largely by donations from the pro-life community in Canada.