Robert Elgie
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Dr. Robert Goldwin (Bob) Elgie (January 22, 1929—) is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1977 to 1985, and was a cabinet minister in the Progressive Conservative governments of Bill Davis and Frank Miller. His father, Goldwin Elgie, was also a Conservative Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) in the 1930s and 1940s.
Elgie was born in Toronto, Ontario, and was educated at the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario, Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Ottawa. He trained as both a lawyer and neurosurgeon, and worked in the medical field before entering political life.
Elgie was first elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in the 1977 provincial election, winning an easy victory in the Toronto-area seat of York East. After a brief period in the government backbenches, he was appointed to Bill Davis's cabinet on August 18, 1978 as Minister of Labour. A Red Tory by ideology, Elgie was easily the most left-wing figure in the Davis cabinet. He was supported by the province's unions, and passed amendments to Ontario's Human Rights Code which were favourable to labour interests. Some campus Progressive Conservative groups opposed his efforts to grant human rights officers the right to investigate and arbitrate reports of workplace discrimination.
Elgie was easily re-elected in the 1981 election, and was named Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations on February 13, 1982. He supported Roy McMurtry's bid to succeed Davis as party leader in 1985. When Frank Miller replaced Davis as Premier of Ontario on February 8, 1985, he named Elgie as his Minister of Community and Social Services. He was re-elected with a reduced majority in the 1985 election, as the Progressive Conservatives won a narrow minority government under Miller's leadership. Elgie was again appointed as Minister of Labour on May 17, 1985.
Following the election, Elgie favoured an alliance with the New Democratic Party to keep the Progressive Conservatives in power. These plans came to nothing, and the opposition Liberal Party was able to form a minority government with NDP support on June 26, 1985. Elgie had little interest in serving on the opposition benches, and soon accepted an appointment by new Liberal Premier David Peterson as chair of the Workers' Compensation Board of Ontario. He formally resigned from the legislature on September 26, 1985, and served as chair of the Ontario WCB until 1991.
He then moved to Nova Scotia, and served as the first director of Dalhousie University's Health Law Institute from 1991 until 1996. He was appointed part-time chair of Nova Scotia's Workers' Compensation Board in the same period, and is credited with making significant improvements to this board's activities. Elgie then served as chair of the Patent Medicine Prices Review Board from 1995 to 2005, and was appointed chair of the Ontario Greenbelt Council by the provincial Minister of Municipal Affairs in the summer of 2005. On Jan. 1, 2006, he became the 6th Chair of the Ontario Press Council, of which he has been a member since 2001.
During the Mike Harris government of the 1990s, Elgie complained that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives had become too right-wing. One son, Peter Elgie is a leading member and former Deputy Leader of the Green Party of Ontario; while another, Stewart Elgie, is a leading Canadian environmental advocacy lawyer, founder of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, and a professor at the University of Ottawa.
Bob Elgie was named to the Order of Canada in 2003.
