Steve Gilchrist

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Steven Gilchrist (born July 7, 1954 in Toronto, Ontario) is a politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1995 to 2003, and served as a cabinet minister in the government of Mike Harris. His father, Gordon Gilchrist, was a Progressive Conservative member of the Canadian House of Commons.

Gilchrist was educated at Queen's University, receiving a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1975. Prior to entering elected office, he operated a number of Canadian Tire franchise stores from 1971 to 1995, including one of the largest stores in the chain.

Active in the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party since 1970, Gilchrist first ran for the Ontario legislature in the provincial election of 1990 in the riding of Scarborough East, but placed third behind incumbent Liberal Ed Fulton and the winner, New Democrat Robert Frankford. Later that year, he was elected 3rd Vice President of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Two years later, he was elected, unanimously, as President of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and served from 1992 to 1994, succeeding Tony Clement. From 1990 to 1994, Gilchrist hosted various cable television shows on Scarborough (then Trillium) Cable.

The Tories won a majority government in the 1995 election under Mike Harris. In a rematch from 1990, Gilchrist easily defeated Frankford by almost 12,000 votes, the highest plurality of any Toronto riding. He was immediately elected Chair of the Standing Committee on Resources Development and he was named a parliamentary assistant to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing in 1997.

Gilchrist was re-elected again in the provincial election of 1999, defeating Liberal candidate Peter Vanderyagt by about 3,500 votes. On June 17, 1999, Gilchrist was named Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. He stepped aside as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to defend himself from allegations by the development industry in October 1999. The allegations were proved to be unfounded and he was exonerated, but was not returned to cabinet.

While Minister, Gilchrist was responsible for co-ordinating the forced amalgamation of municipal governments in Ottawa, Hamilton and Sudbury. The political debate on the future of the Oak Ridges Moraine also began during his tenure. He remained active on the file after his resignation until the passage of the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation Act in 2001.

Gilchrist was elected as Chair of the Standing Committee on General Government and, on April 25, 2002, he was appointed as Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of the Energy.

On June 28, 2001, Gilchrist was put in charge of a commission looking into alternative fuel sources. In the same year, he backed Jim Flaherty's unsuccessful bid to succeed Mike Harris as party leader. In 2002, he was appointed as the first Commissioner of Alternative Energy for the province of Ontario, a position he held until December 2003.

He lost his seat in the provincial election of 2003, falling to Liberal Mary Anne Chambers by almost 7,000 votes.

In addition to his public activism within the PC Party and as a Member of Provincial Parliament, Gilchrist was very active in the community, serving as a Governor of the Central Ontario YMCA's for 11 years; Vice Chair of the Rouge Park Alliance; Director of the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation; Director of the Oak Ridge Moraine Land Trust; Director of the East Scarborough Boys & Girls Club and a member of a number of local ratepayers associations in Scarborough. For over twenty years, Gilchrist annually funded "Gilchrist Science Scholarships" at the University of Toronto at Scarborough and various local high schools.

After the election, Gilchrist became the Vice President of Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company, the world's largest manufacturer of hydrogen-based emissions reduction and fuel saving devices. He was also elected as a Director of the Ontario Association of Former Parliamentarians and he serves as a Special Advisor to the Board of Skypower Ltd., one of Canada's largest wind and solar power companies. Since October 2005, he is the alternate host of "Politically Speaking" on Rogers Cable in Durham Region.

In June 2007, Gilchrist was nominated as the Conservative Party of Canada's candidate in Ajax-Pickering for the next federal election. In March 2008, Gilchrist announced that he was stepping down as the candidate in order to pursue his business interests consisting of alternative energy projects including a proposed waste-to-energy facility in Ghana and an advanced recycling technology for municipalities in Canada.^[1]