Denzil Minnan-Wong

Denzil Minnan-Wong (; born ) is a Canadian politician. He is a Toronto city councillor. He is the person that represents Ward 16, an area of Toronto. He was a chairperson of the Employee and Labour Relations Committee in Toronto's municipal government and was also the deputy mayor of Toronto. He is also part of the board of the Toronto Transit Commission and the Toronto Hydro.

In 2018, he ran for election in the 2018 Ontario election in Don Valley East. He represented the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.

City politics
Minnan-Wong first got into city politics in 1994. This was when one of the councillors of North York, Barry Burton, died of cancer. The city council made him a temporary councillor. After that, in the elections later that year, he was elected in. In the 1997 elections, he was elected to the new city council. This was after the amalgamation of Toronto.

In 2011, he supported outsourcing garbage collection. His plan was to outsource garbage collection in the western part of Toronto. This saved the Toronto government $12 million a year. He also supported adding bike lanes to the streets of downtown Toronto. He opposed creating bike lanes before learning how to ride a bike. This created several bike lanes in downtown Toronto. Afterwards, Minnan-Wong helped get Bixi, a bike sharing company, to become operated by the Toronto Parking Authority. This was because Bixi was in debt.

In December 2010, the Toronto City Council put him on the TTC board of directors. He was one of the five people that voted to fire Gary Webster in 2012, who was the General Manager of the TTC. After the firing of Webster, the five people were removed from the TTC Board. They were removed because many of the councillors did not agree with Rob Ford. In 2014 he was put back on the TTC board after John Tory was elected as mayor.

After the provincial election, Minnan-Wong ran for councillor again in the 2018 municipal election. He ran in the new Ward 16 Don Valley East. Before the 2018 election, the Government of Ontario made the number of councillors in the Toronto City Council smaller. He defeated a former politician, David Caplan.

In 2014, John Tory made him one of the deputy mayors of Toronto.

Provincial politics
Minnan-Wong got into provincial politics for a short amount of time. On 20 January 2018, the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario announced that he would be their candidate for Don Valley East. In the Ontario election, he did not win and instead was second in amount of votes. The person that beat him was the Liberal politician Michael Coteau.

Personal life
Minnan-Wong's father is Denzil Minnan-Wong, Sr. Minnan-Wong, Sr. was a Chinese immigrant that became a well-known member of the Progressive Conservative Party. He went to university at Osgoode Hall Law School. After this, he became a lawyer that would deal with immigration problems.

Minnan-Wong lives in Toronto. He is married and has three children.

References

Related pages


Category:1963 births
Category:Living people
Category:Canadian lawyers
Category:Politicians from Ontario