Politics
He was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1968 as a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of York—Simcoe. [1] He was defeated in the 1972 federal election but returned in 1974. [2] [3] From 1974 to 1984 (defeated in 1979 and re-elected in 1980),he was MP for the riding of St. Paul's in Toronto. [4] [5]
He was a junior cabinet minister in his role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion from 1971 to 1972. In 1976,he was appointed Secretary of State for Canada in Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. Roberts lost his seat again in the 1979 election in which the Trudeau government was defeated.
He was returned to the House yet again as a result of the 1980 election,and joined Trudeau's final cabinet,first as Minister of the Environment,Minister of State for Science and Technology and then as Minister of Employment and Immigration. As Canadian environment minister in the early 1980s he faced off with the US government over the cross-border issue of acid rain at a time when the Reagan Administration was denying its existence. Roberts led a strong public information campaign on both sides of the border that,at one point,resulted in the US justice department officially branding a National Film Board of Canada documentary Acid from Heaven as "foreign country propaganda". The campaign is credited with ultimately leading to a bilateral accord on acid rain being signed later in the decade. [6]
Roberts ran to succeed Trudeau at the 1984 Liberal leadership convention,coming in fourth behind John Turner. Turner kept Roberts in his cabinet as Minister of Employment and Immigration. Roberts and Turner's government were defeated in the 1984 election. [7] An attempt to return to parliament in 1988,this time from Ontario riding (Pickering),was unsuccessful. [8]
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