Marilyn Churley - Definition and Overview

Marilyn Churley (born May 7, 1948 in Old Perlican, Newfoundland) is a Canadian politician, who represents the riding of Toronto—Danforth in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. She is a member of the Ontario New Democratic Party, and serves as the party's critic for the Ministry of the Environment, Women's Issues and Democratic Renewal.

Churley was raised in Happy Valley, Labrador, and moved to the downtown Toronto neighbourhood of Riverdale in 1978. She has served as a director of the Co-op Housing Federation of Toronto, and was a co-founder of the Bain Avenue Day Care Centre. Churley was elected to the Toronto City Council in 1988, where she was instrumental in a number of Toronto council initiatives, including the energy efficiency office, the "Clean Up the Don" movement (with fellow city councillors Jack Layton and Barbara Hall) and police patrols on bicycle.

She was easily elected as a New Democrat in the riding of Riverdale in the provincial election of 1990. The NDP won a majority government in this election; after briefly serving as a Parliamentary Assistant, Churley was named Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations on March 18, 1991, and retained this position throughout the Rae government's mandate. In cabinet, Churley opposed attempts to reduce social assistance to single mothers, and only accepted the introduction of casino gambling with reluctance.

Rae's government lost the provincial election of 1995, and Churley was one of seventeen NDP members to retain a seat in the legislature. In opposition, she worked to force the government of Mike Harris to keep the Riverdale Hospital open, stopped the closure of 11 schools, and forced the government to cap tax increases for small business. She also served as Deputy Speaker of the legislature from October 1997 to October 1998.

In 1996, after a lengthy search, Churley was re-united with a son that she had given up for adoption in 1968. She has subsequently brought forward several private members' bills to assist birth parents in finding their adopted children, and to allow adoptees to gain information on their birth parents after turning eighteen.

In the provincial election of 1999, she was re-elected for the redistributed riding of Broadview—Greenwood (later renamed Toronto—Danforth, at the behest of federal MP Dennis Mills). Churley became Deputy Leader of the NDP in 2001, following the retirement of Frances Lankin from the legislature. She was easily re-elected for a fourth term in 2003.

After the 2003 Ontario election, when the NDP lost official party status in the Legislature, Churley mused in the Toronto press about having her surname legally changed to Churley-NDP so that the Speaker would be forced to say NDP when recognizing her in the House. (A non-official party loses the right to have its members addressed in the Legislature as members of the party.) A compromise was later reached which made this change unnecessary, and the party regained official status when Andrea Horwath won a 2004 byelection.

Churley was a prominent supporter of Jack Layton in his bid to become leader of the federal New Democratic Party in 2002. This position put her at odds with party leader Howard Hampton, who supported Bill Blaikie.

Among other community commitments, Churley has also been a director of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto.

Toronto singer/songwriter Kurt Swinghammer has written a song called "The Signature of Marilyn Churley", inspired by Churley's signature on an elevator license dating from her term in the Rae cabinet.