Frances Lankin

Frances Lankin has had an unusually varied public career — Ontario cabinet minister, United Way CEO, human rights commissioner, and now Senator for Ontario. Each of those phases gave her a different vantage point on how government works and where it doesn't. She brings all of that to a Senate appointment that, in her case, is clearly more than a retirement position. Her Ontario NDP government experience from the early 1990s — governing during a severe recession, making difficult fiscal decisions, eventually losing power badly — is the kind of direct experience that most senators don't have. She knows what it's like to make hard choices in government with real consequences. In the Senate she's contributed on social policy and income security with the specificity that comes from someone who's thought about these systems for decades. That's genuinely useful even in a chamber whose power to force outcomes is limited.

Frances Lankin was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2016, representing Ontario, and brought to the chamber one of the most varied public sector careers of any senator in the current Parliament. She served as a cabinet minister in Bob Rae's Ontario NDP government in the early 1990s — holding portfolios including Management Board, Health, and Economic Development — before leaving politics for a long career in civil society, including as CEO of United Way Toronto and as a commissioner on the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Her Senate contributions have reflected this breadth: she has been active on social policy, on federal-provincial relations, and on the machinery of government questions that her experience at multiple levels of public administration informs. Her Ontario NDP government years — governing during a severe recession with a minority that became a majority and then lost power dramatically — give her a perspective on crisis governance that few legislators have from direct experience. She brings to the Senate a social democratic orientation that, combined with her independent appointment, allows her to advocate for positions on social policy — income security, healthcare, housing — that are not bounded by party discipline or electoral considerations. At a stage of career where most people have stopped accumulating experience, Lankin has continued to use her Senate position as a platform for substantive policy engagement rather than a coda to an accomplished career.