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Bill Siksay was elected as the Member of Parliament for Burnaby-Douglas (British Columbia) in June 2004, and was re-elected in January 2006 and October 2008. In December 2010 Bill announced that he would not seek re-election and he ceased to be an MP at the dissolution of Parliament in March 2011.
Bill was born in Oshawa, Ontario. He studied Canadian History and Political Science at the University of Toronto and graduated with a BA in 1978. In 1979 Bill moved to British Columbia where he studied at the Vancouver School of Theology at the University of British Columbia. |
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Always active in student politics, Bill was the Prime Minister of his high school student parliament and President of the Victoria University Students’ Administrative Council at the University of Toronto.
In September 1986 Bill began work as an Assistant to former MP Svend Robinson, a position he held for almost 18 years. In that capacity he helped thousands of Burnaby residents and dozens of Burnaby community organizations access government services.
Bill also worked on issues such as the abolition of capital punishment, reproductive choice for women, anti-poverty initiatives, human rights, and physician-assisted suicide.
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He represented Svend on the Local Advisory Council to the Canada Employment Centre, the Burnaby Interagency Council, and the Burnaby Poverty Initiative.
An active member of the New Democratic Party since the early 1980s, Bill has served on provincial and federal riding association executives and many committees.
Since 1984 he has worked on election campaigns in Burnaby, Vancouver and Ottawa. In 1997 Bill was the federal NDP candidate in Vancouver Centre.
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As a lifelong member of the United Church of Canada, Bill has been a very active layperson in church affairs. He served as a church representative on the Victoria University (in the University of Toronto) Board of Regents. Bill also served on the National Task Force on the Changing Roles of Women and Men in Church and Society, and he chaired the church’s National Pastoral Relations Committee.
Bill has also been an activist with Affirm United, the organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual and transgender United Church members and adherents.
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Bill was a candidate for the ministry in the United Church in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was one of the first gay or lesbian people to come in the process toward ordination, and was a leader of the campaign that saw gay and lesbian church members secure the right to be considered for ordination and commissioning in the United Church. Bill was not ordained.
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In his time in the House of Commons Bill was the New Democrat Critic for Citizenship and Immigration, Canadian Heritage, Housing, Western Economic Diversification, Access to Information and Privacy and Ethics, and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Transsexual Issues.
Bill was a member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, and he was elected a Vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. Bill served as the Chair of the Federal NDP BC Parliamentary Caucus.
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In the 40th Parliament Bill was the Chair of the Canadian Section of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND) and a member of the PNND Global Council. He was also the Chair of Canadian Parliamentary Friends of Falun Gong-the first such group in any Parliament in the world.
Bill held membership in other Parliamentary organizations including the All Party Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity, the Parliamentary Forum on Small Arms and Light Weapons, the organization for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, and various parliamentary friendship organizations including Canada-Hungary, Canada-Taiwan, Canada-Palestine, Canada-Australia and New Zealand, and Canada-United States.
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