Peter MacKay pops up at city hall
Former cabinet minister part of children’s charity asking for access to low-rent space
Peter MacKay can add Toronto charity advocate to a resumé that includes stints as a high-profile Conservative cabinet minister and leader of the defunct federal Progressive Conservative party.
MacKay, a front-runner to replace Stephen Harper as Conservative leader until last September when he took himself out of the running, made a surprise, low-key appearance at Toronto city hall Monday.
The longtime Nova Scotia MP was part of a delegation from Boost Child & Youth Advocacy Centre asking a committee for access to belowmarket-rent city space offered to charities and community groups.
MacKay, who left politics in 2015, said in an interview he got to know Boost, a charity that brings together police and agencies to co-ordinate help for child victims of abuse and neglect, when he was federal justice minister.
He was invited to join Boost’s board after reaching out to the charity.
He moved his young family to Toronto last fall after commuting between Nova Scotia and his partner duties at the Bay St. law firm Baker McKenzie. MacKay said he has been concerned about the sexual exploitation of kids since he was a young Crown prosecutor.
“The amount of activity now online — child luring, child pornography — it’s a very dark disturbing trend,” that is “exploding” he said.
“Other areas of criminality are receding, they are going down, (but) this is going up,” he added, and the problem can’t be ignored in “Canada’s most dynamic, largest city.”
MacKay’s post-politics life has included volunteer work with the Special Olympics Canada and Wounded Warriors Canada, which helps ill and injured soldiers, veterans and their families.
In addition to justice, MacKay, 51, also had the defence, foreign affairs and Atlantic economic portfolios in an 18-year career capped by thenprime minister Stephen Harper lionizing him as a “great person and . . . a historic figure.”
Toronto was never a bastion of Harper’s support and city hall often accused MacKay’s government of giving the country’s biggest metropolis short-shrift on funding for housing, transit and more.
But an amiable MacKay said he has happily settled into a home in the Beach with his wife, human rights activist Nazanin Afshin-Jam, their son, Kian, 3, and 16-month-old daughter, Valentia.
“Living near the water (is) a nice reminder of home and (it’s) near child care and playgrounds and schools, grocery stores, swimming pools . . . those things were important in deciding where we wanted to set up.
“I have a house still back home in Nova Scotia . . . I’ve never lived in a city of this size. To be sure, it’s a bit of a shock. Commuting and getting around this city is challenging at times, but we’re adjusting,” he said. When he announced his move to the private sector to focus on family, MacKay did not rule out a return to politics. For now, MacKay said, he remains a Conservative, has spoken to all his party’s leadership hopefuls and will not endorse a particular candidate for the May 27 vote. The community development committee voted to ask city staff to look at finding affordable office space for Boost.