Lisa Raitt

Lisa Sarah MacCormack Raitt (born May 7, 1968) is a Canadian former politician, who served as the Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 2017 to 2019. She was the Conservative Party deputy leader, and was the Member of Parliament for the Ontario riding of Milton from 2015 to 2019, having previously represented Halton from 2008 to 2015. She is a professional administrator (1999–2008) turned politician (2008–2019). Raitt served in several portfolios as a minister in the 28th Canadian Ministry of Stephen Harper.
Background.
Raitt was born Lisa Sarah MacCormack in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and raised as the youngest of seven children. It was not until her early teens that she learned that the couple she thought were her parents were actually her grandparents, and that the woman she believed was her sister was her mother, who as a young unmarried woman had almost given up her daughter for adoption. Her grandfather, Colin A. MacCormack, worked for a local coal mine, loading coal onto ships, and later served as city alderman, and secretary-treasurer and a lead negotiator for the Cape Breton Railway Transportation and General Workers. Her grandmother, Mary Christina "Tootsie" (Gillis), was a businesswoman. As a child, she participated in Girl Guides of Canada programs as a youth member. Raitt was married to Second City alumnus, playwright, and stay-at-home dad David Raitt and has two sons, John Colin (b. 2001) and Billy (b. 2004); they are now divorced. On September 2, 2016, she married her longtime partner, Bruce Wood, the President and CEO of the Hamilton Port Authority.
Raitt graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia with a Bachelor of Science. She went on to do a master's degree in chemistry, specializing in environmental biochemical toxicology, at the University of Guelph. Raitt possesses an LL.B from Osgoode Hall Law School, and was called to the Ontario bar in 1998. That year, she was granted a Dr. Harold G. Fox Scholarship. As a result, she trained with barristers of the Middle Temple in London, United Kingdom, which specialized in international trade, commerce, transportation, and arbitration.
Toronto Port Authority (1999–2008).
Raitt served as the TPA's Corporate Secretary and General Counsel, and harbourmaster from April 2001. She was the first female harbourmaster of a Canadian port. In 2002, Raitt was appointed as president and chief executive officer of the Toronto Port Authority (TPA), a Canadian federal corporation that manages the Toronto Harbour as well as the Toronto City Centre Airport.
See relinquished the post of harbourmaster to Angus Armstrong in 2004.
General Counsel.
As General Counsel for the TPA, she filed a $1 billion lawsuit over of land that was transferred in the 1990s to the City of Toronto's Toronto Economic Development Corporation (TEDCO) by the Toronto Harbour Commission (THC). The disputed lands, mostly the infill lands of the Don River delta, constituted around 85% of the THC's land assets as of the early 1990s. The lands had been transferred in two separate agreements, in 1991 and 1994 in exchange for a permanent subsidy for the THC. The TPA's legal claim was that the transfer had been done while the majority of directors of the THC were City-appointed, and who had acted in the city's interest and not in the commission's fiduciary interest, and that the deals crippled the THC's ability to be self-sufficient by ending any potential revenues from those lands. Since the TPA was inheriting the role and activities of the THC, it was thus crippled itself. The TPA and the City settled out of court in exchange for a promised bridge to the Island Airport across the Western Gap and approximately $50 million. The bridge was never built; instead a pedestrian tunnel under the Western Gap was constructed and completed on July 30, 2015.
CEO.
As CEO of the TPA, Raitt was responsible for building the International Marine Passenger Terminal, a Toronto home for the now-defunct Canadian American Transportation Systems, a Rochester, New York-based group. The ground was broken on 24 August 2004, and CATS operated for six months in 2005. The Rochester firm that initially owned the ferry had a 14-year lease on the use of the terminal that would have paid the City of Toronto $250,000 per year.
 The terminal was reported to have cost $10.5 million to construct, which makes a 0.33 cost recovery factor. The lease was terminated in December 2009 after payment of a $90,000 settlement. The terminal has seen little use since then except to dock cruise ships and as a movie set.
During her time as CEO of the TPA, the Air Canada "Jazz" service to the Toronto City Centre Airport was discontinued under a legal cloud.
Raitt was responsible for the new "TCCA1" ferry for passengers at the Toronto City Centre Airport, which is located at the western end of the Toronto Islands.
Raitt was quoted as "proud to have assisted in the remarkable growth of Porter Airlines" in her time at the TPA.
Mismanagement allegations.
New Democrat MP Olivia Chow called on Sheila Fraser, the federal auditor general, to conduct an audit of the port authority to investigate why Baird increased the membership of the board of directors from seven to nine - and why Raitt, while CEO of the authority, was allowed to run up almost $80,000 in travel and other expenses over two years. A November 2009 report by the "Toronto Star" claimed that Raitt signed off on her own expenses inappropriately, but the TPA claimed the Star's report was inaccurate. This followed another story in the Toronto Star that a TPA employee used the office computer to send emails about a Conservative fundraiser event. After an independent forensic review conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Toronto Port Authority released the results on September 14, 2010. These results showed that "all but one of the 15 complaints lodged by the former Directors were groundless".
Federal politics.
In September 2008, Raitt was appointed to run as the Conservative candidate in Halton against Liberal incumbent Garth Turner.
Turner was formerly a Conservative MP but he was suspended from the Conservative caucus in 2006 for breaching confidentiality. He later joined the Liberals after briefly sitting as an independent member. Raitt defeated Turner in the October 14, 2008, election.
Minister of Natural Resources.
Raitt was appointed to the Cabinet of Canada on October 30, 2008, as Minister of Natural Resources. She was one of eleven women named to the Cabinet.
At an October 6, 2009, meeting of the Oakville, Ontario, Chamber of Commerce, Raitt was on record discussing the possibilities of increased tourism and shipping opportunities in the North due to the melting polar ice cap.
Jasmine MacDonnell incident.
On June 2, 2009, CTV News reported that a folder of confidential and secret ministerial briefing documents had been left by Raitt or her staff at the CTV News Ottawa office for a week. CTV News chose to reveal the contents which listed the funding for the Chalk River nuclear reactor which had recently shut down, causing a shortage of medical radioisotopes. There was also an audio tape, made on January 30, 2009, with Raitt and the aide.
On June 3, the opposition parties demanded that the government fire Raitt or accept her resignation. Raitt claimed to have offered her resignation and that the offer was rejected by the Prime Minister. A ministerial aide, Raitt's 26-year-old director of communications, Jasmine MacDonnell, offered her resignation which was accepted.
On June 8, 2009, CBC news online reported that a Nova Scotia court heard an argument to block the "Halifax Chronicle-Herald" from publishing a story about an audio recording involving Raitt. The judge ruled that the public interest over-rode the issue of confidentiality. On the tape, Raitt made comments on the radio isotope issue, describing it as "sexy ... Radioactive leaks. Cancer." and hard to control because it is "confusing to a lot of people". Raitt also made comments on the parliamentary skills of Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Manitoba MP Joy Smith, who introduced a private member's bill on human trafficking:
Minister of Labour.
On January 19, 2010, Raitt was moved from the Ministry of Natural Resources to the Ministry of Labour. Prime Minister Harper publicly defended Raitt, saying she has "a great future."
The Ottawa Citizen and National Post reported Raitt's appearance at Lester B. Pearson Airport on March 22, 2012, and subsequent reaction by Air Canada baggage handlers was the reason a wildcat strike occurred the next day. According to Bill Trbovich, a spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), Raitt was walking through the airport when three workers started "clapping and saying ‘Oh, great job’. Raitt is alleged to have asked the RCMP to ‘arrest these animals’. The strike caused widespread disruption to Air Canada schedule, causing flight cancellations and delays. Raitt's office denied the allegation.
In 2011, Raitt used back to work legislation twice to end strikes by Air Canada's flight attendants and by employees of Canada Post. The following year she threatened to legislate workers with the Canadian Pacific Railway back to work on the first day of their strike. On each occasion she cited the country's fragile economy as the reason for using back to work legislation.
When Raitt was shuffled out of the Labour portfolio she received praise from both opposition critics and union leaders for her work as minister. Liberal MP Rodger Cuzner described Raitt as "tough, quick, funny and hard-working — she can give as good as she gets." Phil Benson of the Teamsters union said "she had an open door policy with us, was professional, courteous and good to deal with," and that he looked forward to working with her as Transportation Minister.
Minister of Transport.
Raitt was named Minister of Transport on July 15, 2013, nine days after the Lac-Mégantic derailment. She replaced Denis Lebel, MP for Roberval-Lac-Saint-Jean who was previously Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. With her promotion to the transportation file she was considered to be one of the most senior women in cabinet, along with Public Works Minister Diane Finley.
Rail safety.
On July 9, 2013, the Ministry of Transport was in full damage control mode owing to the LMD. Two Directors (Marie-France Dagenais and Luc Bourdon), and an Associate Deputy Minister (Gerard McDonald) tried to finesse their delayed reaction to a scathing December 2011 report by the Auditor General of Canada on rail safety. Raitt took over the Ministry on July 15. She issued a directive sometime in autumn 2013 requiring railways to inform municipalities about the kinds of dangerous goods they were carting through their communities, but a spokesman for Canadian National said on 8 January 2014, upon the occurrence of the hazardous derailment (PRD) near Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, that it was too soon for those regulations to have come into effect. Prime Minister Stephen Harper was forced to intervene during a stop in Inuvik on January 8, 2014, and said: "We have made significant investments in rail safety and rail inspections," he said. "We have increased both of those vastly."
Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority.
On July 30, 2014, she appointed Caroline Mulroney, her long-time friend, and three other individuals, including Mark R. McQueen, who was an employer of Mulroney (under the name Lapham) at Wellington Financial and also was a former employee of Brian Mulroney's Prime Minister's office, to the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority, a body to oversee a second bridge across the Detroit River that separates Windsor, Ontario from Detroit, Michigan. Tom Mulcair, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, mocked her appointment, as an instance of the kind of corruption her father was suspected of. The "Business News Network" noted: "The Harper government hasn't explained yet what Mulroney Lapham's qualifications are to serve as a director of the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority."
Conservative leadership.
Shortly after her promotion to the Ministry of Transport, National Post columnist John Ivison wrote that Raitt was quickly becoming a contender to succeed Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he decided to step down.
The Conservative government was defeated in the 2015 federal election, though Raitt was elected in Milton, essentially the western part of her old riding. In the aftermath of the Conservative defeat, Raitt was one of several names commonly mentioned as a potential leadership candidate. Raitt had said she is "seriously considering" a bid for the party leadership.
On October 14, 2016, Raitt stepped down as finance critic. On November 2, 2016, Raitt announced via Facebook that she was running for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, though she eventually lost to Andrew Scheer.
After the 2014 Ontario election, Raitt was considered to be a contender to replace Tim Hudak for the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. However, she declined the opportunity due to health issues. In 2018, after Patrick Brown resigned over accusation of sexual assault, Raitt was named as a possible contender for the leadership, but announced on January 27, that she will not seek the leadership. She endorsed Caroline Mulroney and served as her campaign co-chair.
In a June 7, 2019 retweet of Ross McKitrick's "Financial Post" opinion piece defending Roger Pielke Jr. Raitt said that the "Bottom line is there's no solid connection between climate change and the major indicators of extreme weather, despite Trudeau's claims to the contrary. The continual claim of such a link is misinformation employed for political and rhetorical purposes."
Conservative Deputy Leader.
On July 20, 2017, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer named Raitt as deputy leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Official Opposition. Raitt is the first woman to hold the role for the Conservatives.
When asked about the appointment, she stated she considered herself a feminist and women will 'see themselves' in her.
She was defeated in the 2019 federal election by Adam van Koeverden.
Personal life.
Raitt is married to Bruce Wood. In November 2020, she came out about her experience with her husband's young onset Alzheimer's disease during the COVID-19 pandemic.