RIP Diane Marleau

RIP to Diane Marleau.

Diane Marleau, the former MP for Sudbury and the former Minister of Health in Jean Chretien’s government, passed away suddenly on Wednesday at the age of 69 of cancer. She had been diagnosed with cancer a year ago but the passing came very suddenly. Not many of her former colleagues in Ottawa knew she had cancer so her passing came as a shock to many of them. She was born Diane LeBel on June 21, 1943. A Franco-Ontarian, she married her husband Paul Marleau at the age of 19 in February 1963. After serving on Sudbury City Council in the 1980s, she was elected to the House of Commons for the Sudbury riding in the November 21, 1988 federal election. She served in opposition for 5 years and despite her somewhat soft spoken nature was not afraid to go after Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in the House of Commons. She served alongside then-Nickel Belt NDP MP John Rodriguez. The two MPs often shared plane rides between Ottawa and Sudbury. Rodriguez has positive memories of Marleau. For example, he remembers when the two of them went on a trip to Washington DC and met legendary Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan berated Marleau for Canada’s “outdated” banking system. Marleau gave a passionate defence of Canada’s banking system and held her own against Greenspan. Marleau turned out to have been right given how well Canada’s banks fared compared to the American banks in the 2008 financial meltdown. Marleau is best remembered for her passionate defence of universal healthcare. In the 1990s, she criticized her own government for not adhering sufficiently to federal universality standards during the 1990s neo-liberal period when the federal government was relaxing on enforcing federal standards and provincial governments across the country were making health care cutbacks, due both to federal cutbacks and efforts to balance their own provincial books. After Marleau was dropped from cabinet in 1999 she became a prominent supporter of Paul Martin’s bid to lead the federal Liberal Party. Upon Martin becoming Prime Minister in 2003, Marleau was not re-appointed to cabinet but was instead given a parliamentary secretary position. She was one of many MPs who faced pressure by same-sex marriage opponents for her pro-same-sex marriage stance. One at least one occasion, there was a protest outside her constituency office. But she stuck to her guns on this important issue. In the 2006 election, she faced the closest election thus far in her parliamentary career, winning by about 9 percentage points over the NDP candidate. Marleau was unexpectedly beaten by the NDP candidate in the 2008 federal election by about 5 percentage points. After this defeat Marleau retired to private life. She was enjoying a vacation in Mexico a year ago when she suddenly fell ill, cutting short her vacation enjoyment. She returned to Canada and was diagnosed with cancer in its late stages.
Also of note was that Marleau was a fierce advocate of women’s rights and served for a time as chair of the Liberal Women’s caucus. Fittingly, just four days before her death, Kathleen Wynne was selected by the Ontario Liberal Party to be Ontario’s first female Premier.
I will do a post on Kathleen Wynne soon.
Interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, who served with Marleau for a few months in the House of Commons in 2008, recently gave a great tribute to Marleau in the House of Commons. RIP Diane Marleau. She was my favourite Sudbury politician.