Joe Volpe

Giuseppe "Joe" Volpe (born September 21, 1947) is a Canadian politician.

Volpe was born in Monteleone di Puglia, in southern Italy, and migrated to Canada with his family in 1955.

Volpe first became involved with the Liberal Party in the 1968 federal election, when he worked on Charles Caccia's campaign in Davenport.

As a teacher, he taught in Stoney Creek from 1971 to 1974, headed the history department of a secondary school in Etobicoke from 1974 to 1979, and was head of multicultural studies in a college in Weston, Ontario between 1979 and 1982.

He ran for the North York Board of Education in the 1974 municipal election as a separate school representative, but was defeated.

Volpe increased his profile in the mid-1980s by recruiting many new Liberal Party members from Toronto's Italian community.

He later ran for the Ontario legislature in the 1981 provincial election and narrowly lost to New Democratic Party incumbent Odoardo Di Santo in Downsview.

The following year, he supported David Peterson for the Ontario Liberal Party leadership.

He worked as a mortgage development officer in 1982–83, and was vice-principal of the James Cardinal McGuigan Catholic High School (which he helped found) between 1983 and 1988.

He is married to Mirella and they have four children.

Volpe subsequently chaired the sponsoring group of an immigrant counseling agency called Alliance Community Services, which received a controversial $500,000 grant from the federal government in January 1984.

Local municipal politicians Howard Moscoe and Maria Rizzo charged that the ACS was a partisan organization and that the grant was political patronage; Volpe and others rejected this charge.

Maria Minna, the president of COSTI-IIAS Immigrant Services, opposed the grant on the grounds that the new organization would duplicate the work of her organization.

Employment and Immigration Minister John Roberts retracted the grant following criticism, but later reversed himself and allowed it to proceed.

He helped influence several party nomination contests, including John Nunziata's 1984 victory over Paul Hellyer in York South—Weston.

Some questioned Volpe's methods and suggested that he was manipulating the system by signing up "instant party members", a charge that he denied.

He endorsed John Roberts in the 1984 federal Liberal leadership convention, and threw his support to Jean Chrétien on the second ballot after Roberts withdrew from the contest.

The winning candidate was John Turner, who led the Liberal Party to defeat in the 1984 federal election.

Turner, who was faced with public and backroom challenges since 1984, received the necessary support to consolidate his leadership.

Volpe spoke out against the Meech Lake Accord the following year, while most of the Liberal leadership supported it.

The ACS dissolved in early 1985.

Volpe unsuccessfully campaigned for the presidency of the Ontario Liberal Party in 1985 and 1986, against media speculation that leading figures in the party opposed his candidacy.

Despite Volpe's earlier support for Chrétien, he organized a pro-Turner slate for the Liberal Party's 1986 leadership review.

He represented the Ontario riding of Eglinton-Lawrence as a member of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons of Canada from 1988 until 2011, when he lost his seat to Conservative candidate Joe Oliver.

Volpe successfully challenged sitting Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Rev. Roland De Corneille to win the party's nomination for Eglinton—Lawrence in the 1988 election.

The contest was extremely divisive, with de Corneille alleging that Volpe was "trying to organize a group for his personal advantage" in recruiting new members from the riding's Italian community.

After losing the nomination, de Corneille endorsed Progressive Conservative candidate Tony Abbott, who was himself a former Liberal cabinet minister.

Volpe defended his right to seek the nomination, arguing that Toronto's Italian residents were seeking to play a more active role in government.

He also sought a reconciliation with de Corneille's supporters, many of whom were from the riding's Jewish community.

Despite the divisions engendered by his nomination, Volpe won a convincing victory on election day.

The Progressive Conservatives were re-elected with a majority government in the 1988 election and Volpe sat as a member of the official opposition for the next five years, serving as his party's revenue critic for part of this time.

During the constitutional debates of the early 1990s, he suggested that the Parliament of Canada (as opposed to the executive branch of government) should assume responsibility for reformulating the terms of Canadian Confederation.

He argued that parliament represented a strong cross-section of Canada's population, saying that parliamentary initiative on constitutional reform could save millions of dollars on "needless commissions".

Volpe supported Paul Martin in the 1990 federal Liberal leadership convention, which was won by Jean Chrétien.

He subsequently opposed some of Chrétien's reforms to the Liberal Party constitution, including a change that allowed the leader to appoint candidates in selected ridings.

Several Chrétien supporters defended this as necessary to prevent "instant party members" from taking over the party nomination process; many believe the change was directed against both Volpe and the Liberals for Life group affiliated with MP Tom Wappel.

Volpe remained one of Martin's most prominent Toronto-area supporters after 1990.

Many political observers believe this association kept him out of cabinet during Chrétien's tenure as prime minister, from 1993 to 2003.

Volpe held two senior positions in Prime Minister Paul Martin's Cabinet from 2003 to 2006, and served as transportation critic when his party became the Official Opposition.

In 2006, he ran unsuccessfully for the Liberal Party leadership.