Dan Vandal

Daniel Vandal (born April 18, 1960) is a Métis Canadian politician in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Vandal was born on April 18, 1960 to a Métis family in Winnipeg, the youngest of eight children.

His family identified as French Canadian during his youth, and he only became aware of his Métis heritage in later life.

Vandal dropped out of high school, and was a manual labourer for part of his teenage years.

He started boxing at age 15, turned professional in 1978, and was the #1 ranked Canadian middleweight in 1983.

The following year, he fought Alex Hilton for the Canadian title in front of 18,000 fans at the Montreal Forum.

He later credited boxing for turning his life around, and has opposed efforts to ban the sport.

Vandal subsequently became a youth worker at Winnipeg's Mamawiwichiitata Centre, and received a degree in Social Work from the University of Manitoba.

He was vice-president of the Old St. Boniface Residents Association in the 1990s, and campaigned against the proposed construction of a stadium for Sam Katz's Winnipeg Goldeyes baseball team in Whittier Park.

He represented St. Boniface on the Winnipeg City Council from 1995 to 2004 and from 2006 to 2014, and ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Winnipeg in 2004, coming in second to Sam Katz.

He briefly served as acting mayor of Winnipeg following Glen Murray's resignation.

Vandal was elected to the Winnipeg City Council in the 1995 municipal election, winning an upset victory over incumbent councillor Evelyne Reese in the St. Boniface Ward.

He was associated with the left-leaning Winnipeg in the '90s (WIN) group, which also included councillors Glen Murray and Lillian Thomas.

The WIN organization was dissolved after the 1995 election.

In 1996, Vandal and Murray served on an ad hoc social services committee that held a series of public hearings on federal and provincial welfare cuts.

He opposed a 2% salary rollback for municipal employees in 1996, and later opposed the dissolution of the Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation, which provided public housing.

He later saved the Pointe Hebert neighbourhood in his ward from being turned into parkland, and was chosen to sit on the city's newly formed property and development committee in November 1997.

Vandal was a frequent opponent of Mayor Susan Thompson during his first term, and voted against several of Thompson's major initiatives.

In 1997, he voted against a proposal to allow Sam Katz to build a new baseball stadium for the Goldeyes on a city-owned site at The Forks.

Vandal's position was that the project was not financially viable, and that Katz would later return to the city for more money.

In February 1997, Vandal introduced a motion to create a municipal aboriginal affairs committee that would address issues of crime prevention and health.

He later represented Winnipeg on an aboriginal subcommittee of the Manitoba Round Table on Environment and Economy.

Vandal was re-elected in the 1998 municipal election as an independent with support from the Winnipeg Labour Council and the New Democratic Party, of which he was a member at the time.

Glen Murray was elected Mayor of Winnipeg in this campaign, and appointed Vandal to his executive policy committee (i.e. the municipal cabinet) as chair of the protection and community services committee, which oversees Winnipeg's police, fire and hospital services.

Vandal also led a task force charged with improving francophone services in the city, and was one of three council representatives on the board of Winnipeg Enterprises Corp.

The initiative nonetheless passed, and CanWest Global Park opened in 1999.

Vandal promoted a plan to turn over some police responsibilities to civilian control in 1999, both to reduce costs and to free up more officers for front-line duty.

Murray's administration was often at odds with Gary Doer's provincial government in early 2000 over Winnipeg's ambulance services.

Murray and Vandal argued that the city's share of the cost, about $2.5 million per year, should be assumed by the province.

Doer initially disagreed, and the issue was unresolved for several months.

In July 2000, the city and the province announced a deal with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority to provide five new ambulances and thirty new paramedics, with a ceiling on municipal costs.

Vandal said that he was very pleased with the outcome.

He later supported a plan to introduce photo radar to catch speeding drivers, and endorsed a 2000 report that called for three fire stations to be closed to provide increased funding for paramedic services.

Vandal argued that overall fire services would not be affected, as a smaller number of stations could oversee the city.

Later in the year, he announced $445,000 in new money to combat a growing problem of arson.

Murray shuffled the executive policy committee on October 30, 2000, and moved Vandal to the chairmanship of Winnipeg's property and development committee.

Soon after his appointment, he helped bring about the demolition of an abandoned Canada Packers site in his ward.

On October 19, 2015, he was elected as the Member of Parliament for Saint Boniface—Saint Vital in the House of Commons of Canada.

He is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada and as of November 20, 2019 serves as the Federal Minister of Northern Affairs in Justin Trudeau's cabinet.

On October 26, 2021, he was also named Minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister responsible for the Prairies Economic Development Agency of Canada.