Peter Milliken

Peter Andrew Stewart Milliken (born November 12, 1946) is a Canadian lawyer and politician.

He was active in student politics, and served a year as speaker of the student government's assembly at Queen's. In 1967-68, he worked as a special assistant to federal cabinet minister George J. McIlraith.

Milliken holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Economics from Queen's University (1968), a Bachelor of Arts (1970) and Master of Arts (1978) in Jurisprudence from Oxford University, (Wadham College), in England, and a Bachelor of Laws (1971) degree from Dalhousie University.

As a consultant, he produced the Milliken Report on the future of Queen's University athletics in the late 1970s.

A fan of classical music, he has sung with the Pro Arte Singers and the Chalmers United Church Choir as well as serving on the board of the Kingston Symphony.

He also often canoes, taking week-long trips in northern Canada.

Called to the Ontario Bar in 1973, Milliken was a partner at the prestigious Kingston law firm, Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham, before entering political life.

He also lectured on a part-time basis at the Queen's University School of Business from 1973 to 1981, became a governor of the Kingston General Hospital in 1977, and has been a trustee with the Chalmers United Church.

Milliken has long been active in political matters, having served as president of the Frontenac Addington Provincial Liberal Association Kingston in the 1980s.

He subscribed to the Canadian House of Commons Hansard at age sixteen, and once wrote a thesis paper on Question Period.

Unlike most MPs, he was already well-versed in parliamentary procedure at the time of his first election.

He was a member of the House of Commons of Canada from 1988 until his retirement in 2011 and served as Speaker of the House for 10 years beginning in 2001.

Milliken represented the Ontario riding of Kingston and the Islands as a member of the Liberal Party.

Milliken won the Kingston and the Islands Liberal nomination in 1988 over local alderman Alex Lampropoulos, and defeated well-known Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Flora MacDonald by 2,712 votes in the 1988 general election.

The Progressive Conservatives won the election with a majority government, and in early 1989 Milliken was named as the Liberal Party's critic for electoral reform, associate critic for senior citizens, and whip for eastern and northern Ontario.

Shortly thereafter, he was named to the parliamentary standing committee on elections, privileges, procedures and private members' business.

He supported Jean Chrétien for the federal Liberal leadership in 1990.

He was easily re-elected in the 1993 election, as the Liberal Party won a majority government, and was named to a two-year term as parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader in December 1993.

He also became chair of the Commons Procedure and House Affairs Committee.

Milliken was a leading candidate for Speaker of the House in January 1994, but lost to Gilbert Parent.

Milliken supported fellow Kingstonian John Gerretsen for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in 1996, and moved to the camp of the eventual winner, Dalton McGuinty, after Gerretsen was eliminated on the second ballot.

In the same year, Milliken and fellow Liberal MP John Godfrey introduced the Godfrey-Milliken Bill as a satirical response to the American Helms-Burton Act.

The Bill, which would have allowed the descendants of United Empire Loyalists to claim compensation for land seized in the American Revolution, was drafted in response to provisions in the Helms-Burton Act which sought to punish Canadian companies for using land nationalised by Fidel Castro's government in Cuba.

Godfrey and Milliken gave a twenty-minute presentation on their bill in Washington, D.C. in early 1997, and were greeted with warm applause from local Helms-Burton opponents.

Milliken was re-elected for a third term in 1997 election, and became Deputy Speaker of the House for the parliament that followed.

In 2001, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the State University of New York at Potsdam.

He is an honorary member of the Royal Military College of Canada, and an Honorary Patron of Choirs Ontario.

Milliken was elected Speaker of the House in late January 2001, after five ballots of a secret vote of all MPs held at the first sitting of parliament following the 2000 federal election.

He was widely praised by government and opposition MPs for his rulings, which were considered very fair.

He also brought new life to the chair in delivering his rulings and remarks with witty humour.

Elected for his fifth term in 2004, he was the unanimous choice of MPs to be re-elected Speaker for the next parliament.

In 2005, Milliken prevented an early federal election by breaking a tie vote on the second reading of Bill C-48, an amendment to the 2005 federal budget, which was a confidence motion.

On October 12, 2009, he became the longest serving Speaker of the House of Commons in Canadian history.

His Speakership was notable for the number of tie-breaking votes he was required to make as well as for making several historic rulings.

Milliken also has the unique distinction of being the first Speaker to preside over four Parliaments.

His legacy includes his landmark rulings on Parliament's right to information, which are key elements of parliamentary precedent both in Canada and throughout the Commonwealth.

Milliken chose to stand down from Parliament at the 2011 federal election.

His successor as Speaker, Andrew Scheer, was elected on June 2, 2011.

Milliken was born in Kingston, Ontario, the eldest of seven children to a physician father, and is a descendant of United Empire Loyalists who left the new United States of America after the American Revolution.

He is the cousin of John Matheson, a former Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) best known for his prominent role in adopting the red maple leaf as the Flag of Canada.