Royal Galipeau

Royal Galipeau was elected to the House of Commons to represent Ottawa-Orléans in the 39th general election. His family has been involved in community life and local politics for four generations. As such, he has inherited a genuine concern for public service and advocating for the betterment of his community.

Mr. Galipeau was elected as a citywide Councillor for Gloucester in 1982. During that term of office, he was instrumental in launching the city's first corporate strategic plan, which later was lauded by the province of Ontario as a model for other municipalities. Another achievement of which he is proud is the designation more than 20 years ago of 200 hectares as commercial and industrial land. This was intended for future employment centres in Ottawa-Orléans.

Always active in the community, Mr. Galipeau was appointed in 2001 by the Council of the newly amalgamated city of Ottawa as Trustee of the Ottawa Public Library, where he focused on the protection of children from Internet pornography on library computers. This was a hard battle, but after two votes, he succeeded on April 30, 2003. In 2004, he was the only Trustee of the previous term to be reappointed by City Council. Then he was twice elected as vice-chair of the Board. He also strongly advocated the opening of the University of Ottawa School of Information Studies.

In addition, he has served seven years on the Ottawa-Carleton Regional District Health Council, helping prepare a workable policy for the delivery of minority language health services in Ottawa. He has also served two terms as a director of TVOntario, where he participated in the TFO implementation team.

Most recently, Mr. Galipeau has spent three years as a member of the East-West Light Rail Transit Corridor Environmental Assessment Committee.

On January 23, 2006, Mr. Galipeau was elected to the House of Commons with a margin of 1,231 votes over his closest opponent. He also received 1,800 more votes than the Conservative candidate had won in the previous general election. Always gracious in victory, he has pledged to serve all the people of Ottawa-Orléans, no matter whom they may have supported in the election.

On the recommendation of Speaker Peter Milliken (Lib., Kingston & the Islands), in consultation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Cons., Calgary Southwest), Opposition Leader Bill Graham (Lib., Toronto Centre), and the leaders of the other two Parties represented in the House of Commons (Gilles Duceppe, BQ, Laurier-Sainte-Marie; and Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto-Danforth), Mr. Galipeau was elected Deputy Chair of Committees of the Whole House. (Debates of the House of Commons, April 5, 2006, p. 22.) He becomes the first rookie MP in Canada's parliamentary history to occupy this position. His 26 predecessors had on average nine years of parliamentary experience at the time of their election.

An alumnus of the University of Ottawa, where he has lectured at the School of Management, he is an experienced corporate director and an international elections observer.

A steadfast family man, Royal Galipeau has been married to Anne Pallascio for more than 30 years. They have four community-minded children, three sons and a daughter.