Denzil Minnan-Wong

Minnan-Wong is the son of Denzil Minnan-Wong, Sr., a Chinese immigrant who became a prominent member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. His father died in 1988 at age 53.

He was educated at Osgoode Hall Law School and became a lawyer specializing in immigration issues. He lives in Toronto with his wife Colleen and their three children.

In 1994 North York councillor Barry Burton died of cancer. and the North York city council appointed Minnan-Wong as interim councillor. Later that year he was elected to the position in the municipal election. In 1997 he was elected to the city council of the new amalgamated city of Toronto.[3]

In 2011, he led an initiative to contract out garbage collection in Toronto west of Yonge Street in 2011 which projected savings of $12 million a year.[4]

Although Minnan-Wong didn't learn to ride a bicycle until the age of 46, he supported the development of the first on street separated bike lane network in Toronto, resulting in the creation of the Sherbourne, Wellesley, Hoskin,[5] Richmond and Adelaide protected cycle tracks while voting for the removal of 3 painted bike lanes on Jarvis Street, Pharmacy Avenue and Birchmount Road.[1][6][7] In 2013 he facilitated the move of the Bixi public bike share system to the operation of the Toronto Parking Authority.[8][9] Toronto was awarded Bicycle Friendly Community (BFC) gold status from the Share the Road Cycling Coalition in April 2015, an award criticized by local cycling advocates.[note 1][10][11][12]

Minnan-Wong was Deputy Mayor of Toronto for period 2014-2018.[13] During the 2014-2018 Council term, he was Chair of the Striking Committee, the Employee and Labour Relations Committee, and the Civic Appointments Committee. He was also Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee and sat on the TTC Board, the Debenture Committee, the Committee of Revision, and was part of the Nominating Panel for Facilities and Finance.[14]

He was appointed to the TTC by City Council under the Mayor Rob Ford administration in December 2010.[15] He was one of 5 councillors on the TTC board who voted in 2012 to terminate the services of the TTC General Manager Gary Webster.

Andy Byford was hired as Webster's replacement.[16] The five councillors who supported Webster's termination, including Minnan-Wong, were removed from the TTC board by council on March 5, 2012, as a result of a motion by Councillor Karen Stintz, chair of the TTC board.[17][18] On December 2, 2014, he was appointed again to the TTC board by city council after the election of Mayor John Tory.[19] Under Byford's leadership the TTC subsequently won the 2017 American Public Transportation Association's (APTA) award for Transit System of the Year [20]

On January 20, 2018 he was acclaimed as the candidate for the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario for the riding of Don Valley East for the 2018 provincial election.[21] He placed a close second to the Liberal incumbent, former cabinet minister Michael Coteau.[2]

During his run for the Don Valley East seat, Minnan-Wong stated that he would take an "unpaid" leave from Toronto City Council, remitting the salary he would have collected from the 30-day provincial campaign period to either the city or a charity. He ultimately donated his councillor salary for that period to the City of Toronto and directed the money be spent on roads.[22]

After the 2018 Ontario general election Minnan-Wong ran for Councillor for Toronto City Council in the 2018 municipal election in newly constituted Ward 16 Don Valley East, which has the same boundaries as Don Valley East. He won the election for a 4-year term from 2018 to 2022, defeating former Liberal Cabinet Minister David Caplan. [23] Minnan-Wong was the only 1 of 7 sitting councillor TTC Board members to be returned to council.[24] He was reappointed during the 2018-22 council term as deputy mayor and was reappointed, a third time, as a member of the Toronto Transit Commission Board.[25]

In an interview published on August 30, 2017, in the Toronto Sun,[26] Minnan-Wong said in reference to outgoing chief planner of Toronto Jennifer Keesmaat that he wanted the planner to "stick to knitting". Although Minnan-Wong had previously also used the term to describe men he was accused of making a sexist comment by Keesmaat.[27] Minnan-Wong apologized for his words and said that they were taken out of context.[28] In 2015 Keesmat was accused of having political aspirations and did ultimately resign from her position to unsuccessfully run for mayor in the 2018 Toronto election.[29]

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