David Kilgour
David William Kilgour was a Canadian human rights activist, author, lawyer, and politician. He also served as a senior fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
Kilgour earned a degree in economics from the University of Manitoba in 1962 and a law degree from the University of Toronto in 1966. His career spanned roles from a crown attorney in northern Alberta to Canadian Cabinet minister. He concluded his 27-year tenure in the House of Commons of Canada as an independent MP. Upon retirement, he was one of the longest-serving members of parliament and one of the few who had been elected under both the Progressive Conservative and Liberal banners.
Member of Parliament
Kilgour was originally elected as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1979. He first sought election in 1968 in the riding of Vancouver Centre as a Progressive Conservative. He did not run again until the 1979 election, in Edmonton; he won a seat this time and went on to serve as a member of parliament for about 27 years. In April 1990, he was expelled from the Tory national caucus after criticizing the Mulroney government's policies. He sat as an independent for several months before joining the Liberals.In the Liberal government, he served as the Deputy Speaker and Chairman of Committees of the Whole of the House of Commons, Secretary of State , and Secretary of State . In the Conservative governments of Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney he served as Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council, the Minister for CIDA, the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, and the Minister of Transport.
As a Secretary of State, Kilgour was continuously vocal on many human rights violations around the world. In 2001 while visiting Zimbabwe, Kilgour was vocally critical of Robert Mugabe's farm-invasions policy and pushed for increasing international pressure. In December 2004, he was among the Ukrainian election monitor delegation of the federal run-off elections.
In April 2005, he received media attention when he speculated about quitting the Liberal Party because of his disgust with the sponsorship scandal, saying that the issue made Canada look like "a northern banana republic". On April 12, 2005, he announced that he would sit as an independent MP. He also cited Canada's lack of action on the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, as reasons for quitting. He asserted that he had no plans to either join the reorganized Conservative Party of Canada or to run for re-election.
From 1979 to 1988, he represented the riding of Edmonton Strathcona, but with shifting constituency lines moved to Edmonton Southeast in 1988, and then again to Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont in 2004, which he represented until he retired from politics at the 2006 election.
Because of the unusual structure of the 38th House of Commons, in May 2005, David Kilgour's lone vote had the power to bring down or support the government. He used this influence to urge the Martin government to send peacekeepers to Darfur. He was an endorser of the Genocide Intervention Network. Prime Minister Paul Martin agreed to send humanitarian support but in the end, no peacekeepers were sent.
Electoral history
Democracy activism
While being a lifelong practicing Christian, Kilgour worked on issues such as inter-faith dialog, personal freedoms, and democratic government throughout his career. In Parliament, he was active in prayer groups while at venues and publications across the country he has spoken specifically on religious themes and politics. Commonly, his topics have been on global religious and political persecutions. He served as a fellow of the Queen's University Centre for the Study of Democracy; a director of the Washington-based Council for a Community of Democracies, and co-chair of the Canadian Friends of a Democratic Iran, and hosted an Iran pro-democracy rally attended by approximately 90,000 in France in 2009.His personal religious beliefs landed him in the news in 2003 when he abstained from the same-sex marriage bill and was reprimanded by then Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.
Organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China
In 2006, allegations emerged that a large number of Falun Gong practitioners had been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry. With David Matas he released the Kilgour-Matas report, which stated "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six-year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and "we believe that there have been and continue today to be large-scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners". In 2009, they published an updated version of the report as a book. They traveled to about 50 countries to raise awareness of the situation.In 2012, State Organs: Transplant Abuse in China, edited by David Matas and Dr. Torsten Trey, was published with essays from six medical professionals, Ethan Gutmann, David Matas and an essay co-written by Kilgour. Ethan Gutmann interviewed over 100 witnesses and estimated that 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs from 2000 to 2008.
Personal life and death
Kilgour was married to Laura Scott, with whom he had five children. He died on April 5, 2022, in Ottawa at the age of 81, from lung disease.Kilgour's older sister Geills was married to John Turner, briefly prime minister in 1984. The brothers-in-law served jointly in the 33rd and 34th Canadian Parliaments.
Articles
- Subcommittee on Human Rights of European Parliament, Brussels, December 1, 2009
Books
- with David T. Jones
- with David Matas
Recognition
In May 2006, he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Knox College, University of Toronto. Kilgour, a Presbyterian, was recognized for his commitment to human rights in Canada and abroad and particularly his challenge to the international community to respond to the plight of Darfur, as well as in Burma, and Zimbabwe.
For their organ harvesting work, Matas and Kilgour won the 2009 Human Rights Award from the German-based International Society for Human Rights and were nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.