Barbara Greene - Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

Greene returned to political life again in 1988, narrowly winning the federal Progressive Conservative nomination for Don Valley North over Peter Ayre Phillips. She subsequently won the riding in the 1988 federal election, defeating Liberal Sarkis Assadourian by a close margin. (Concert pianist Anton Kuerti finished third for the New Democratic Party.) There was some media speculation that Greene would be appointed to cabinet, but she instead served in parliament as a backbench supporter of Brian Mulroney's government.

Greene encouraged the Progressive Conservative government to change a section of the Immigration Act in 1989, saying that it discriminated against disabled people. She also argued that Canadian copyright laws should be adjusted to permit teachers to copy and reproduce material for classroom analysis. In late November 1989, she was appointed to a parliamentary task force examining Canada's abortion laws.

Greene protested against her own government's cutbacks to multicultural organizations in 1990. She chaired the parliamentary standing committee on Health, Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and Status of Women and two subcommittees on Child Poverty and the Status of women. Her committee's report on violence, entitled "The War Against Women", was supported by the prime minister and opposition parties, but opposed by some Progressive Conservative backbenchers on the grounds that its title was "confrontational and inflammatory". This subsequently resulted in a significant program to combat violence against women which included funds for women's shelters and education programs for police.

Greene supported stricter firearms controls, and announced plans to introduce a bill creating a national firearms registry in late 1991. The initiative was opposed by many in her party. She also supported changing Canadian laws to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation

In April 1991, Greene called for existing tax and social benefits to be rolled into a single national child support program targeted to benefit low-income Canadians. Greene argued that existing benefits favoured wealthier families over the poor, and that the balance needed to be changed. Critics expressed concern that the proposed changes would threaten the universality of these programs, and reduce benefits for vulnerable middle-income families. The Mulroney government implemented the child tax credit program but did not implement the recommendations in the report for a national day care program which it had initially supported. Greene tried to convince her government to re-establish the program later in the year, without success. Greene also sought to create a national standard for social assistance to eliminate the wide disparities between the provinces.

Greene called for an adequate income and programs to assist social assistance recipients to become independent as an alternative to food banks, which she argued were creating an unwanted culture of dependence. Gerard Kennedy, the director of Toronto's Daily Bread Food Bank, said that her comments reflected a "superficial analysis" of hunger issues in Canada. Greene did not call for food banks to be shut down, despite some reports to the contrary.

Greene also argued that poverty had become a poorly-defined concept in Canada, as the Low Income Cut Offs used to determine poverty levels in Canada did not include other subsidies. She argued that many people listed as being below the poverty line in Canada were not actually poor, while some of the real poor were not being assisted. She was quoted as saying, "Some of our poor may be the most well-off poor in the world. Our poor have their own apartments and televisions." Several opposition MPs and social agencies criticized Greene's comments, arguing that she was misrepresenting the issue.

See also: Poverty in Canada#Measures of poverty in Canada

Greene argued that breast cancer was becoming a problem of epidemic proportions in 1992, and argued that the federal Department of Health had become too dependent on information from drug manufacturers in regulating its treatment. She supported the creation of a new arms-length agency to approve drugs and other biomedical products. Her committee report on breast cancer resulted in a $50 million research funding program for which she received a national award from the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation in 1992.

Greene supported Kim Campbell's 1993 bid to succeed Mulroney as Progressive Conservative leader and prime minister, arguing that Campbell's ideology was fiscally conservative and socially liberal. After Campbell's victory at the 1993 Progressive Conservative leadership convention, there was renewed speculation that Greene would be appointed to cabinet. She was not, although she was appointed as parliamentary secretary to the President of the Treasury Board on 1 September 1993.

The Progressive Conservatives were resoundingly defeated in the 1993 federal election, and Greene lost to Liberal candidate Sarkis Assadourian by a significant margin in a rematch from 1988.