Member of Parliament
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.
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