Dan McTeague - Political Career

Political Career

McTeague was first elected to Parliament in the 1993 federal election and was re-elected in 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008. He is a member of the Liberal Party of Canada and was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs tasked with protecting Canadians Abroad, until the Liberals lost the 2006 election. He served as the Vice-Chair of the Standing Committee on Industry and the Chair o

Dan was a key player in rescuing William Sampson from prison in Saudi Arabia by obtaining a letter of forgiveness from his eldest son. McTeague was also instrumental in achieving the release of a number of other Canadians from detention abroad, including Abdullah Al-Malki, Muyadad Nureddin and Al-Matti. He continued this work as Parliamentary Secretary from 2003-2006.

An early advocate for proper compensation of Hep-C victims and an effective critic of Canada's restrictive Drug patent laws, he was also instrumental in pushing his own Government to do more to address the African Aids pandemic by relaxing those very laws. McTeague has undertaken to help Canadians in distress abroad with an initiative to help free a condemned William Sampson from Saudi execution.

Having chaired the Liberal Government Task Force on gasoline pricing in 1998, McTeague challenged the premium prices Canadians were forced to pay for gasoline in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (Aug 2005) For 10 weeks Canadian refiners added several cents a litre to the price of gasoline even over prices in the most affected markets in the US.

On November 22, 2005, McTeague asked Immigration Minister Joe Volpe to restrict rapper 50 Cent from entering Canada, citing the death of a constituent at the performers previous concert in Toronto in 2004. 50 Cent's tour went on as scheduled but McTeague's intervention succeeded in seeing at least half of the accompanying members of the rapper's troupe, the G-Unit, banned in Canada as a result of the objections.

In July 2006 he condemned Prime Minister Stephen Harper's initial failure to address the plight of Canadians in Lebanon trapped by Israeli air strikes and challenged the PM's characterization of the attack as being "a measured response".

With Canadian troops facing more casualties in Afghanistan, McTeague led the charge to force the Harper Government to abandon the practice of docking injured soldier's "operational pay" once out of theatre. Oct 6, 2006. In May 2007 he again forced a reluctant Conservative Government to increase the funeral stipend to families of fallen Canadian soldiers, a matter they originally denied.

McTeague's interventions in Question period also resulted in goading the Conservative government to back away from its plan to eliminate the Liberal energuide program for seniors and low income Canadians.