Jeff Leal - Legislator

Legislator

Leal first ran for the Ontario legislature in the 1999 provincial election and was narrowly defeated by Progressive Conservative incumbent Gary Stewart. He defeated Stewart by over six thousand votes in a 2003 rematch, amid a provincial shift to the Liberal Party. The Liberals won a majority government in the latter election under Dalton McGuinty's leadership, and Leal entered the legislature as a government backbencher. He helped secure provincial funding for Peterborough following a damaging flood in mid-2004.

On September 27, 2004, Leal was named parliamentary assistant to the minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. On July 4, 2005, he was reassigned as parliamentary assistant to the minister of Economic Development and Trade and in this capacity chaired the Small Business Agency of Ontario. Leal later became parliamentary assistant to the minister of Energy in November 2005 and to the minister of the Environment in September 2006. In the latter capacity, he chaired a series of information sessions about Ontario's Clean Water Act.

In early 2006, Leal introduced a private member's bill to ban advertisements for websites linked to online gambling sites not licensed by the federal or provincial governments. The provincial government introduced its own legislation on the subject later in the year, based on Leal's bill.

Leal was expected to face a difficult challenge in the 2007 provincial election. He was instead re-elected with an increased majority, helped in part by the provincial government's creation of a new hospital in his riding. Shortly after the election, he was named as parliamentary assistant to the minister of Aboriginal Affairs. In February 2010, he was promoted to Chief Government Whip.

Leal introduced a private member's bill in 2008 to provide creditor protection for Registered Retirement Savings Plans (RRSPs). Two years later, he introduced a separate bill that would require companies with twenty or more employees to offer a savings or pension plan that all employees would automatically join (with the ability to opt out). The latter bill also proposed a new legal framework that would allow insurers and other institutions to create large plans covering workers in different companies, the self-employed, and workers who switch jobs after starting a plan. The stated purpose of this bill, which was supported by the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association, was to reduce the costs of such insurance plans compared with retail mutual funds. The New Democratic Party of Ontario strongly opposed the bill on the argument that it would benefit the insurance industry at the expense of consumers, as well as forestalling renewed investment in the Canada Pension Plan.