Political Career
After retiring from professional skating, Jelinek started a business, Canadian Skate Industries, to manufacture figure and hockey skates for the mass market. He also had considerable investments in real estate.
After a time in business, Otto Jelinek entered politics and was elected in the 1972 election to the House of Commons as the Progressive Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for High Park-Humber Valley in Metropolitan Toronto. He was re-elected in 1974. In 1979, he switched to the riding of Halton, where he ran and won in the 1979 federal election.
When the Tories formed government after the 1984 election, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Jelinek to Cabinet as Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport, and the Minister responsible for Multiculturalism.
In 1988, he was named Minister of Supply and Services, and later, Minister of National Revenue. Jelinek was returned to Parliament in the 1988 federal election in Oakville—Milton left politics after Mulroney retired and did not run in the 1993 election.
In politics, Jelinek was considered a right-wing conservative, and a staunch anti-Communist.
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Famous quotes related to political career:
“No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life’s course by a mere accident.”
—James Bryce (1838–1922)