John Angus (politician)

rdf:langString John Angus (politician)

rdf:langString John Angus (born March 3, 1943 in Winnipeg, Manitoba) is a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He was a city councillor in Winnipeg from 1977 to 1988, and a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1988 to 1990. He returned to the Winnipeg City Council in 1992, and was a member of that body until 2004. Angus was educated at the University of Winnipeg and the . He has served as an Executive Member of the Winnipeg Business Development Corporation, and was for a time the Vice President of Comcheq, a national Canadian company providing computerized payroll services. He now owns an international software company and a real estate firm, as well as with holding a broker's license. He was elected to the Winnipeg council for St. Norbert ward (at the city's southern tip) in 1977, and reached the office of deputy mayor in 1986. During his early years on the city council, he was associated with the now-defunct Independent Citizens' Election Committee, a right-wing organization which generally represented the interests of the city's developers and suburban residents. In the provincial election of 1988, he was elected to the provincial legislature for St. Norbert as a Liberal, defeating incumbent Progressive Conservative Gerry Mercier by 388 votes. The Liberals increased their parliamentary representation from one to twenty in this election, and Angus sat as a member of the official opposition for the next two years. During his time in parliament, he argued that the Public Utilities Board should be granted greater review powers over Manitoba Hydro. In the provincial election of 1990, he lost to Tory candidate Marcel Laurendeau by 117 votes, amid a general decline in support of the Liberal Party. Angus was re-elected to the city council in 1992. He supported the gradual elimination of the city's business tax, and the immediate elimination of city taxes on arts and amusement. He entered the race for Mayor of Winnipeg in 1998, but withdrew before election day. Reg Alcock, then the federal MP for Winnipeg South, endorsed Angus in 2002. On January 12, 2004, Angus resigned from the city's Executive Policy Committee, one of the most important bodies in the city's governing structure. In 2008 Winnipeg named a major Waverley West street in his honour.