Frances Lankin, PC CM (born April 16, 1954),[1] is a former Canadian senator, former president and CEO of United Way Toronto, and a former Ontario MPP and cabinet minister in the NDP government of Bob Rae between 1990 and 1995.
[6] After four years, Lankin became a probation and parole officer before taking a position with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU).
She took a position as Equal Opportunity Coordinator with the union, working on such issues as paid maternity leave, pay equity and childcare.
[8] During her time at OPSEU, Lankin was appointed by the provincial government to the Workers' Compensation Appeals Tribunal for a 3-year term.
She also increased funding for AIDS initiatives and made it easier for Ontario residents to receive treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.
[15] The Rae government was defeated in the provincial election of 1995, although Lankin was re-elected in Beaches-Woodbine by about 3,000 votes over her nearest opponent.
Rival candidate Peter Kormos accused her in the leadership debate of bearing responsibility for the "social contract" — which forced open collective bargaining agreements with public sector unions and was deeply unpopular with labour — and for the Rae government's abandonment of a promise to institute a publicly run auto insurance system.
She later considered resigning from cabinet over the issue on two separate occasions, but ultimately chose to remain because (she argued) it would give her the opportunity to moderate the legislation.
She did, in fact, replace Rae's initial plans for outright wage rollbacks with requirements that workers above a certain income level take unpaid leave days.
She was inspired to propose the bill after discovering that her own mother suffering from dementia had been tied to her bed in a Toronto area hospital.
[19] In the 1999 Ontario election, which reduced the NDP to only nine seats, Lankin scored a convincing re-election victory in the redistributed riding of Beaches—East York.
They released a report, Brighter Prospects: Transforming Social Assistance in Ontario Archived 19 March 2020 at the Wayback Machine, in 2012 with their findings.
During her time in the Senate, she has been a member of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Joint Parliamentarians (NSICOP) since its inception in 2018, until today.