John Guyon Richards (born August 19, 1944) is a Canadian politician and professor at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia.
He left the NDP in 1973 over its refusal to nationalize the potash industry, and sat as an independent socialist until the next election, when he was defeated in the new district of Saskatoon Centre and turned to academia.
In recent decades Richards's views have moderated, and he became an early exponent of the 'Third Way' politics popularized by UK Labour Party leader Tony Blair.
He remains one of Canada's foremost political intellectuals, writing and editing a series of books and articles that suggest the development of more pragmatic social democratic politics, in addition to work on aboriginal policy, the energy sector, language policy, federalism, and international development.
Richards was instrumental in the creation of a new school of public policy at SFU[3] and volunteers for a small university in Bangladesh, a country he has been visiting since the early nineteen nineties.