Peggy Nash

Peggy A. Nash is a Canadian labour official and politician from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was the New Democratic Party Member of Parliament for the ParkdaleHigh Park electoral district in Toronto, and was the Official Oppositions Industry Critic. Before becoming a parliamentarian, she worked as a labour official at the Canadian Auto Workers union . In 2005, she became the first woman to negotiate a major contract with one of the Detroitbased automobile corporations. She was first elected as the MP for ParkdaleHigh Park in the 2006 federal election. In the 2008 federal election, she was defeated in her reelection bid by Liberal candidate Gerard Kennedy. Following the 2006 election, Nash returned to her previous job as a labour official with the CAW. She was elected to a twoyear term as the federal NDPs President on August 15, 2009, at the partys convention in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was a candidate again in the 2011 federal election, and defeated Kennedy, earning 47 of the vot

Nash was born in Toronto, and holds an Honours B.A. in French language and literature from the University of Toronto and is fluent in English, French and Spanish. Nash has lived in the ParkdaleHigh Park electoral district for over twenty years, where she is married with three sons. In the years before she ran for parliament, Nash worked as a ticket agent and union activist with the Canadian Airline Employees Association. When that union merged with the Canadian Auto Workers in 1985, she became an assistant to national president Bob White. When he stepped down, she continued in that same capacity with his successor Basil Buzz Hargrove. She worked as a labour negotiator in the transportation, service and manufacturing sectors and was the first labour woman responsible for major auto negotiations in North America, when she negotiated the 2005 Ford Canada contract. Nash also wrote articles published in Our Times, Canadian Dimension, The Canadian Forum, and Our Schools Our Selves, and coaut

Source: Wikipedia