Ontario Tory MPP and rural affairs critic Bill Murdoch has announced he won’t seek re-election next year.
When election time comes, provincial Tory leader Tim Hudak said Monday, the Ontario legislature “will lose one of its most tenacious members, a true maverick and a long-standing champion of rural and agricultural Ontario.”
First elected in 1990 in the Grey riding, Murdoch, now the MPP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, briefly served as the opposition Tories’ agriculture critic (1994-95) near the end of Bob Rae’s NDP administration.
During the McGuinty administration, he’s served as critic for rural affairs (2005-08, 2009) and since last July as the party’s critic for municipal affairs on rural and northern issues.
Read Also
U.S. livestock: New contract highs for live cattle
Live cattle futures hit new contract highs on Wednesday while cattle futures came close and lean hog futures continued to…
During the Eves and Harris administrations, Murdoch acted as parliamentary assistant to the minister of the environment (2002-03) and to the minister of northern development and mines (1995-99).
Hudak on Monday noted Murdoch’s opposition to industrial wind farms and his “steadfast promotion” of Ontario meats and produce.
“While he chose not to seek a sixth term, I know ‘Wild’ Bill Murdoch will continue to be an outspoken advocate for Ontario farmers and rural communities in Bruce and Grey counties and across the province,” Hudak said.
Murdoch sat briefly as an independent MPP from September 2008 to April 2009, having been kicked out of the Tory caucus over his criticisms of John Tory, the party’s leader at that time.
