Libby Davies (born February 27, 1953) is a Canadian Member of Parliament for the New Democratic Party, representing the riding of Vancouver East in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Davies was originally born in Aldershot, England and immigrated to British Columbia in 1968. Before being elected to Parliament, she participated in many grass-roots political organizations in Vancouver, specifically in the Downtown Eastside area. She dropped out of university to help Bruce Eriksen found the Downtown Eastside Residents' Association (DERA) which is an influential low-income housing advocacy group. She was instrumental in a campaign to save the Carnegie building which was later converted into a community centre and daycare facility.
She was elected to the Vancouver City Council in 1982 and re-elected in 1984, 1986, 1988, and 1990. She was first elected to parliament in 1997 and re-elected in 2000 and 2004. For the federal NDP she is currently both the House Leader and the spokesperson for Housing and Homelessness and Multiculturalism. In parliament she has been a strong supporter of drug policy reform, specifically to halt the criminalization of drug users.
For 24 years Davies lived in a common law relationship with Vancouver city councilor Bruce Eriksen who died of cancer in 1997. They had one son, Lief. During a parliamentary debate on October 29 2001, she revealed that she was now in a relationship with a female partner, Kimberly Elliott, thereby becoming the first (and to date, only) female MP who is out as a member of the LGBT community [1], although she has never specifically stated whether she identifies as lesbian or bisexual. (Her former caucus mate Svend Robinson had come out as gay in 1988, becoming the first MP to do so.)
In 2005, during the parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage in Canada, Conservative MP Jason Kenney cited Davies' prior relationship with Eriksen (and Robinson's short-lived marriage to a woman) as proof that marriage law doesn't discriminate against LGBT individuals, since a gay person can marry a member of the opposite sex. Davies, who was never formally married to Eriksen, joined other commentators in criticizing Kenney for playing politics with other parliamentarians' personal lives.
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Last updated: 08-22-2005 21:59:05
