Joyce Catherine Murray (born July 11, 1954) is a Canadian politician who represented the riding of Vancouver Quadra in the House of Commons as a member of the Liberal Party from 2008 until 2025. She was re-elected in the 41st, 42nd, 43rd, and 44th federal elections. Murray was appointed as President of the Treasury Board and Minister of Digital Government on March 18, 2019. She was re-appointed as Minister of Digital Government following the 2019 election. In 2021, she was appointed Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, a position she held until July 2023.
Murray previously served as a cabinet minister in the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, first as Minister of Water, Land, and Air Protection from 2001 to 2004 and then as Minister of Management Services until 2005. From 2003 to 2004, she presided over the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment. On April 14, 2013, Murray placed second in the Liberal Party of Canada leadership election. In December 2015, she was appointed as Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board.
She announced on July 25, 2023, that she would not be seeking re-election.
Background Murray was born in Schweizer-Reneke, South Africa, and immigrated to Canada with her parents in 1961. Murray and her parents settled in Vancouver, in the West Point Grey neighbourhood. Murray's mother, Charlotte Coe Murray, was an architect who became the first female assistant professor at the University of British Columbia School of Architecture. Murray's father, Gordon Murray, a businessman, founded Murray & Associates Surveying.
After graduating from Lord Byng Secondary School, Murray attended Simon Fraser University in the 1970s, studied archaeology and linguistics, and then completed her pre-med requirements. In 1989, she pursued an executive master's degree in Business Administration at SFU's Beedie School of Business. In 1992 in recognition of her academic achievements, she received the Beedie School of Business's "Dean's Convocation Medal" for the being the school's top MBA graduate of that year."City woman branches out into business" p12 Royal City Record, June 8, 1993 Her thesis was a policy analysis of one of Canada's options for meeting the challenge of climate change.
Business career Murray and a group of friends won one of the first tree-planting contracts in British Columbia in 1970, starting what would become Brinkman and Associates Reforestation. Starting as a small tree-planting proprietorship in British Columbia, the business began to expand when Murray and Brinkman started working together in 1975. Murray and her husband, Dirk Brinkman, incorporated Brinkman and Associates Reforestation Ltd. in 1979. The company grew and planted its billionth tree by 2012.
In 1976, Nick Kendall of Orca Productions documented the planting of millions of trees in the heavy slash debris of that era's logging in a one-hour NFB documentary Do it with Joy. Released in 1977, it is regarded as a tree-planting classic today.Review Adam Humphreys 2009 http://freemarketsolutions.blogspot.ca/2009/08/do-it-with-joy.html
Murray and Brinkman grew the company across Canada (1978 Alberta; 1983 Ontario, 1987 Saskatchewan 1989 Quebec, 1992 Manitoba, 1993 Yukon) and diversified beyond reforestation into ecosystem restoration, urban restoration, forest management services for First Nation communities, rights of way clearing and fully integrated harvest to reforestation services and sustainability initiatives. In 1994, the company's long-term strategic international division, BARCA, was formed to develop forestry initiatives and plantations in Central America.2006 In 2007, Brinkman co-founded Earth Partners LP, which is undertaking the largest private soil and ecosystem restoration projects in the United States. The company operates in six countries and is developing projects in several others. It employs approximately 600 full-time and 800 seasonal positions. Murray helped in developing management systems, organizational re-engineering, strategic development, restructuring, training and business planning. For a period beginning in 1979, she was the chair of the board of directors and from this role proposed a global warming strategy for Canada.The Kootenay Review, Vol 2, #2, January 1988
Provincial politics
From 1996 to 1999, Murray sat on the BC Forest Resources Advisory Board and the GVRD Waste Management Committee. As a result of her public interventions, the leader of the BC Liberals attempted to persuade her to run for nomination as a BC Liberal candidate, but she challenged him to lead more strongly on sustainability commitments. When she declared herself a candidate in May 2000, the headline "From the Greens to the Liberals" ran over an article that opens with predictions Murray had made in 1997 about forest renewal, her background and her wish "to create a sustainable community".Lori Pappajohn, Special Report, Royal City Record, May 2000
In August 2000, Murray won the nomination as the BC Liberal candidate for the riding of the electoral district of New Westminster. During the election, she developed climate action and forest renewal policy papers for the party leadership. Then in 2001, she switched from business to politics full-time when she became the first BC Liberal (and first non–New Democrat) to be elected from New Westminster since the 1949 provincial election. She was named a cabinet minister by Premier Gordon Campbell in June 2001, serving until 2004 as the first-ever minister of Water, Land and Air Protection, and as Minister of Management Services from 2004 until the 2005 election. In 2002, Murray hosted a joint meeting of the federal, provincial and territorial energy and environment ministers, to examine policies in the context of ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection Annual Report 2001-2002 http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/Annual_Reports/2001_2002/wlap.pdf
Murray's tenure as Minister of Water, Land and Air Protection focused on protecting ecological sites in the province. For example, Murray worked towards developing an agreement with the Heiltsuk First Nation and brought about co-management of the protected Hakai Luxvbalis Conservancy Area.4th Session, 37th Parliament, Hansard Vol 18 No 10 Page 8058 November 19, 2003 Spruce Lake Protected Area was named a provincial park, and Burns Bog, the largest domed peat bog on the west coast, was purchased by the province and other local public entities and became the Burns Bog Ecological Conservancy Area. She also presided over budget cuts in the department and rollbacks of environmental regulations. "Murray lifted the moratorium on hunting grizzly bears, oversaw huge cutbacks in staffing levels for environmental protection, and gutted the Waste Management Act in favour of legislation that eliminated up to 80 percent of permitting." The chair of the Sierra Club's BC chapter stated in 2003: "I have never seen such an assault on the environment". However, the Sierra Club later awarded Murray with a medal for her environmental work.
Murray also introduced the first comprehensive framework strategy for total product stewardship for recycling of all products in British Columbia.Status discussed 2003 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 37th Parliament Hansard -- Thursday, May 15, 2003, pm -- Vol. 15, No. 14 The new regulations required that producers assume responsibility for removing their products from the waste stream. She also brought together the province's 13 oil producers to develop a cooperative solution for recycling waste oil, plastic (from containers), and steel wool from oil filters. At that time, over 22million litres of oil were entering the GVRD waste stream annually. Murray then brought the electronics industry under the product stewardship framework to develop solutions for all electronic waste and worked with the pulp and paper industry to help them implement their stewardship strategy. Murray's work has since served as the basis for similar legislation in several other provinces.
From 2003 to 2004, Murray was the president of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment.
As Minister of Management Services in 2004, Murray participated in the moves to the first-ever cross-Canada interprovincial procurement program and the first legislation that would limit personal information access via foreign corporations working in Canada.HANSARD WEDNESDAY, April 21, 2004, ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF MANAGEMENT SERVICES http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/37th5th/h40421p.htm#10329 HANSARD TUESDAY October 19, 2004, BILL 73_2004 FREEDOM OF INFORMATION AND PROTECTION OF PRIVACY AMENDMENT ACT, 2004 https://www.leg.bc.ca/37th5th/3rd_read/gov73-3.htm
She was defeated by Chuck Puchmayr in the 2005 provincial election before moving on to federal politics.
Federal politician In the 2006 federal election, Murray was the Liberal Party candidate in the riding of New Westminster—Coquitlam, placing third behind New Democrat Dawn Black and Conservative incumbent Paul Forseth. But in 2007, she became the Liberal candidate in her home riding of Vancouver Quadra, as Stephen Owen, the incumbent Liberal MP in the riding, had resigned in July 2007. In a March 2008 by-election, Murray defeated her main competitor, Conservative candidate Deborah Meredith. Murray was re-elected in 2008 and 2011.
Murray was the third-party critic for Small Business and Tourism, the Asia Pacific Gateway, and Western Economic Diversification for the Liberal Party's shadow cabinet, having previously served as the Liberal critic for Amateur Sport, leading up to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and as the critic for Democratic Reform in 2008.
During her first term in the House of Commons, she sat on the House's Standing Committee on International Trade and was vice-chair of the Liberal Caucus Committee on Environmental Sustainability. Murray also visited Colombia and Panama to review proposed free trade agreements. She attended the climate negotiations at the Bali Conference in 2007 and the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. After the latter, Murray wrote, while applauding the positive actions of Canada's municipal governments, "a patchwork of climate initiatives is far from effective – a coordinated approach across this vast and diverse country is required".
After her first term, Murray's committee experience included membership on the Standing Committees on Environmental and Sustainable Development, Fisheries and Oceans, and serving as vice-chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Health. She was also an active member of the Canada-China Legislative Association, chaired Parliament's All-Party Conservation Caucus, and was the vice-chair of the Liberal Policy Caucus. In March 2012, Murray visited Haiti as a member of a delegation representing the Canadian section of ParlAmericas.
In June 2008, she presented her first private member's bill, Bill C-572, which proposed exempting bicycles (including electric bikes), bike accessories, repairs, and safety training from the GST.
In June 2014, Murray introduced Bill C-622, the CSEC Accountability and Transparency Act. This legislation would have updated the framework for accountability and transparency for CSEC, partially in response to concerns over the use of metadata. It also would have established a committee of security-cleared parliamentarians, to oversee all of Canada's security and intelligence agencies. The next Liberal government would later introduce many of these provisions, including a new National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, with Bill C-22 and Bill C-59.