John R. Rodriguez (February 12, 1937 – July 5, 2017)"Former MP, mayor John Rodriguez dies at 80". Sudbury Star, July 5, 2017. was a Canadian politician. He served as the mayor of Greater Sudbury, Ontario from 2006 to 2010 and previously represented the electoral district of Nickel Belt in the House of Commons of Canada from 1972 to 1980 and from 1984 to 1993 as a member of the New Democratic Party.

Early life and career

Rodriguez was born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), and moved to Canada in 1956. He was of Portuguese descent. He attended Toronto Teachers' College, worked for a time as a teacher in St. Catharines, and moved to Coniston in Northern Ontario in 1962, where he was appointed as principal of St. Paul School. He also attended Laurentian University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Spanish Literature."Mayor John Rodriguez: City of Greater Sudbury ", Mayor's Biography, accessed 21 August 2008.

Rodriguez became president of the Ontario English Catholic Teachers' Association in 1968. The following year, he led a protest outside Queen's Park to urge the provincial government of John Robarts to extend separate school funding to grades 11, 12 and 13."Catholic pickets to demand separate schools extension", Toronto Star, 19 March 1969, 40. He also served on the Board of Governors of the Ontario Teachers' Federation in this period and promoted greater cooperation between teachers and organized labour.Martin Dorrell, "Ontario teachers fear threat to status, reject alliance with labor", The Globe and Mail, 27 August 1971, C1.

Rodriguez joined the New Democratic Party upon its formation in 1961.Hugh Winsor, "NDP leadership contender has new approach to partisan politics", The Globe and Mail, 23 November 1989, A3. He ran for mayor of Coniston in 1967 and by his own acknowledgement was soundly defeated by the incumbent, Michael Solski.Rudy Platiel, "The Sandpipers and the Golden Egg", The Globe and Mail, 26 February 1972, A3; Rob O'Flanagan, "Rodriguez takes run at mayoralty", Sudbury Star, 28 July 2006, A3. He was elected to the Coniston town council in 1971. When Inco shut down its Coniston operations later in the year and appealed part of its municipal business tax, Rodriguez argued that the company had a moral responsibility to continue paying into a community it had helped to create.Rudy Platiel, "The Sandpipers and the Golden Egg", The Globe and Mail, 26 February 1972, A3. He did not seek re-election when Coniston was amalgamated into the new community of Nickel Centre.

Federal politics

1972 to 1980

Rodriguez contested the riding of Nickel Belt in the 1972 federal election and defeated incumbent Member of Parliament (MP) Gaetan Serré of the Liberal Party. The Liberals under Pierre Trudeau won a narrow minority government in this election and governed for the next two years with unofficial parliamentary support from the NDP. Rodriguez opposed this arrangement and broke party ranks on two occasions to support non-confidence motions against the government. He became identified with the left wing of the NDP, was a vocal advocate of the party's pledge to nationalize Inco, and also called for the nationalization of Bell Canada and Canadian Pacific.Jeff Simpson, "A hard-liner from a hard land", The Globe and Mail, 5 June 1974, 8. Nationalizing Bell Canada was not official NDP policy.

In 1973, Rodriguez took part in a study group on Northern Ontario that identified the region as a "social, economic and political ghetto" in relation to the rest of the province and sought to improve its status.John King, "Northern Ontario described as alienated, ghetto-like area", The Globe and Mail, 19 June 1973. In the same year, he led a campaign to allow Chilean refugees to resettle in Canada after the overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically elected government. He spoke the words, "Vive Allende, vive Chile" at the end of one parliamentary speech.Jeff Simpson, "A hard-liner from a hard land", The Globe and Mail, 5 June 1974, 8.

Rodriguez was re-elected in the 1974 election, in which the Liberals won a majority government. The following year, he participated in efforts to prevent black activist Roosevelt Douglas from being deported from Canada. On one occasion, he recommended Liberal Solicitor-General Warren Allmand to Douglas' supporters as a sympathetic contact in the Trudeau government. It was later discovered that a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) informer monitored both Allmand and Rodriguez on this matter, even though Allmand was the minister responsible for the RCMP at the time.Mary Trueman, "Rodriguez alleged a possible bugging incident", The Globe and Mail, 23 February 1978, P8; "Allmand bugged by accident, Blais tells MPs", The Globe and Mail, 28 February 1978, P10. See also Robert Sheppard, "Hart: the unsecret secret agent", The Globe and Mail, 14 January 1980, P10; Christopher Waddell, "Ottawa pays $56,000 to deported informant who spied on two MPs", The Globe and Mail, 5 May 1987, A1.

Also in 1975, Rodriguez criticized a sexist Canada Post advertisement which showed a man writing a postal code on the bottom of a thonged woman. Postmaster General Bryce Mackasey apologized for the ad.The advertisement included the line, We're not 'stringing' you along/Use postal codes—you'll 'thing our 'thong'/Don't be cheeky—you've all got 'em/Please include them on the bottom.

Rodriguez was one of two MPs who called for the Atomic Energy Control Board to release all its information on the health hazards posed by radiation in Elliot Lake in 1976."Force disclosure, two MPs ask", The Globe and Mail, 22 October 1976, 3. The following year, he engaged in a filibuster against an income tax reform package that contained financial benefits for wealthy Canadians. Although filibusters are common practice in some parliamentary assemblies and later become more common in Canada, this was the first such incident to occur in the Canadian House of Commons in several years."Rodriguez begins rare Commons filibuster on tax changes", The Globe and Mail, 8 February 1977, 10. Rodriguez spoke on the bill for six hours and ten minutes over a period of two days, setting a contemporary record."Debate record set, but tax bill passed", The Globe and Mail, 15 February 1977, 8.

In the late 1970s, Rodriguez argued that the federal government should purchase Inco's excess nickel stock to prevent job losses at a time when global prices were low. Prime Minister Trudeau rejected this proposal, arguing that it would depress the market even further."Joint union-Government effort could avert Sudbury layoffs, Trudeau feels", The Globe and Mail, 14 December 1977, P9. Rodriguez also joined with other Sudbury-area NDP politicians to support the 1978 Inco Strike, arguing that the workers would have suffered massive layoffs had they not taken this action."Inco uses helicopters in Sudbury as battle over pickets continues", The Globe and Mail, 19 September 1978, P8. The politicians in question issued a press release that included a veiled criticism of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, who had questioned the logistics of the strike at a time when Inco had large stockpiles in storage.

Rodriguez broke with his party caucus when he opposed the suspension of Progressive Conservative MP Roch LaSalle from the House of Commons in 1978. LaSalle had referred to finance minister Jean Chrétien as a liar on three occasions and refused to apologize. The rest of the NDP caucus supported LaSalle's suspension.Jeffrey Simpson, "Tory MP expelled from Commons for insisting that Chrétien is a liar", The Globe and Mail, 17 May 1978, P1.

Rodriguez was re-elected to a third term in the 1979 federal election, as the Progressive Conservatives under Joe Clark won a minority government. He was appointed as NDP Labour Critic in the parliament that followed.Mary Trueman, "MP hopes to encourage minorities to enter the mainstream of politics", The Globe and Mail, 26 September 1979, P9.

In late 1979, Rodriguez emerged as the most prominent member of the NDP's "Left Caucus", a successor group of sorts to The Waffle. In a The Globe and Mail interview, Rodriguez said that the new group differed from The Waffle in that its ultra-left elements were minor and that it would abide by the results of NDP conventions, even if it did not agree with them. The Left Caucus was nonetheless opposed by the party leadership, which argued that it would hurt the NDP's chances of winning an election.Kirk Makin, "Left Caucus fills Waffle shoes in battling NDP", The Globe and Mail, 24 November 1979, P5. Rodriguez spearheaded the group's only successful motion at the NDP's 1979 convention, protesting a jail sentence handed out to Jean-Claude Parrot of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.Jeffrey Simpson, "NDP convention finds radicals in left field", The Globe and Mail, 26 November 1979, P5.

The Clark government lost a non-confidence motion in late 1979, and Canadians returned to the polls for another election in 1980. Rodriguez was defeated in Nickel Belt by Liberal candidate Judy Erola. Some local Progressive Conservatives later indicated that they ran a deliberately weak campaign to consolidate the opposition vote around Erola.In return, the Liberals were expected to field a weak campaign for the area in the 1981 provincial election. See Arthur Moses, "Sudbury profile", The Globe and Mail, 17 March 1981, 70. Rodriguez criticized the Liberal campaign for portraying him as a borderline Marxist.Erola responded that she had never called Rodriguez a Marxist, but acknowledged that her campaign literature had drawn attention to what she described as similarities between his political views and those of the Marxist-Leninist Party. See Mary Trueman, "Bad feeling lingers in defeated MP after Erola rides upset into Cabinet", The Globe and Mail, 5 March 1980, P9.

After leaving office Rodriguez returned to a high school principal position.Richard Cleroux, "Erola may be loser as Tories ride trend in Northern Ontario", The Globe and Mail, 25 August 1984, P1.

1984 to 1993

Rodriguez was re-elected to the House of Commons in the 1984 federal election, as the Progressive Conservatives won a landslide majority government under Brian Mulroney. Rodriguez was appointed as his party's critic on Unemployment Insurance (UI).Charlotte Montgomery, "Planned UI rule changes create worry for workers retiring early", The Globe and Mail, 12 December 1984, P5. In late 1984, he took part in a series of public forums organized by the NDP on the Mulroney government's record of job creation.Barbara Yaffe, "Tories not doing enough to find jobs, says NDP announcing national forums", The Globe and Mail, 20 December 1984, P4.