John Roberts

Who was John Roberts?

John Moody Roberts, PC was a Canadian politician.

Roberts was born in Hamilton, Ontario and grew up in Toronto. He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1968 as a Liberal Member of Parliament for the riding of York—Simcoe. He was defeated in the 1972 federal election but returned in 1974. From 1974 to 1984 he was MP for the riding of St. Paul's in Toronto.

His was junior cabinet minister in his role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion from 1971 to 1972. In 1976, he was appointed Secretary of State for Canada in Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. Roberts lost his seat again in the 1979 election in which the Trudeau government was defeated.

He was returned to the House yet again as a result of the 1980 election, and joined Trudeau's final cabinet, first as Minister of the Environment, Minister of State for Science and Technology and then as Minister of Employment and Immigration. As Canadian environment minister in the early 1980s he faced off with the US government over the cross-border issue of acid rain at a time when the Reagan Administration was denying its existence. Roberts led a strong public information campaign on both sides of the border that, at one point, resulted in the US justice department officially branding a National Film Board of Canada documentary Acid from Heaven as "foreign country propaganda". The campaign is credited with ultimately leading to a bilateral accord on acid rain being signed later in the decade.