Bélanger, Mauril, 1955-2016 : Mauril Adrien Jules Bélanger, politician (born 15 June 1955 in Mattawa, Ontario; died 16 August 2016 in Ottawa, Ontario). Member of Parliament for the riding of Ottawa-Vanier from 1995 to 2015, he was successively Minister responsible for Official Languages, Associate Minister of National Defence, Minister responsible for Democratic Reform and Minister of Internal Trade. In particular, he was the promoter of a gender-neutral rewrite of the lyrics of the Canadian national anthem, "O Canada".
Mauril Bélanger is the second of a family of five children. He attended high school in North Bay, in a French-language school located 60 kilometers from the family home in Mattawa, a small logging village located in mid-northern Ontario, at the confluence of the Mattawa River and the Ottawa River. He then studied English literature at the University of Ottawa, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts. In the mid-1970s, he served for two years on the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa.
It was by working from 1980 to 1983 as assistant to Jean-Luc Pépin, Minister of Transport in the Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, that Mauril Bélanger began his career on Parliament Hill. In the 1980s, he was also a financial advisor and stockbroker. In the early 1990s, he was Chief of Staff to the President of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. In February 1995, Mauril Bélanger entered federal politics by winning a by-election to replace Liberal MP Jean-Robert Gauthier, appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. Elected a total of eight times in the riding of Ottawa-Vanier (in 1995, 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015), he was an MP for just over 20 years (1995-2015).
As a member of the Chrétien government, Mauril Bélanger was chair of the Standing Joint Committee on Official Languages and a member of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament. Between 1998 and 2000, he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Sheila Copps. In December 2003, when Paul Martin succeeded Jean Chrétien, he entered Cabinet as Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Party Whip. Following the June 2004 general election, he was reappointed to Cabinet, where he held numerous ministerial positions, including Minister responsible for Official Languages, Associate Minister of National Defence, Minister responsible for Democratic Reform and Minister of Internal Trade.
When the Conservatives were elected in 2006, Mauril Bélanger was re-elected in his riding. Now in the Official Opposition, he was successively critic for issues affecting Canadian Heritage (2006-2007), Infrastructures and Communities (2007), as well as Official Languages, Canadian Heritage and La Francophonie (2007-2008). In 2010, he was again given the role of Liberal caucus spokesperson for official languages, a position he kept after the 2011 general election. In May 2012, he also became "Liberal defender of cooperatives" , a crucial role in his political career. He was re-elected in his riding of Ottawa-Vanier on November 4, 2015 when Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party won.
In the weeks that followed, however, Mauril Bélanger learned that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease or Charcot's disease). This forced him to withdraw his candidacy for the post of Speaker of the House of Commons, which he nevertheless had an excellent chance of obtaining. He then became honorary national spokesperson for the Walk for ALS, an annual campaign conducted across Canada to support research into this incurable neurodegenerative disease. He died of it on August 16, 2016.
Mauril Bélanger is co-founder of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, created in 2003. This association, which he co-chaired for several years, aims to promote exchanges between Canadian and African parliamentarians by creating friendship groups with one or the other of the 53 African countries included in the partnership. As of May 2012, he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Parliamentary Centre, a non-governmental organization dedicated to strengthening parliamentary democracy in Canada and abroad.
During 2016, Mauril Bélanger called for the City of Ottawa to become officially bilingual in time for the 2017 celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation. On January 27, 2016, having lost his voice due to illness, he used an electronic voice-to-text tool to communicate with the House of Commons. The speech written on his tablet was transposed into words and broadcasted by an electronic voice in the gallery. This was a historic first.
Mauril Bélanger was Commander of the Order of the Pléiade, Parliamentary Assembly of La Francophonie (2005), Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2007), Grand Cross ("Honor and Merit"), Republic of Haiti (2016), Bernard-Grandmaître Prize, Association of Francophone Communities of Ottawa (2016), Honorary Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada (2016). He received the Award of Excellence, Cooperatives and Mutuals Canada (2016), the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Cooperative Housing, Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada (2016), the Boreal Award, Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada (2016), the Montfort Hospital March 22 Medal (2016), and the Communicator of the Year Award from the Ottawa Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) (2016).
