Szabo, Paul, 1948- : Paul John Mark Szabo was born in Toronto, Ontario, on 10 May 1948. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Western Ontario in 1970, and an M.B.A. from York University in 1975. Between 1975 to 1993 he worked as a controller at Heede International Ltd (1975-1976), a Director at TransCanada Pipeline Ltd (1977-1983), treasurer for the United Cooperative of Ontario (1984-1990), and ran his own private accounting practice (1990-1993).
On 25 October 1993, Paul Szabo was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Mississauga South, which he continued to hold until losing his seat in the 2011 Federal Election, on 2 May 2011. During his MP career, he served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services from 2000-2003, and served as the Chair of the Canada-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Group for four years (1997-2000). While Paul Szabo had numerous membership and chairmanship appointments to Parliamentary Committees and Sub-committees in the course of his career, the most high profile was that of Chairman of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (2007-2010), commonly known as the "Ethics Committee". In 2007 to 2008 the Committee reviewed the monetary and business dealings between former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian Karlheinz Schreiber, commonly known as the "the Airbus Affair".
In the course of his career, Paul Szabo received numerous awards. In 2004, Szabo was awarded the Joseph P. Borowski Award for his anti-abortion activities. On November 21, 2006, Szabo was honoured as "The Hardest-Working Member of Parliament" at the First Annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards, sponsored by Macleans, l'Actualite and the Dominion Institute. On November 21, 2007, Szabo was honoured with the same award for a second consecutive year, and on May 14, 2009, he was honoured in a ceremony on Parliament Hill with the same award for the third consecutive time, as there was no award given in 2008 due to the Federal Election. In July 2009, in recognition of his career achievements and leadership contributions to the community, he was also elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario. The FCA designation is the highest honour conferred by the Chartered Accounting profession. On December 6, 2011, he was honoured to receive the Rotary International Paul Harris Fellowship for his long career of service to the community and for his longstanding support for the work of Rotary.
Paul Szabo was a socially conservative member of the Liberal Party of Canada, and was pro-life and against same sex marriage. In addition to authoring numerous House of Commons Committee Reports, Paul Szabo was the author of six monographs dealing with traditional family values, including the ethics of stem cell research and uses (see "Related Material").
On May 2nd, 2011, after seven consecutive successful Federal Election victories as the Member of Parliament for Mississauga South, Paul Szabo lost his seat to Conservative Party candidate Stella Ambler. The Liberal Party of Canada as a whole did not do well in the Election, and was reduced to third party status for the first time as they won the fewest seats in its history.
