Mitzie Hunter

Mitzie Jacquelin Hunter (born September 14, 1971) is a Canadian politician who represented Scarborough—Guildwood as a member of provincial parliament in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 2013 to 2023. A member of the Ontario Liberal Party, Hunter was a provincial cabinet minister from 2014 to 2018 and was the deputy leader of the party from 2022 to 2023. She resigned from the Ontario legislature on May 10, 2023, in order to be a candidate for mayor of Toronto in the 2023 by-election, in which she placed sixth with 2.9% of the vote. She is currently President and CEO of the Canadian Women's Foundation.

Background Mitzie Jacquelin Hunter was born in Jamaica on September 14, 1971. Her family immigrated to Canada in 1975, moving to Scarborough. Hunter graduated from the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Arts before earning a Master of Business Administration from the Rotman School of Management.

She was CEO of the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance, and was previously CAO of Toronto Community Housing. She also served as Vice President at Goodwill Industries of Toronto.

She co-chaired John Tory's 2003 Mayoral bid. She was later CEO of CivicAction.

Political career In 2013 she ran as the Liberal candidate in a by-election called to replace Margarett Best, a member of the Ontario Parliament who resigned for health reasons. She defeated Progressive Conservative candidate Ken Kirupa by 1,246 votes. She faced Kirupa again in 2014 this time defeating him by 7,610 votes.

In June 2014, she was appointed as associate minister for the Ministry of Finance responsible for the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan.

As the Liberal MPP for Scarborough-Guildwood, Mitzie Hunter, introduced the Toronto Ranked Ballots Election Act in March 2014. The bill passed the second reading, but died prematurely when the election was called.

On June 13, 2016, she was promoted to the senior position of minister of education.

On January 17, 2018, it was announced that Hunter would leave her position as minister of education to replace outgoing Deb Matthews as the minister of advanced education and skills development.

The Liberals suffered its worst electoral defeat in the 2018 Ontario provincial election both in terms of seat count (seven) and popular vote (19.6%), losing official party status at the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. It was also the worst defeat of a governing party in Ontario history. However she was narrowly re-elected in the 2018 Ontario Election, by a factor of 74 votes, as one of 7 remaining MPPs.

In 2019, she attempted to change the Ontario Liberal Party away from a delegated convention, however she only reached 57% support, shy of the 66% of the vote she needed.

On August 14, 2019, Hunter announced her candidacy for the 2020 Ontario Liberal Party leadership race. At the leadership convention on March 7, 2020, she finished fourth. She was re-elected in the 2022 Ontario general election.

Hunter became deputy leader of the Ontario Liberals and was considered a possible candidate in the 2023 Ontario Liberal Party leadership election. However, in March 2023, she said that she would be resigning her seat as an MPP to run in the 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election. Hunter lost the election to Olivia Chow, placing sixth with 2.9% of the vote.

Cabinet positions

Electoral record