Peter Stewart Bevan-Baker (born 3 June 1962) is a

Scottish-Canadian Scottish Canadians are people of Scottish people, Scottish descent or cultural heritage, heritage living in Canada. As the third-largest ethnic group in Canada and amongst the first Europeans to settle in the country, Scottish people have made a ...

politician, currently the leader of the

Green Party of Prince Edward Island The Green Party of Prince Edward Island is a registered provincial political party and one of the three major parties in Prince Edward Island, Canada. The party was founded by Sharon Labchuk, a political organizer for the federal Green Party of Can ...

and a member of the

Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island The Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island (french: Assemblée législative de l'Île-du-Prince-Édouard) is the sole chamber of the General Assembly of Prince Edward Island. The Legislative Assembly meets at Province House, which is locate ...

representing

New Haven-Rocky Point New Haven-Rocky Point is a provincial electoral district for the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island, Canada. The district was contested for the first time in the 2019 Prince Edward Island general election The 2019 Prince Edward Islan ...

(formerly representing

Kellys Cross-Cumberland Kellys Cross-Cumberland was a provincial electoral district for the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island, Canada. It was previously known as Crapaud-Hazel Grove. It was the first provincial constituency to elect a member of the Green Pa ...

.) He previously stood as a candidate for both the

Green Party of Ontario The Green Party of Ontario (GPO; french: Parti vert de l'Ontario) is a political party in Ontario, Canada. The party is led by Mike Schreiner. In 2018, Schreiner was elected as the party's first member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly. In th ...

and the

Green Party of Canada The Green Party of Canada (french: Parti vert du Canada) is a federal political party in Canada, founded in 1983 with a focus on green politics. The Green Party is currently the fifth largest party in the House of Commons by seat count. It el ...

. Bevan-Baker is a

dentist A dentist, also known as a dental surgeon, is a health care professional who specializes in dentistry (the diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases and conditions of the mouth, oral cavity and other aspects of the craniofaci ...

by profession as well as being an active writer, musician and public speaker. As a result of the 2019 election, Bevan-Baker is the current Leader of the

Official Opposition Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. This article uses the term ''government'' as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning ''th ...

in the

66th General Assembly of Prince Edward Island The 66th General Assembly of Prince Edward Island is the 66th sitting of the Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island and the 40th since confederation in 1873. The membership of the assembly was determined by the 2019 Prince Edward Island gener ...

."Seven things to know about the P.E.I. election results"

CTV News CTV News is the news division of the CTV Television Network in Canada. The name ''CTV News'' is also applied as the title of local and regional newscasts on the network's owned-and-operated stations (O&Os), which are closely tied to the national ...

, 23 April 2019.

Personal life

He is the second child of composer

John Bevan Baker John Stewart Bevan Baker (3 May 1926 – 24 June 1994) was a British composer, born in England, but a longtime resident of Scotland. Biography He was born in Staines, Middlesex, to an English father, Bevan Braithwaite Baker FRSE (1890-1963), a p ...

and June Findlay. He holds a Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

. In 1985 he emigrated to Canada, living first in

Lewisporte, Newfoundland Lewisporte is a town in central Newfoundland, Canada, with a population of 3,288. It is situated in Burnt Bay which opens on to the Bay of Exploits. Lewisporte has a deep water port and related facilities that serve many communities in the r ...

and then

Brockville Brockville, formerly Elizabethtown, is a city in Eastern Ontario, Canada, in the Thousand Islands region. Although it is the seat of the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, it is politically Independent city, independent of the county. It i ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

before settling in

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen Provinces and territories of Canada, provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has seve ...

in 2003. He became a Canadian citizen in 1992.

Political career

Bevan-Baker joined the Green Party of Canada in 1992, and has run as a candidate for the

House of Commons of Canada The House of Commons of Canada (french: Chambre des communes du Canada) is the lower house of the Parliament of Canada. Together with the Crown and the Senate of Canada, they comprise the bicameral legislature of Canada. The House of Common ...

in the elections of 1993, 1997 in the riding of Leeds—Grenville and provincially in 1995 in the riding of Leeds-Grenville in Ontario, and 2008 and 2011 in Malpeque, PEI. In 1997, he ran on a platform that advocated establishing a Genuine Progress Index (GPI). This was proposed to replace the

Gross Domestic Product Gross domestic product (GDP) is a money, monetary Measurement in economics, measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjec ...

(GDP) as the standard measure for assessing national progress with an index that gauged the health and well-being of people, communities and eco-systems. Though not elected from 1997 to 2001, he forged an alliance with Liberal MP

Joe Jordan Joseph Jordan (born 15 December 1951) is a Scottish football player, coach and manager. He is currently a first-team coach at AFC Bournemouth. A former striker, he played for Leeds United, Manchester United, and Milan, among others at club ...

to draft the Canada Well-Being Measurement Bill (C-268), which incorporated many of the central tenets of the GPI. The bill received first reading on 14 February 2001, but did not become law. Bevan-Baker has also run three times as a candidate in provincial elections in Ontario, and on Prince Edward Island in the riding of Kelly's Cross-Cumberland in

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

and

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

. In 2012 he spearheaded a coalition from a broad spectrum of Islanders against a project known as "

Plan B Plan B typically refers to a contingency plan, a plan devised for an outcome other than in the expected plan. Plan B may also refer to: * Plan B, a brand name of levonorgestrel, an emergency contraception drug Film and television * Plan B En ...

", which involved rerouting a portion of the Trans Canada Highway through a section of ancient Acadian forest, citing negative environmental and fiscal implications for the province. In

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the Apri ...

, Bevan-Baker was elected to the Prince Edward Island Legislative Assembly with 54% of the vote, winning the first-ever seat for the

. It was his tenth attempt at winning a seat.Tenth time lucky for the Green Party’s Peter Bevan-Baker
''Macleans''. 6 May 2015. He is the third member of a provincial Green Party to win a seat in a provincial legislature in Canada, following Andrew Weaver in

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

and

David Coon David Charles Coon (born 28 October 1956 in Toronto, Ontario) is a Canadian politician, who was elected to the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick in the 2014 provincial election to represent the provincial electoral district of Fredericton S ...

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

. In 2019 the Green Party under Bevan-Baker's leadership witnessed the best electoral performance of any Green Party in Canada, finishing with enough seats to form the Official Opposition, marking the first time that the Green Party has formed the Official Opposition at any level in Canadian history.

Electoral history

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bevan-Baker, Peter 1962 births Alumni of the University of Glasgow Canadian dentists Green Party of Ontario candidates in Ontario provincial elections Green Party of Prince Edward Island MLAs Leaders of the Green Party of Prince Edward Island Living people Ontario candidates for Member of Parliament Politicians from Aberdeen Prince Edward Island candidates for Member of Parliament Scottish emigrants to Canada 21st-century Canadian politicians Naturalized citizens of Canada