David Anderson

David Anderson is not to be confused with David L. Anderson, the member of parliament from Cypress Hills--Grasslands. Also, David W. Anderson is an American entrepreneur.

The Honorable David Anderson is a Canadian politician who was born August 16, 1937 in Victoria, British Columbia.

Anderson is currently Liberal member of the Canadian House of Commons, representing the riding of Victoria since 1993, and is a former member of Cabinet. He was also the member from Esquimalt—Saanich from 1968 to 1972.

An Olympic silver medalist in rowing Anderson entered politics on the federal level, before going on to serve as leader of the British Columbia Liberal Party and was member of the legislative assembly for single term of 1972 and 1975.

Even though Social Credit was badly defeated in 1972 and reduced to a small caucus, Anderson was not only unable to gather momentum from the Social Credit implosion, he lost three of his five MLAs to Social Credit when Garde Gardom, Allan Williams and Pat Macgeer crossed the floor to join Social Credit.

Anderson resigned as party leader three months prior to the 1975 provincial election and was badly humiliated in his Victoria riding, coming a distant fifth. Many presumed that his failure as BC Liberal leader would be the end of his political career.

In 1993 he ran in Victoria and was elected as one of the few Liberal MPs elected from BC

Anderson has been a Counsel, environmental consultant, foreign-service officer, professor, public servant. Anderson has served as Minister of National Revenue, Minister of Transport, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. He was Minister of the Environment from 1998 to 2004 and now sits on the Liberal backbench.