Andy Scott (politician)

Canadian politician

Robert Andrew Keith Scott (March 16, 1955 – June 24, 2013) was a Liberal Member of Parliament who represented the electoral district of Fredericton from 1993 to 2008. He was a member the Cabinet of Canada, most recently serving as the eighteenth Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (2004–2006).

Scott was born in 1955 in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and grew up in Barker's Point, a working class neighbourhood. He was the only son in a family of four children. His parents both supported the Liberal Party, with his father especially an avid volunteer. The family business involved making cement blocks and fireplaces for houses. His father also volunteered for a summer camp for disabled children.

In the late 1980s, he was a senior civil servant with the provincial Liberal government of Frank McKenna. He ran in the 1993 federal election and won convincingly, becoming the first Liberal MP elected in Fredericton since 1957. He was re elected in the 1997 election and was named Solicitor General of Canada. In 1998, New Democratic Party MP Dick Proctor said he overheard Scott on an airplane talking about several sensitive national matters, including the then ongoing Vancouver Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) inquiry. Scott was alleged to have stated that several Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers (who had used pepper spray against protesters) would take the blame at the end of it all. He denied prejudging the outcome, but later resigned his post as Solicitor General. In an incident in the fall of 2003, Scott was hospitalised after being physically assaulted by a constituent angry over his government's support for same sex marriage. Scott returned to the Cabinet in December 2003, when he was named Minister of State for Infrastructure by Paul Martin. Following the 2004 federal election, he was promoted to the position of Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

On October 22, 2008, it was announced that Andy Scott would assume a research post in social policy at the University of New Brunswick.

Scott died of cancer on June 24, 2013, at the age of 58, from non Hodgkin lymphoma.