Leonard Salusbury Evans (August 19, 1929 – January 2, 2016) was a Canadian politician in Manitoba. He was a member of the Manitoba legislature from 1969 to 1999 and was a Cabinet Minister in the governments of New Democratic Premiers Edward Schreyer and Howard Pawley.
Early life and career
The son of David Evans and Gwen Salusbury, he was born in Winnipeg and educated at Transcona Collegiate Institute, the University of Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba, Simon Fraser University and the University of Ottawa. He worked as an economist and a professor of economics before entering political life. Evans first ran for public office in the Canadian federal election of 1953, running as a Cooperative Commonwealth Federation candidate in the riding of St. Boniface. He finished second with 5,568 votes, a credible showing for the party in the region.
In 1953, he married Alice Lorrain Mazinke.
Evans was named Minister of Mines and Natural Resources on July 15, 1969. On December 18 of the same year, he was promoted to Minister of Industry and Commerce, a position which he held until the defeat of the NDP government in 1977. He was also given ministerial responsibility for the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corporation on September 22, 1976.
Prior to the fall of the NDP government in 1988, Evans went on record as being one of the few MLAs in his party to oppose the Meech Lake Accord. He wanted to join with Elijah Harper in denying approval for the Accord in 1990 but declined so as not to detract from the issue of aboriginal rights (Harper was aboriginal, Evans was not). As a cabinet minister, Evans stopped the process of adopting aboriginal children to non-aboriginal families outside of the province, a process which many aboriginal activists had regarded as cultural genocide.
Evans served as NDP Finance critic from 1988 to 1999. By now a respected "elder statesman" in the party, he had little difficulty being re-elected in the elections of 1990 and 1995. He did not seek re-election in the 1999 Manitoba general election; Drew Caldwell retained Brandon East for the NDP.
In 2007, Evans was elected as president of the Association of Former Manitoba MLAs. He died on January 2, 2016, at the age of 86 after suffering a heart attack in the previous week.