Tony Ruprecht (born 12 December 1942) is a Canadian former politician. His first elected position was as an alderman in the old Toronto City Council, in the late 1970s. He became a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1981, and served in premier David Peterson's cabinet as minister without portfolio from 1985 to 1987. Ruprecht represented Toronto's Parkdale and then Davenport constituencies for the Liberal Party of Ontario for 30 years. On 5 July 2011, he announced that he was leaving politics and would not seek re-election in the October 2011 provincial election.
Background
Born in Konstantynów, Poland on 12 December 1942, Ruprecht moved to Canada with his family in 1949 after attending school in Germany. He taught in the Political Science department at York University, teaching public administration and municipal governance.
He has authored two books: The Graduate School Game (1976) and Toronto's Many Faces (1990) now in its 5th edition. The latter book being an overview of Toronto's multicultural communities. He lost the nomination to future Toronto mayor, Art Eggleton. By receiving the most votes, he became the senior alderman for Ward 2 on Toronto City Council and Metropolitan Toronto Council.
Provincial politics
Parkdale constituency (1981–1999)
Ruprecht was first elected to the Ontario legislature in the 1981 provincial election, representing the Parkdale constituency defeating incumbent New Democratic Party MPP, Jan Dukszta, by nearly 1,000 votes. Ruprecht was re-elected by a margin of almost 7,000 votes in the 1985 election.
The Liberals formed government after the election, and on 26 June 1985, Ruprecht was appointed as a minister without portfolio responsible for Disabled Persons and Multiculturalism. He was re-elected by a landslide the 1987 election, but was subsequently dropped from cabinet.
In 1996, Ruprecht was the only Liberal MPP outside of Ottawa to support Dalton McGuinty's bid for party leader prior to the actual leadership convention.
Davenport constituency (1999–2011)
Due to Premier Mike Harris' Progressive Conservative government changing Ontario's provincial electoral district boundaries to match the federal ones for the 1999 Ontario general election, the Legislature was reduced to 103 seats, from 130. This boundary change meant that the previous constituencies were redistributed into several of the new ones and incumbent MPPs would have to decide where they would stand for re-election as their old constituencies no longer existed. Instead, Ruprecht ran in the neighbouring Davenport constituency which included the eastern portion of his old Parkdale constituency. He was not appointed as the Liberal candidate but had to defeat human-rights lawyer Rocco Galati at a nomination meeting on 21 July 1998 before he could run in the election.
Ruprecht's main opponent in the 1999 campaign was another displaced incumbent MPP, the NDP's deputy leader, Tony Silipo. What the Toronto Star dubbed "The battle of the Tonys" was expected to be a very close race between Silipo and Ruprecht. Election night, 3 June, was anticlimactic, as Ruprecht easily won with a 4,932 vote plurality. The Progressive Conservatives managed to lose all their seats in the old city of Toronto, but nevertheless, won the provincial election, and Ruprecht remained in opposition.
Ruprecht was elected for a seventh time in the 2003 election, defeating NDP candidate Jordan Berger by over 8,000 votes on 2 October 2003. The McGuinty-lead Liberals formed government following this election after having been in Opposition for 13 years. Despite being the only MPP outside of Ottawa to support McGuinty's leadership campaign, Ruprecht was not appointed to cabinet, but he was appointed vice-chair of the legislature's Standing Committee on Regulations and Private Bills. The MPP acknowledged that since the previous fall he had made four trips to Cuba for a cumulative period of seven weeks. He made this decision, partially because of the unexpected death of fellow Liberal MPP, Bruce Crozier, stating "I have not groomed a successor (in Davenport) simply because Bruce’s death shocked me."