Dorothy Dobbie

Dorothy Dobbie (born January 5, 1945) is a businesswoman and former Canadian politician. She served in the Canadian House of Commons from 1988 to 1993, as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party.

Dobbie was a publisher before entering political life, and was a founder of Association Publications Ltd. She was the first woman to serve as president of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce. In 1983, she was named Outstanding Business Citizen of the Year by the Manitoba Chamber of Commerce.

In 2012, she received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Dobbie was elected to the House of Commons in the 1988 election, defeating Liberal candidate Allan Kaufman by 715 votes to win the Federal riding of Winnipeg South. The Progressive Conservatives won a majority government in the election, and Dobbie entered parliament as a government backbencher.

She served as parliamentary secretary to seven different ministers between 1989 and 1993, and was a member of fifteen committees. Dobbie acted as Co-Chair alongside Claude Castonguay on the Special Joint Committee on a Renewed Canada, and the committee's recommendations on constitutional reform later formed the basis of the government's 1992 Charlottetown Accord, which was defeated in a national referendum.

Dobbie supported Jean Charest's bid to succeed Brian Mulroney as Progressive Conservative party leader in 1993 (Winnipeg Free Press, 11 June 1993), and retained her own nomination over a challenge from Charles Maximilian (Winnipeg Free Press, 16 March 1993).

The PC Party was resoundingly defeated in the 1993 election, losing all but two of its parliamentary seats. Dobbie lost her candidate's deposit, receiving 6,432 votes (12.29%) for a third-place finish against Liberal Reg Alcock. During the campaign, she accused the rival Reform Party of being controlled by Christian fundamentalists and criticized her own party for running advertisements that mocked Liberal leader Jean Chrétien's facial deformity (Winnipeg Free Press, 17 October 1993). She also called for the abolition of the Canadian Senate (Winnipeg Free Press, 18 July 1993).

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