Keith Martin

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Keith P. Martin, PC, MP, BSc, MD (born April 13, 1960, in London, UK) is a Canadian physician and politician. He is the Liberal Member of Parliament for the riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

Martin was first elected in 1993 as a member of the Reform Party of Canada. However, unlike most Reformers, he was socially liberal, and he often clashed with Reform's conservative leaders. He is conservative on economic issues such as the privatization of health care services, but has socially liberal views on homosexuality, abortion and other issues. When the Reform Party was folded into the Canadian Alliance, he sought the party leadership, but finished a poor fourth with barely 2% of the vote. Despite his ideological differences, he did not join the dissidents who briefly left the party in 2001-02 to protest the leadership of Stockwell Day.

In January 2004, after the Alliance merged with the centre-right Progressive Conservative Party to form the Conservative Party of Canada, Martin announced he would not join the new party. He sat as an independent for the remainder of the 37th Parliament, but ran as a Liberal in the 2004 election. He was handily reelected in that election, and served as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence.

During the 2006 federal election, he described the Liberal military-themed attack ads as having been approved by "some idiot", which received widespread press attention. He was easily reelected in that election. Now in opposition, he is the Liberal critic for the Canadian International Development Agency.

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