Jane Philpott (née Little; born November 23, 1960) is a physician, academic administrator, and former Canadian politician who represented the riding of Markham—Stouffville in the House of Commons. Philpott was first elected in the 2015 federal election as a member of the Liberal Party and was appointed to the Cabinet of the 29th Canadian Ministry, headed by Justin Trudeau, on November 4, 2015. On March 4, 2019, Philpott resigned from her cabinet position as President of the Treasury Board over the SNC-Lavalin affair. On April 2, 2019, she and Jody Wilson-Raybould were both expelled from the Liberal caucus in the aftermath of the controversy.
Philpott ran for re-election, as an independent candidate, in the 2019 federal election. She was defeated by Liberal candidate Helena Jaczek, placing third in the race with 20.8% of the popular vote.
Prior to entering politics, Philpott was a family physician known for promoting medical education in Africa, HIV/AIDS fundraising, refugee advocacy, and her work on the social determinants of health.
In February 2020, Philpott was appointed dean of the Queen's University Faculty of Health Sciences and director of the Queen's School of Medicine, and CEO, Southeastern Ontario Academic Medical Organization, effective July 1, 2020.
Early life and education
Philpott was born Jane Little in Toronto, Ontario. Her childhood was spent in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States; and Cambridge, Ontario. Her father, The Reverend Wallace Little, was a Presbyterian minister. Her mother was a schoolteacher. She is the oldest of four daughters.
Philpott attended high school at Galt Collegiate Institute. She received a Bachelor of Science and medical training at University of Western Ontario, where she was granted a Doctorate of Medicine, graduating cum laude in 1984. She later earned a Master of Public Health, with a concentration in Global Health, in 2012 from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Philpott also completed a Tropical Medicine Fellowship at Toronto General Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, in 1986–87. From 1984 to 1986 she completed a Family Medicine Residency at the University of Ottawa/Ottawa Civic Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario.
Medical career
Philpott was a family doctor in Markham–Stouffville from 1998 to 2015. She served as Chief of the Department of Family Medicine at Markham Stouffville Hospital from 2008 to 2014. She was concurrently Associate Professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Family and Community Medicine. She was the Lead Physician of the Health For All Family Health Team in Markham, Ontario.
She worked in Niger in West Africa from 1989 to 1998 with a faith-based non-governmental organization, where she practiced general medicine and developed a training program for village health workers. She returned to Niger in 2005 with Médecins sans Frontières during a food crisis.
She was the Family Medicine lead in the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration (TAAAC) from 2008 to 2014. In this capacity she helped colleagues at Addis Ababa University to develop the first training program for Family Medicine in Ethiopia that began in 2013. The first seven students in this programme graduated in early 2016.
Philpott has been an advocate for Canada to give greater attention to the rights of refugees, particularly in respect of the health care afforded to them. In an article in the Toronto Star in 2014 she argued that "the Conservative government's cuts to refugee health care are 'cruel and unusual.
Philpott is a co-curator of TEDxStouffville founded in 2012 with Dr. Eileen Nicolle. The TEDxStouffville committee, a collaboration between Health for All Family Health Team, Markham Stouffville Hospital, the University of Toronto and residents of the town of Whitchurch–Stouffville, develops its program with live speakers on the theme of Social Determinants of Health.
HIV/AIDS Advocacy Work
"A Coin for Every Country" was an educational campaign geared to intermediate level classrooms to raise funds for the Stephen Lewis Foundation in response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Philpott was a founder of this initiative, that was delivered through schools in the York Region District School Board. Philpott is the founder of the "Give a Day to World AIDS" movement which started in 2004 as a way to engage Canadians in responding to HIV. Since 2004, Give a Day has grown in the medical, legal and business communities and, as of 2014, had raised over 75 million dollars to help those affected by HIV in Africa.