Borys

Biography

Borys Wrzesnewskyj has had the privilege of serving the riding of Etobicoke Centre since 2004. Over these past four years he has brought the dedication, hard work and compassion that he feels for public service to the constituents of Etobicoke Centre in working with them in the riding by making himself available through Saturday constituency hours, organizing seniors’ tax clinics, and working for them in the House of Commons with Private Members Motions, such as M-16 which calls for the elimination of night flights out of Pearson Airport.

A proud son and grandson of Ukrainian and Polish immigrant refugees, Borys is a native of Etobicoke. He attended Humber Valley Village Public School and Upper Canada College during high school. He received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Trinity College at the University of Toronto. Borys is conversant in French, Polish, Spanish and Ukrainian.

Upon graduation, at the age of 22, he went to work at Future Bakery, the company founded by his grandparents. Through his hard work and visionary leadership, Future Bakery has grown to become an innovative small business institution in Toronto. Borys is the current President and owner of both the Future Bakery (and MC Dairy), headquartered in Etobicoke and employing more than 80 people.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Borys organized and initiated a number of grass roots projects in some of Toronto’s most challenged neighbourhoods. Through Future Bakery, he was one of the original sponsors of the Out of the Cold program to aid the homeless. In recent years here in Etobicoke he has been a sponsor and supporter of the Daily Bread Food Bank run out of St. James United Church, and he has financially supported sporting events such as Hoops Unlimited, which provides a positive outlet for youth in some of Etobicoke’s at-risk neighbourhoods.

This spirit of giving back to the community continues. Recently, in Etobicoke the Wrzesnewkyj family foundation provided a $500,000 donation towards building a dementia wing in one of Etobicoke Centre’s wonderful senior citizen care centres and another substantial donation to the Dorothy Ley Hospice. The Wrzesnewskyj family continues to fund and organize relief efforts for orphans and post-secondary scholarships for promising students abroad. Borys has provided grants to the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa, the University of Alberta, and this fall is providing grants of over $150,000 towards academic and educational work on the subject of genocide.

The 2004 presidential election crisis in Ukraine and the subsequent Orange Revolution erupted just as Borys was taking his seat in the House of Commons. As a newly elected MP, Borys worked tirelessly to reach all-party consensus in Canada’s Parliament to support the struggle for democracy and freedom in Ukraine. He spearheaded unanimously accepted House of Commons motions on October 26 and November 25, as well as an emergency debate on November 24. Borys was instrumental in securing the Government of Canada’s commitment to send an unprecedented 500 election observers to Ukraine for the re-run of the Presidential election. During the 2008 state visit to Canada by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, President Yushchenko presented Borys with the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, Ukraine’s highest honour for a foreign national, during a special ceremony on Parliament Hill.

Since his election in 2004 Borys has served as a member of numerous House of Commons’ Standing Committees, notably the Standing Committee on Public Accounts on which he served since September 2004. Recently, Borys’ yearlong determined investigations into the RCMP on the Public Accounts Committee led to the Conservative government’s reluctant agreement to an inquiry which published the report “A Matter of Trust: Report of the Independent Investigator into Matters Relating to the RCMP,” as well as a finding of contempt of Parliament and removal of some of the senior-most members of our federal police force. Through his perseverance, and the support of the selfless members of the RCMP that worked so diligently with him, together they successfully challenged corruption at the top echelons of the federal police force, and helped to set the RCMP on a new and better course.

Borys is married to Lina Fedko and on August 25, 2008 they were blessed with the birth of their first child, a daughter, Viktoria.