Raymonde Folco | |
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Member of Parliament for Laval West | |
In office 1997–2004 |
|
Preceded by | Michel Dupuy |
Succeeded by | riding dissolved |
Member of Parliament for Laval—Les Îles | |
In office 2004–2011 |
|
Preceded by | first member |
Personal details | |
Born | March 16, 1940 [1] Paris, France |
Political party | Liberal |
Profession | business administrator/public servant/educational advisor |
Religion | Jewish |
Raymonde Folco is a Canadian politician, member of the Liberal Party of Canada. She represented the Quebec riding of Laval—Les Îles in the Canadian House of Commons through 5 successive parliaments from 1997 to 2011, when she left politics.
Born in Paris, she received a Bachelor of Arts (History) from the University of Melbourne (Australia), a Baccalauréat Spécialisé in Linguistics from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and a Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics from Concordia University (Montreal).
Folco was vice president in 1988, and president from 1990–95, of the Conseil des Communautés culturelles et de l'Immigration. This agency's role is to advise the government on matters relating to the immigration and integration of ethnic minorities.
In 1996–97 she acted as Commissioner with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, an independent administrative tribunal, responsible for making well-reasoned decisions on the status of persons seeking refugee status in Canada, in accordance with the law.
While holding that position, she was recruited to the Liberal Party of Canada and ran for the Canadian House of Commons as candidate for the Quebec riding of Laval East in 1993, but lost to Maud Debien.
In 1997, Folco won the Federal Liberal nomination for the riding of Laval West. There, she was elected in the 1997 and 2000 general elections, then reelected in 2004, 2006, and 2008 for the newly-formed riding of Laval—Les Îles.
Folco began her career as a lecturer in Jamaica and Australia, and as a politician served on a number of diplomatic or quasi-diplomatic foreign missions: Algeria, Timor Este, Haiti, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Kuwait, Côte d'Ivoire, and Chiapas (Mexico).