Wilson Parasiuk

Wilson Dwight Peter Parasiuk (born May 6, 1943 in Stenen, Saskatchewan, Canada) is an entrepreneur with experience in the private and public sectors. As founder and CEO of the Vancouver–area based Paralink Group of Companies, Parasiuk organizes private sector/public sector partnerships in the export of Canada’s health care, education and governmental expertise. Paralink also provides advice on energy development matters within Canada and internationally. In his early career as a politician, he was an elected member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, Canada from 1977 to 1988, and a cabinet minister in the New Democratic Party government of Howard Pawley from 1981 to 1988.

Born into a farming family, the son of William Peter Parasiuk and Lillian Gogal, he moved with his family to Transcona, a Winnipeg suburb when he was five. Parasiuk went on to obtain a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Master of Arts, Political Science and International Relations at the University of Manitoba and subsequently became a Rhodes Scholar (Manitoba 1966), studying at Oxford University (also playing for the University's ice hockey team in 1967 and 1968) and obtaining a Master of Arts at St.John’s College. In 1967, Parasiuk married Wilma Dorothy Hewitson.

Parasiuk returned to Canada in 1968 and worked for the Canadian federal government’s Department of Regional Economic Expansion as an Economic Development Planner in Ottawa, Ontario.

In 1970, Parasiuk returned to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and began work with the Provincial Government of Manitoba. Appointed Assistant Deputy Minister for the Cabinet Planning Secretariat by then Premier Edward Schreyer, Parasiuk held several positions over the following years, including Cabinet Sub-Committee on Economic and Resource Development, Chairman of the Lake Winnipeg Management Board, Chairman of Northern Manpower Corporation, Deputy Minister to the Premier and Deputy Minister to the Cabinet Planning Secretariat.

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