Anne Cools

Early life and education

Cools' family immigrated to Canada in 1957 from the Caribbean island country of Barbados when Cools was 14 years old, and settled in Montreal. Cools attended Queen’s College Girls School in Barbados and Thomas D’Arcy McGee High School in Montreal. She has a B.A. in Social Sciences, Sociology and Psychology from McGill University.

Student activism

Attending McGill University to study social work in the 1960s, she became involved in radical campus politics. In 1969, she was a participant in a 10-day sit-in at Sir George Williams University (later Concordia University), protesting alleged racism at the school. The action ended with $2 million worth of damage to computer equipment. Although not accused of damaging property herself, Cools was sentenced to four months imprisonment for participating in the sit-in.

In 1974, Cools moved to Toronto where she founded one of the first shelters for abused women in Canada, Women in Transition Inc., and served as its Executive Director.

Canadian House of Commons

She twice sought election to the Canadian House of Commons as a candidate of the Liberal Party of Canada. She lost the Liberal nomination in a highly contested race against John Evans for the 1978 by-election in Rosedale. She ran again in 1979, and won the nomination but was defeated in both the 1979 and 1980 elections by Progressive Conservative candidate David Crombie. On her second attempt, she lost by fewer than 2,000 votes.

Canadian Senate

In 1984, she was summoned to the Canadian Senate by then Governor General Edward Schreyer, on the recommendation of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

In the 1990s, Cools served on the Senate/House of Commons Special Joint Committee on Child Custody and Access, which in December 1998 issued its report, For the Sake of the Children. A principal recommendation of this report was that, following a relationship breakdown, shared parenting should be presumed to be in the best interests of the child. Her extensive work on the Committee, and its wide investigations, saw her become increasingly outspoken on the issues of fathers' rights, divorce and family values. She was candid in her criticism of the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien when proposed legislation to be introduced in the House of Commons was shelved after intense lobbying by women's groups.

Crossing the floor

Cools also became increasingly critical of the Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, and of same-sex marriage. On June 8, 2004, she announced that she was crossing the floor to join the Conservative Party of Canada.

Cools was vocal in criticizing Martin after the passing of a motion of non-confidence against his government in 2005. She openly called for Martin to resign rather than dissolving Parliament, stating that the motion of non-confidence was expressing no-confidence in the Prime Minister, and not directly in the government. Rather than calling for a general election, Cools stated that Martin should have resigned.

Independent

On June 25, 2007, she was removed from Conservative caucus for speaking out against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and for voting against the 2007 budget. She sat as a non-affiiated Senator until March 10, 2017 when she joined the Independent Senators Group.

She has designated herself as representing the Senate division of Toronto-Centre-York.

Assault controversy

In 2005, Cools claimed to have been assaulted by fellow senators and to have witnessed a senator hitting a child. Canadian senators expressed shock after the claims were picked up by the media.

Views on domestic violence

In January 2016, in an audio interview conducted by Desmond Cole of Jesse Brown's Canadaland podcast, Cools supported and cited the work of Erin Pizzey, who believes that women are equally violent as men in domestic violence conflicts.