Dave MacKenzie (politician)

David "Dave" MacKenzie (born June 12, 1946) is a Canadian politician. He is a current member of the House of Commons of Canada, representing the riding of Oxford, Ontario as a Conservative.

Born in London, Ontario, MacKenzie served with the Woodstock City Police from 1967 to 1997, and was Chief of Police from 1987 to 1997. In 1997, he became the General Manager of Roetin Industries Canada.

He first ran for parliament in the federal election of 1997 as a Progressive Conservative, losing to Liberal John Finlay by 1,575 votes. He ran again in the election of 2000, and lost to Finlay by roughly the same margin. It may be noted that the national Progressive Conservative Party had a weak organization in Ontario during this period, and that Mackenzie's vote totals were well above the party's provincial average and that in both 1997 and 2000, the right wing vote was split between the Progressive Conservatives and Reform who later became the Canadian Alliance.

In 2002, MacKenzie was the Bosnia and Herzegovina trainer for the National Democratic Institute in Washington, D.C.

The Progressive Conservatives merged with the Canadian Alliance as the Conservative Party of Canada in early 2004, and Mackenzie joined the new party. Finlay did not run in the 2004 election, and MacKenzie defeated new Liberal candidate Murray Coulter by about 6,500 votes. After the election, he was named as his party's associate critic for National Defense. In the 2006 federal election, MacKenzie was re-elected to his Oxford seat, beating Liberal candidate Greig Mordue by a wide margin. With the Conservative Party of Canada forming a minority government, MacKenzie was selected as parliamentary secretary for the Ministry of Public Safety.