Meet Joe Dickson, President of Dickson Printing Ltd. in Ajax, Ontario--who was re-elected in Oct 2011 to serve a second term as the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) representing the riding of Ajax-Pickering in the Liberal government of Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.

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2. J
oe Dickson, President of Dickson Print-
ing Ltd. of Ajax, Ontario, is the only
printer I know who is currently active in
provincial politics in Canada.Following on
a prior political career of remarkable
longevity,Dickson was re-elected on Octo-
ber 6, 2011, to serve a second term as the
Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP)
representing the riding of Ajax-Pickering in
the Liberal government of Ontario Premier
Dalton McGuinty.
Dickson’s electoral district, some 25 km
east of Toronto, encompasses the Town of
Ajax and the northern part of the City of
Pickering (combined population
117,183). Owing to the area’s rapidly
growing demographics, the riding was
newly created for the 2007 provincial vote
– the same year Dickson was first elected
to the Ontario legislature.Accordingly, he
holds the historical distinction of being
his riding’s first and only MPP. In his first
term, Dickson served as Government
Deputy Whip; now McGuinty has ap-
pointed him Parliamentary Assistant to
the Minister Responsible for Seniors.
Considering Dickson’s vast prior com-
munity service and his present age of 70,
this new post seems particularly apt.
The printer
The oldest of 10 children, Dickson identi-
fies his mother, Mary, and father, Lou, as
his most formative influences. Under-
standably, Lou had to work hard to sup-
port his large family, initially as Ajax’s first
door-to-door Fuller Brush man. Back
then, the area had no postal service, so Lou
lit on the stratagem of delivering his cus-
tomers’mail to and from the local post of-
fice at an additional cost of 50 cents per
household per month. Lou expanded his
mail-courier business for several years,
until Canada Post moved in and put him
out of business. Next Lou went on to
found and publish his community’s first
newspaper, the Ajax Advertiser.
In 1959, as a teenager, Dickson started
the family printing business as an offshoot
of helping his father produce the commu-
nity newspaper. As early as grade school,
Dickson can recall cranking out mimeo-
graphed sheets in his bedroom on a table-
top, hand-cranked Gestetner. Later he
advanced to a small electric floor model.
“We continued in the newspaper business
until the day before I got married, when a
company that is now Metroland was buy-
ing up all the local weeklies and bought
the business from my father. So I was mar-
ried and out of a job simultaneously,”
Dickson laughs – “Perfect!”
Afterwards he worked various jobs, in-
cluding nine months as an assembly-line
inspector for General Motors. To earn
more cash, he also took on second and
third part-time jobs, one as the produc-
tion manager for a religious publishing
house. Eventually Dickson’s printing ac-
tivities led him to create a full-time print-
ing business that prospered during the
1970s and 80s, eventually expanding into
office products. At one point, Dickson
owned five office-supply outlets and from
1980 to 1991 served as national chairman
of the Stationers Marketing of Canada,
comprising 47 retailers in 10 provinces.
At another point, Dickson sold this
printing business to the 77-year-old Brown
and Collet Corporation of Toronto. But to
everyone's surprise, the purchaser filed for
bankruptcy shortly after the sale, forcing
Dickson back into business. He reassem-
bled some of his former equipment and
staff,and has continued upgrading his tech-
nology regularly ever since.
Today Dickson Printing comprises 10
staff, prepress department, 6-colour 40-
inch offset and Xerox DocuColor toner-
based equipment, plus bindery, with
some equipment housed separately at a
second production site. “Over 50 years
the business evolved from a little offset
production with letterpress to 100 per-
cent offset, but in more recent years I find
the Xerox units are much better and more
competitive on the short runs. Offset is
still the dominant production tool in
longer runs,” explains Dickson, whose
clients are a wide commercial mix, most
in Durham Region and some in Toronto.
Since politics has increasingly absorbed
Dickson’s time, his brother Paul, who has
been with the company for several decades,
has taken over as General Manager.“When
you’re in public office, you’re in constant
touch with public, and their needs come
first,”says Dickson. He still visits the print-
ing company for two to three hours weekly,
but only to answer messages he receives at
the e-mail address he still publishes on the
company’s Website to make it easy for his
constituents to contact him personally
with their concerns.
The politician
Dickson’s political career grew alongside
the family business. His first foray was two
terms as a Catholic school trustee, initially
prompted by encouragement from other
trustees plus support from his church
parish. Later, after he entered municipal
politics, he was elected Ward 2 Councillor
inAjax for an impressively long seven terms
(with a break of two terms in the middle
during the recession in the early 90s to
allow him to concentrate on the business).
His past and present track record of com-
munity service includes founding, direct-
ing, chairing, and sponsoring countless
sports, nonprofit, and charitable teams,
events, and organizations, and has earned
him numerous citizenship awards, as well
as the nickname“Mr.Ajax”from more than
one local news reporter.
Like many other successful politicians,
Dickson was once defeated in an election.
It occurred in 1995, when he made a first
unsuccessful bid to enter Ontario politics
in the riding of Durham West. He re-
mained in the municipal arena until his
second successful bid for the provincial
legislature in 2007.
“I made the jump to the provincial
arena, because I felt I could do more at
the provincial level. When I was younger,
I had a golden opportunity to run feder-
ally, but I made a conscientious decision
that it was not the right thing to do. Be-
cause of the young ages of my [two] chil-
dren, I didn’t want to be away from home
in Ottawa for a week at a time.”
Dickson repeatedly emphasizes the im-
portance of a strong family to his political
success: “My wife [of 46 years], Donna, is
fully supportive of my political and com-
munity efforts. I tell people she’s not only
my right arm,she’s also my left arm.I would
be lost without her.”Donna has a hereditary
advantage in understanding the demands of
provincial politics: her great-grandfather,
William John Bragg,was a Liberal MPP rep-
resenting Durham from 1919 to 1937.
DECEMBER 2011 • PRINTACTION • 13
VICTORIA GAITSKELL
Popular MPP Printer
Joe Dickson (seated centre) and family celebrate his contributions
to Ontario, including (left to right): son Jim Dickson, daughter-in-
law Elaine; daughter Joanna; wife Donna; and the Clerk for the
Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Deb Deller.
Continued on page 33

3. DECEMBER 2011 • PRINTACTION • 33
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2011 Election
Dickson’s 2007 victory was decisive, win-
ning 50 percent of the vote in the new riding
away from his nearest contender, Progres-
sive Conservative (PC) Kevin Ashe, with 34
percent. Yet four years later, news coverage
of the October 2011 provincial election was
singling out Dickson’s riding as a hard-
fought race of uncertain outcome.
Just five months earlier, in Canada’s May
national election, the PC Party increased
its power from a minority to a majority
government, the New Democratic Party
ousted the Liberal Party as Official Oppo-
sition by winning a record number of
seats, and the Liberals won the fewest seats
in their history and saw their leader
Michael Ignatieff defeated in his own rid-
ing. Reflecting this trend, newcomer PC
Candidate Chris Alexander unseated
three-term Liberal MP Mark Holland in
the federal Ajax-Pickering riding.
Although ultimately in October Dick-
son maintained his seat and a similarly
large share of the votes to his 2007 vic-
tory, he admits the past election was “ab-
solutely the toughest fight I have ever
been in.” Other McGuinty Liberals
proved less lucky, as their party fell one
seat short of a majority government after
back-to-back majority victories in the
previous two provincial elections.
Jobs, education and
health-care priorities
Dickson’s plans for the near future in-
clude developing a 10-year plan for the
Ajax-Pickering hospital and working with
local mayors towards a better economy,
particularly more jobs.
“Part and parcel of jobs and the economy
are two other key elements: health care and
education. I know the Premier hit the nail
on the head with all three priorities.We are
the envy of most places in the world for
both health care and education at all levels.
We’re just inundated at the provincial level
with requests for information from other
countries on why we do so well.”
During their first week back in the leg-
islature since the October vote, the re-
elected Liberal government recommitted
to protecting health care and education
and not raising taxes. They also reaf-
firmed several of their campaign prom-
ises that, all in, total at least $1.1 billion in
new spending over the next 1.5 years. At
the same time, the Liberals have vowed to
eliminate Ontario’s financial deficit in six
years, by 2017-2018.
Yet a recent downgrading of Ontario’s
economic forecast diminishes growth to
1.8 percent in 2011 and 2012, meaning
revenues will be $1.3 billion lower than
estimated in the Liberals’ fall election
platform. Finance Minister Dwight Dun-
can now calculates the province’s deficit
at $16 billion – $1 billion more than the
Liberals projected on the eve of their elec-
tion. When, on average, McGuinty’s Lib-
erals have hiked spending seven percent
per year since forming the government in
2003, their challenge now will be to con-
tinue to provide world-class public serv-
ices in a time of slow economic growth.
Small business working together
As a successful small businessman, Dick-
son feels he understands that sector of the
economy well:
“Business is entirely different than pol-
itics,” he explains.“In business you either
make it or break it on your own, because
nobody is going to give you a paycheque,
whereas in politics it’s different. I can see
where it’s a problem for those people in
politics who have never held a full-time
job or had the opportunity to run a busi-
ness. They start to think like a bureaucrat.
But you have to think outside the box. If
it’s a good business project, it will grow
the business and allow for acquisition of
equipment, but in the end what’s impor-
tant is that it will grow more jobs. The se-
cret in Ontario is to continually have
more jobs.
“Currently, it’s a terrible marketplace
where I’m probably like most small- to
mid-sized printers,”he laments.“Even be-
fore I was elected provincially, there were
many, many months when I couldn’t
draw a paycheque.We’ve all gone through
that. Although the recession has bot-
tomed out, the economy will still take a
good two to three years to come back
with much stronger growth.”
What is the secret to Dickson’s remark-
able political longevity and popularity?
“It’s just the way we were raised to help
each other,” he says.“As a child you learn
very quickly that, for a family to succeed,
everybody has to help everyone else. That
expanded into helping other people
through involvement in the community,
and in my case the calling to enter public
service.”
While he feels several community leaders
did not realize or fully appreciate the
changing demographics of the rapidly
growing municipalities bordering Toronto
city limits, Dickson feels he had an distinct
advantage because of his upbringing, in
which he was taught how everyone is equal.
“In my father’s newspaper day, Ajax
was a base for 600 temporary homes built
for young families after World War II, but
because the community has continued
to grow, they were never torn down,” he
recalls.“Now Ajax is home to immigrants
from every nationality and culture.
Outside of Toronto, it’s the most diverse
area – a worldwide mix made in heaven.”
He explains one aspect of his party’s
vision for reenergizing the workforce:
“Probably not enough people are coming
into the workforce from other countries.
One of the processes the opposition mistak-
enly chastised us for was to help three dif-
ferent professional sectors of the economy
– accountants, engineers, and architects –
all sectors that lack enough professionals to
fill vacant jobs – to educate professionals
coming from other countries in language
and the Canadian way of life to help them
integrate better into the workforce.
“It’s alarming, what the general public
doesn’t understand is that, if we didn’t do
as required by the professional organiza-
tions, our companies here will have a
manpower shortfall or even lose the work
to other parts of the world.”
Liberal Finance Minister Duncan ad-
vises Ontarians will have to wait until the
March budget for details on whether this
and other recently proposed programs
can survive new austerity measures that
will enable Ontario to balance its books
by 2018.
Victoria Gaitskell is keen to exchange ideas
with readers at victoria@printaction.com
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Continued from page 13
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