Mary Polak
Canadian politician
Mary Ruth Polak (born 1967 or 1968) is a Canadian politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia (MLA) representing the riding of Langley from 2005 until her defeat in the 2020 general election. She was re-elected to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in 2017, having represented the constituents of Langley since 2005 and was appointed Minister of Health on 12 June 2017 by Premier Christy Clark. Prior to her new cabinet post, she served as the Minister of the Environment, Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation, Minister of Children and Family Development and Minister Responsible for Child Care, Minister of Healthy Living and Sport, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health for the Conversation on Health. Before being elected to the legislative assembly, Polak served as a trustee and former chair of the Surrey School Board in Surrey, British Columbia. She currently resides in Langley, British Columbia.
Surrey School trustee
Same-sex-parents book controversy
Polak was recruited to run as a member of the Surrey Electors Team by school trustee Heather Stilwell. As a Trustee on the Surrey School Board, she voted down a request, along with the majority of the school board, to add three specific books dealing with same sex families as recommended learning resources for the kindergarten and grade one curriculum. These books were requested by a kindergarten teacher to reflect the realities of today's families and to teach his pupils about diversity and tolerance. The Government of British Columbia also declined to approve the same books.
A legal battle to overturn the decision to ban the three books went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, where the school board's decision was returned to the board.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Mary Polak” as canadian politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as canadian politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6780534. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1968, 2005 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Polak” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.