Alfred Apps

William Alfred Apps is a Canadian lawyer, businessman and prominent activist in both the Liberal Party of Canada and the Ontario Liberal Party. He is currently a senior partner of the leading Canadian law firm of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin, based in its Toronto office. Apps is associated with a number of philanthropic and charitable causes and is currently Chair of the Foundation Board for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. He is married to Danielle French and has five daughters.

Education

Alfred Apps was born in Brantford, Ontario in 1957, the eldest of seven children. He spent his formative years in Woodstock, Ontario and attended high school at Woodstock Collegiate Institute. In 1979, he received his BA (Hons) at Huron University College, an affiliated college of the University of Western Ontario. He graduated in law from the University of Toronto in 1984 and was called to the Ontario bar in 1987. Apps served as Prime Minister of his high school students' council in 1974-75 and as President of both the Huron College Student's Council in 1978-1979 and of the University Students' Council in 1979-1980.

Business background

Apps joined Fasken Martineau as an associate in 1989 and was named partner in 1991. In 1993, he withdrew from the partnership on being named CEO of The Lehndorff Group (an international commercial real estate firm with assets in Canada, the United States and Europe), where he led a 47-lender $1 billion debt restructuring. In 1998 he led a business combination between Lehndorff and Dundee Realty Corporation and, following a short period as President and COO of the successor corporation, was appointed CEO of Newstar Technologies Inc. In 2001, upon completing a merger of Newstar with three of its principal U.S. competitors, he rejoined the partnership at Fasken Martineau, where he continues to practice corporate/commercial law specializing in corporate mergers, acquisitions and financings. He has served on the Board of Directors of a number of public and private companies.

Political involvement

Apps first came to prominence as a Liberal in 1979 when, at age 22, he was elected Executive Vice-President of the Ontario Liberal Party. As a young Liberal, he also led the party reform movement at the national biennial convention of 1982. In 1984, he was appointed chief Ontario organizer for the successful John Turner leadership campaign. While studying law, he was a speechwriter for David Peterson, then Leader of the Opposition in Ontario, as well as for several cabinet ministers in the last Canadian government led by Pierre Trudeau.

Apps ran as a Liberal in his home riding of Oxford in the federal elections of both 1984 and 1988, but was defeated by the long-serving Progressive Conservative incumbent, Bruce Halliday. On his second try for Parliament, at age 31, in a safe Conservative seat that had not elected a Liberal since Alexander C. Murray in 1949, he lost by only 2.7% of the vote.

During the 1993 federal election, Apps worked closely with Senator David Smith as election readiness chair for the Greater Toronto Area. He has played a key role in recruiting a number of prominent Liberal politicians into public life including former Prime Minister Paul Martin and current Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. He was also a prominent backer of Ignatieff's 2006 Liberal leadership bid.