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Buzz Hargrove

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Buzz Hargrove

Basil Eldon "Buzz" Hargrove OC (March 8, 1944 – June 15, 2025) was a Canadian trade union leader and onetime national president of the Canadian Auto Workers. Until his death in 2025, he served as a distinguished visiting professor at Toronto Metropolitan University's Ted Rogers School of Management and director of its Centre for Labour Management Relations.

Born in Bath, New Brunswick, Hargrove first became involved in the automotive sector as a line worker for the Chrysler assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario. He succeeded Bob White as president of the CAW in 1992. On July 8, 2008, he announced his intention to retire, before he turned 65, in September 2008. The CAW national executive board and staff endorsed then CAW Local 444 president Ken Lewenza to replace Hargrove as national president, and on September 6, 2008, Lewenza was formally elected to the position at a special union convention.

In 1998, Brock University honoured him with a doctorate of laws degree. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Windsor in 2003, from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2004, from the University of New Brunswick in 2008, and from Queen's University in 2009. In 2008, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.

Hargrove was seen as a proponent of social unionism, and his supporters claimed that he steered the CAW to become a more activist union. In the field of electoral politics, however, the CAW has broken from its longtime support for the left-wing New Democratic Party and instead began increasingly supporting the Liberal Party of Canada.[citation needed]

Hargrove was married to Denise Small, a mediation officer for the Ontario Labour Relations Board

Hargrove was the leading advocate of tactical voting in the 1999 Ontario provincial election. Hargrove proposed this approach in an attempt to defeat the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris. Hargrove's support for this approach, and his union's subsequent commitment of resources in its pursuit, marked the CAW's first major departure from its previous policy of unconditional support of the Ontario New Democratic Party, although the CAW had been somewhat estranged from the Ontario NDP ever since the union had opposed the "Social Contract" austerity measures imposed by the previous 1990–1995 Bob Rae NDP government. The 1999 election, however, was the first time that the union did not at least formally endorse the NDP, instead urging its members (and all voters) to vote for the candidate, NDP or Liberal, that had the best chance of defeating the Progressive Conservative candidate.

Tactical voting not only failed to prevent the re-election of the Tories to another majority government but also was blamed by New Democrats for the party's poor electoral performance, returning only 9 members of provincial parliament, down from 17 in the 1995 election.

Following the 1999 Ontario election, an attempt to expel Hargrove from the Ontario NDP was defeated but Hargrove's relationship with provincial leader Howard Hampton remained acrimonious.[citation needed]

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