Fluently bilingual, McTeague graduated from the University of Toronto and worked as an intern in Ottawa to Paul Cosgrove, then Minister of Public Works and Canada Mortgage and Housing and later with the Royal Bank. After graduation he worked as an assistant to Alvin Curling, Ontario Minister of Housing. From 1989 to 1993 he worked as a public relations specialist with Toyota Canada. After an 18-year career in Parliament, he is now President at Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Political career
McTeague was first elected to Parliament in the 1993 federal election and was re-elected in 1997, 2000, 2004, 2006 and 2008. He was a member of the Liberal Party of Canada and was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs tasked with protecting Canadians abroad, until the Liberals lost the 2006 election. He served as the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Industry. McTeague was a key player in rescuing William Sampson from prison in Saudi Arabia by obtaining a letter of forgiveness from his eldest son. McTeague was also instrumental in achieving the release of a number of other Canadians from detention abroad, including Abdullah Al-Malki, Muyadad Nureddin and Al-Matti. He continued this work as Parliamentary Secretary from 2003-2006. His earlier legislative achievements included a bill passing into law the recognition of the third week in April as the Annual Donor Organ Week and setting Parliamentary precedent as the first backbench MP to successfully amend the Criminal Code and see his bill making fleeing a peace officer using a vehicle unlawful. So rare was this feat, that upon passing of third reading in the Senate, his Bill, C-202, was promulgated into law before a one judge on the Supreme Court of Canada, without the normal requirement of waiting the several months of publication in the Canada Gazette. His Act, now section 249.1 of the Criminal Code of Canada, took effect on February 7, 2000. An early advocate for proper compensation of hepatitis C victims and an effective critic of Canada's restrictive drug patent laws, he was also instrumental in pushing his own government to do more to address the African AIDS pandemic by relaxing those very laws. McTeague has undertaken to help Canadians in distress abroad with an initiative to help free a condemned William Sampson from Saudi execution. Having chaired the Liberal Government Task Force on gasoline pricing in 1998, McTeague challenged the premium prices Canadians were forced to pay for gasoline in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. For 10 weeks Canadian refiners added several cents a litre to the price of gasoline even over prices in the most affected markets in the US. On November 22, 2005, McTeague asked Immigration Minister Joe Volpe to restrict rapper 50 Cent from entering Canada, citing the death of a constituent at the performer's previous concert in Toronto in 2004. 50 Cent's tour went on as scheduled but McTeague's intervention succeeded in seeing at least half of the accompanying members of the rapper's troupe, the G-Unit, banned in Canada as a result of the objections. In July 2006, he condemned Prime Minister Stephen Harper's initial failure to address the plight of Canadians in Lebanon trapped by Israeli air strikes and challenged the PM's characterization of the attack as being "a measured response". With Canadian troops facing more casualties in Afghanistan, McTeague led the charge to force the Harper government to abandon the practice of docking injured soldier's "operational pay" once out of theatre. In May 2007 he again forced a reluctant Conservative government to increase the funeral stipend to families of fallen Canadian soldiers, a matter they originally denied. McTeague's interventions in Question period also resulted in goading the Conservative government to back away from its plan to eliminate the Liberal energuide program for seniors and low income Canadians.
McTeague tabled a private member bill that proposed to give parents substantial tax breaks for saving education money; taxpayers who deposited $5,000 into a Registered Education Savings Plan for their children's post-secondary education would earn a $5,000 tax deduction, similar to the deduction allowed for contributions to a Registered Retirement Savings Plan. Under the Tax-Free Savings Account, introduced in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's 2008 budget, there was no deduction for annual contributions. Ted Menzies, Conservative Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, lashed out at the proposal and suggested McTeague explain how the government would pay for his proposal, while Garth Turner strongly supported McTeague's bill and called it "the greatest financial tool in a generation." The Green Party said the government should have ceased threats to trigger an election over the RESP private member’s bill. McTeague's bill passed through the House of Commons of Canada on March 5, 2008, after Speaker of the House, Liberal Peter Milliken, ruled the bill in order as it did not require a royal recommendation, given that it did not contemplate spending money, only reducing revenue. Flaherty introduced a ways and means motion which nullified McTeague's bill.
Rising energy costs
Renowned for his work on gasoline prices, McTeague has devoted much effort on pinpointing the causes of rising fuel prices, going as far as running a website aiming to predict gas prices the day before they are posted in cities across Canada. He received support from all parties on the Industry Committee to strike a subcommittee for the purpose of examining the role of institutional investors, hedge funds and lending institutions in purchasing large contracts in oil and natural gas on the futures commodity market in driving the price of commodities beyond normal market fundamentals.
McTeague, along with Jack Layton of the NDP, on February 4, 2011 attended a rally in Toronto organized by Calvin Tennant against an internet usage based billing decision by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. He vowed to fight on behalf of all Canadians and his fellow MPs to reverse the CRTC decision, coining it the "Giga-Tax".
McTeague criticized the induction into the Order of Canada of Dr. Henry Morgentaler, saying that the Advisory Council of the Order of Canada strayed into social comment with its "provocative" choice, and argued that it was not the mandate of the ten-person panel.
