Omar Alghabra

Alghabra was born in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia to a Syrian family. His father, an architect, moved their family to Saudi Arabia in 1968.[6] Alghabra has stated that he remembers living a sheltered life there, attending private school and visiting Syria in the summer.[7] Alghabra completed his high school education at the Dhahran Ahliyya School in Alkhobar. He then moved to Damascus, Syria where he started his Engineering degree at Damascus University. He decided to complete his education in Canada.

Alghabra moved to Toronto when he was 19 years old to attend school. He attended grade 13 to obtain his Canadian high school diploma. Later, he completed his Bachelor of Engineering at Ryerson University.[8]

Alghabra also attended York University, where he graduated with a Master of Business Administration.[8]

Alghabra’s first job was at Ainsworth Inc. as a Quality Assurance supervisor. He later transitioned to sales and worked as the Predictive Maintenance supervisor.[9] Afterwards, he joined General Electric (GE) as a Six Sigma Black Belt in the Industrial Service Business.[10] He became the Global Business Leader for GE’s Industrial Refurbished Parts business.

After his political defeat in the 2008 general election, Alghabra joined ENBALA Power Networks as their Vice President for Corporate Development.[3] Later, he worked as an advisor to the COO of the Ontario Energy Board on innovation in the utility sector.[9] Alghabra returned to the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science after being appointed a Distinguished Visiting Professor. In this role, he also joined Ryerson’s start-up incubator DMZ as their Executive-in-residence.[3]

Alghabra was the president of the Canadian Arab Federation (CAF) in 2004-5. After Alghabra left CAF, the group made controversial statements, and Alghabra condemned those statements.[11]

When a Member of Parliament retired, Alghabra left General Electric to run as a Liberal candidate for Member of Parliament in the 2006 federal election in the riding of Mississauga—Erindale. He defeated Conservative candidate Bob Dechert by 3,328 votes.[12] He got elected into a Conservative Party minority government, led by Stephen Harper. He was defeated in 2008, and then was elected again in 2015, and re-elected in 2019.

Alghabra served as Parliament Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Consular Affairs) from 2015-2018. He was appointed Parliament Secretary to the Prime Minister with a focus on Public Service Renewal and Parliament Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. Alghabra was also sworn into the Privy Council.

Following a motion condemning Islamophobia amidst death threats to Muslim MPs, Alghabra stated that his primary concern was his staff who process these messages.[16] He continued that it is important to have a conversation about Islamophobia and that he purposely does not delete comments received on his Facebook page. Alghabra attributes backlash against the motion to a campaign of misinformation and ignorance.[16]

• Official website
• Omar Alghabra – Parliament of Canada biography