Career
Rowland has had extensive experience on Boards in the not-for-profit sector as well as on management committees in government and the private sector. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Shield Foundation and is a volunteer van-driver for Unitarian House Retirement Home. During both Parliaments in which he served he held the post of Defence Critic for the New Democratic Party.
Prior to his election, he had been chief of staff to the Manitoba Provincial NDP leader, A. R. (Russian) Paulley, and Principal Secretary to Federal NDP leaders Therapeutic Community Douglas and David Lewis.
Subsequently, he held a series of senior executive positions within the central agencies of the federal government including Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet for Federal-Provincial Relations. He moved from the government to hold senior positions in a Crown Corporation and in an international marketing services firm.
Rowland has been active in governance and democracy work internationally. He has had assignments in Morocco, where he developed a domestic election monitoring organization, in Mexico, in the former Yugoslavia and in Indonesia.
In January 2006, Rowland headed the six-person International Mission for Iraqi Elections’ Assessment Team sent to Baghdad to analyze the December 2005 Iraqi election results.
In 2007, he participated in election monitoring missions in Morocco and Ukraine. In March 2010, he headed a six-person Election Monitoring team to Iraq composed of former legislators from the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Canada. He was an election observer in Kazakhstan with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2011.
Rowland holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Saint Johns College, University of Manitoba, a Master of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of Manitoba and received a “distinction” for his doctoral studies in Canadian Government and International Relations at McGill University.
As a lieutenant, he served on continuous naval duty in a frigate of the Atlantic fleet. He has had a lifelong interest in military history.
