Lorenzo Berardinetti is a politician in Ontario, Canada. He is currently the member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario for Scarborough Southwest, representing the governing Ontario Liberal Party.

Mr. Berardinetti was born and raised in Scarborough, and is a lawyer. He has degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Windsor Law School, and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1988.

Berardinetti was a councillor in the Scarborough from 1988 to 1996, and represented Ward 37 (Scarborough Centre) on the amalgamated Toronto City Council from 1997 to 2003. In 1997, he served as chair of Toronto's administration committee, which created the framework for a unified civic administration in the amalgamated city. Berardinetti was generally regarded as an ally of Toronto mayor Mel Lastman during his years on the Toronto council.

In the provincial election of 2003, Berardinetti defeated incumbent Progressive Conservative Dan Newman by about 6,000 votes in Scarborough Southwest. The Liberals won a majority government under Dalton McGuinty in this election, and Berardinetti was appointed the deputy government whip on October 23, 2003.

He became prominent for his private member's bill, introduced in 2004, to outlaw what he called "gender-based pricing," whereby prices for equivalent or similar products and services, such as clothing, dry cleaning and haircuts, may vary between women and men. He contended women were charged much more for many products and services, which he had only discovered when he went shopping with his new wife. The bill reached second reading in early 2004.

External link

• MPP Lorenzo Berardinetti