Peter Kent, PC, MP (born July 27, 1943 in Sussex, England) is Minister of State for Foreign Affairs of the Americas in the Canadian Cabinet . In the Canadian federal election, 2008 on October 14, 2008, he ran for the Conservative Party of Canada and was elected as the member of parliament for the riding of Thornhill Peter Kent is the son of Parker Kent, a long-time employee of the Southam Newspaper Group who retired as associate editor at the Calgary Herald . His younger brother, Arthur Kent, is also a journalist, known in the first Gulf War as the "scud stud" . In the 1966, he went to South East Asia to cover the Vietnam War as a freelance foreign correspondent . He stayed on to cover the final withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam in 1973 and covered the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge in 1975 . Kent returned to Canada and worked as a producer for The National and, in 1976, he became the broadcast's anchor after Lloyd Robertson moved to CTV News . In 1978 Kent agreed to step down as anchor of The National after he submitted an intervention to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) recommending that the Corporation's licence not be renewed until management created procedures and protocols to prevent political interference in the CBC's editorial decision-making . Kent's complaint involved messages conveyed through the then CBC President Al Johnson from the Prime Minister's Office that resulted in cancellation of a speech by Premier René Lévesque and coverage of a speech by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. As a result of his intervention and descent from The National anchor desk, Kent accepted assignment to the newly created African Bureau of the CBC, located in Johannesburg. .