Hard_Rom
Northumbrian Skald
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http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...s-has-died-at-84/ar-AAlkuyC?OCID=ansmsnnews11
Warren Allmand, the longtime Liberal MP from Montreal who legislated an end to capital punishment in Canada, died Wednesday. He was 84.
The Montreal native represented Notre-Dame-de-Grâce for 32 years, during which time he served as a cabinet minister during some of the headiest moments in Canadian history. But his most significant achievement in federal politics will no doubt be his tabling, in 1976, of the bill that abolished the death penalty in Canada. Bill C-84 passed in a free vote, 131 to 124 in favour of abolition. It was one of the closest votes in Canadian parliamentary history.
When he retired from federal politics in 1997, then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed him president of the Montreal-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a post he took over from its founding president, Ed Broadbent and held until 2002.
As a Liberal MP he voted against the 1982 Constitution Act, bucking at the inclusion of the notwithstanding clause. He also incurred the wrath of Jean Chrétien when, in 1995, he voted against the government's budget. Allmand, ever the progressive, couldn't stomach the budget's wide-ranging cuts to social services. He lost his position as chair of the Commons justice committee as a result.
Allmand's wife, Rosemary, told CBC her husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumour last February and took a turn for the worse in October. He was in palliative care at the CHUM's Notre-Dame Hospital when he died on Dec. 7.
Warren Allmand, the longtime Liberal MP from Montreal who legislated an end to capital punishment in Canada, died Wednesday. He was 84.
The Montreal native represented Notre-Dame-de-Grâce for 32 years, during which time he served as a cabinet minister during some of the headiest moments in Canadian history. But his most significant achievement in federal politics will no doubt be his tabling, in 1976, of the bill that abolished the death penalty in Canada. Bill C-84 passed in a free vote, 131 to 124 in favour of abolition. It was one of the closest votes in Canadian parliamentary history.
When he retired from federal politics in 1997, then-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed him president of the Montreal-based International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a post he took over from its founding president, Ed Broadbent and held until 2002.
As a Liberal MP he voted against the 1982 Constitution Act, bucking at the inclusion of the notwithstanding clause. He also incurred the wrath of Jean Chrétien when, in 1995, he voted against the government's budget. Allmand, ever the progressive, couldn't stomach the budget's wide-ranging cuts to social services. He lost his position as chair of the Commons justice committee as a result.
Allmand's wife, Rosemary, told CBC her husband had been diagnosed with a brain tumour last February and took a turn for the worse in October. He was in palliative care at the CHUM's Notre-Dame Hospital when he died on Dec. 7.
