Imagine for a second that you are in a job where
doing the the quote -unquote right thing Constantly
puts you at odds with your boss right and your
colleagues and oh, yeah about 70 % of the general
public that is Quite the stressful work environment.
Yeah, exactly I mean every single day you walk
into the office knowing that sticking to your
principles just simply refusing to bend a popular
opinion Might actually end your career Yeah.
So you have to ask yourself, would you keep doing
it? Or would you eventually cave just to keep
the peace? Well, it is the ultimate test of integrity,
isn't it? Totally. Most of us like to think we
would hold the line. But when the pressure to
compromise is coming from the literal people
who control your livelihood, I mean, the math
usually changes for most folks. It really does.
But the reason we are asking this today. because
we found a historical source detailing the career
of a man who actually lived that exact scenario.
He really did. Right, so today's deep dive into
the source material focuses on William Warren
Ullman. He was a Canadian member of Parliament
whose entire career was essentially Well, a master
class in staggering contradictions. And completely
immovable principles. Yes. We are extracting
a roadmap of how one man navigated these massive
political and moral dilemmas. fighting to abolish
the death penalty to literally taking on his
own country's national police force. It's a wild
ride. And just a quick note before we dive in,
we are dealing with some incredibly heavy, highly
polarizing topics today. Very heavy. Yeah. Our
source material covers everything from capital
punishment and abortion to international conflicts
and national security. Right. Which means we
need to state directly to you listening. Our
goal here is never to endorse a right wing or
left wing viewpoint on any of these issues. Exactly.
We are strictly here to impartially report on
the fascinating historical facts contained in
the source material. We lay out the mechanics
of what happened and why it happened. And well,
you get to draw your own conclusions. Right.
Because our focus is on the architecture of his
leadership and the historical context of his
decisions. We're not here to litigate. the modern
political debates surrounding them. OK, let's
unpack this because his background sounds like
a recipe for a completely different kind of politician.
Oh, for sure. I mean, he was a Mile and Montreal
kid born in 1932. He played three years of varsity
ice hockey for the McGill Redmen, which is pretty
intense. Yeah. And he was deeply Catholic, Jesuit
educated. You hear that resume and you might
picture this, I don't know, rigid traditionalist,
but he eventually became a fierce champion for
deeply progressive, highly controversial causes.
And that background is actually the foundation
of everything you did. It really forged this
unbreakable, highly stubborn moral compass. Blubbering
is definitely the word. Yeah, you have the physical
discipline of a varsity athlete, the intellectual
rigor of a civil law degree, and this deeply
held personal faith. All of these things combined
to create a politician who viewed the law not
just as some administrative rule book, but as
a moral instrument. And we really see that put
to the test when he gets his first taste of real
power, don't we? Oh, absolutely. To understand
his lifelong fight against unchecked authority,
we first have to look at what happened when Pierre
Trudeau appointed him to actually run it. So
in 1972, Alman becomes the Solicitor General
of Canada. Which, I mean, is an incredibly tense
period to step into that specific role. Yeah,
the timing was wild. He is serving right after
the October crisis. For those unfamiliar, this
was a period where domestic terrorism by a separatist
group known as the FLQ led to martial law essentially
being declared. Right, the military was literally
deployed on the streets of Montreal. Exactly.
The nation is completely on edge and national
security is the absolute top priority. And as
the listener general, Almonde is suddenly the
watchmen over the watchdogs, the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, the RCMP. But it turns out the
watchdogs were completely off the leash. They
really were. Right. In 1976, the director general
of the RCMP Security Service comes to Almond
and asks him to sign a warrant to intercept the
mail of a Toronto couple. The intelligence suggested
this couple was conspiring with the Japanese
Red Army to launch a terrorist attack on the
1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. A huge threat.
Right. So given the stakes, Alman signs it. But
then nine months later, he has to scramble to
cancel the warrant. Yeah, because the Justice
Department knocks on his door and basically informs
him that intercepting mail like that blatantly
violates the Post Office Act. It was a massive
wake up call regarding how intelligence agencies
actually operate. And the thing is, it was not
an isolated incident. Right. The source talks
about another case. Yes. Look at the Leonard
Peltier extradition case that same year. Peltier
was a prominent Indigenous rice activist in the
United States who fled to Canada after a deadly
shootout with the FBI. Almond was a Solicitor
General when Peltier was extradited back to the
U .S. And according to Almond, the FBI submitted
flat -out false information to the Canadian government
to secure that extradition. Yeah, I read this
in the source. They submitted an affidavit from
a woman with severe mental disorders who falsely
claimed to be Pelty's girlfriend, just to manufacture
a reason to get him back across the border. Exactly.
And the Canadian intelligence apparatus didn't
stop them. Unbelievable. And then you have his
testimony before the McDonald Commission. This
was a massive federal inquiry launched specifically
to investigate illegal activities by the RCMP.
Right. So after he left the post of Solicitor
General, Allman sat down and testified that the
RCMP had routinely lied to him. Just to his face.
Yeah. Yeah. He recounted how they actually advised
him that breaking into buildings without warrants
was totally legal, as long as the officers did.
didn't steal anything while they were inside.
Wow. I mean, it's like being hired to manage
a bank, only to find out the security guards
are running a side hustle robbing the vault,
and they're looking you in the eye and saying
it's standard company policy. Gad is the perfect
way to look at it, and this explains the underlying
mechanism for the rest of his career. Well, this
era was the crucible for Almond. Witnessing the
RCMP and the FBI manipulate the law shattered
any blind faith he had in the infallibility of
the state. I see. Yeah. He realized that institutions,
even those heavily funded and specifically designed
to protect citizens, are fundamentally flawed
and entirely capable of profound dishonesty.
And that profound distrust of state power leads
directly into what might be his ultimate stand,
right? It does. Because Almond had just witnessed
firsthand how dishonest state justice systems
could be. he became fiercely determined to strip
the state of its absolute ultimate power. The
power to kill. Exactly. In 1976, he tabled Bill
C -84. The objective was to remove the death
penalty from the criminal code entirely and replace
it with a minimum 25 -year life sentence with
no chance of parole. And the public backlash
to this was astronomical. Oh, it was huge. Polls
at the time showed 70 % of Canadians actually
supported capital punishment. Opponents were
screaming for a national referendum. Even former
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker weighed in, didn't
he? He did. Diefenbaker argued that abolishing
the death penalty right before the 1976 Montreal
Olympics, especially after the horrific Munich
massacre at the previous summer games, was sending
a green light to global terrorists. Wow. And
didn't Canada's official hangman even publicly
call for Allman's resignation? Yes. The pressure
was coming from every conceivable angle, from
his constituents, his political rivals, the media,
everyone. Okay, here's where it gets really interesting.
I have to push back a bit on Allman's strategy
here. Okay, sure. If 70 % of the public actively
wants something, isn't it political suicide?
Or even fundamentally undemocratic for an elected
representative to just ignore them? That's the
big question. Right. How did he justify essentially
looking at the Canadian public and telling them
they were wrong? Well, it comes down to a fundamental
philosophical debate about the nature of democracy.
Almond argued that a representative democracy
deliberately excludes plebiscites or direct public
votes on complex, emotionally charged issues.
OK, so he didn't believe in direct democracy
for this. Exactly. His defense was that members
of parliament are elected to deliberate. They
are paid to study the granular details of the
justice system and make informed decisions of
conscience. Oh, I just follow the crowd. Right.
They are not elected to just blindly read the
latest opinion polls and rubber stamp the anger
of the public. And he also pointed out a massive
glaring hypocrisy in the system itself, didn't
he? He did. Canada had a death penalty law on
the books, sure, but Parliament had commuted.
every single death sentence since 1962. Oh, wow.
So no one was actually being executed anyway.
Exactly. It was functioning as security theater.
It looked tough on paper, but the state wasn't
actually carrying it out. That is fascinating.
And again, keeping to our rule of impartiality,
we aren't here to debate the morality of the
death penalty itself. Right, of course. We are
examining the mechanics of Alman's political
courage. He genuinely believed it was illegitimate
to grant the cabinet and the judiciary the ultimate
power over a person. especially given the institutional
corruption he had just uncovered as Solicitor
General. So he and Prime Minister Trudeau knew
a forced party vote on this would basically tear
the government apart, so they made it a free
vote. Which means members could vote their conscience
instead of the party line. Yeah, and it was an
absolute nail -biter. The bill narrowly passed
131 to 124. That margin is incredibly tight,
especially considering there was a liberal majority
in the House at the time. Super tight. It proves
how polarizing the issue was and it shows the
sheer volume of political capital. Allman was
willing to burn just to codify his principles
into law. And that willingness to burn political
capital, to defy the majority, it really bled
into every other role he took. He essentially
turned into a rebel within his own party. He
really did. Let's look at his time as Minister
of Indian Affairs and Northern Development from
1976 to 1977. What was the baseline culture he
walked into there? Was the government actually
taking indigenous land claims seriously at that
point? Not at all. The standard attitude of the
era was highly dismissive. How bad was it? Well,
his predecessor in that role, Jud Buchanan, had
literally referred to the land claims and self
-government demands of the Dean people as, quote,
goobel de gook. Wow. Seriously. So Almond walks
into an office where the standing policy is essentially
mockery. Yes. How does he actually change the
mechanism of that department? What's fascinating
here is how he fundamentally flipped the legal
approach. Before Allman, the government essentially
treated historical treaties like ancient, ignorable
suggestions. Allman told his bureaucrats to treat
them as binding, modern contracts. He extended
the rule of law to indigenous witnesses by taking
historical treaties at face value. That's a massive
shift. Huge. If a treaty guaranteed a right,
Allman decided the burden of proof was on the
government to prove they shouldn't honor it,
rather than forcing indigenous groups to beg
for it. He publicly expressed sympathy for the
political demands of the Dean and the Metis.
And he was apparently on the verge of reaching
a massive land claim and autonomy settlement.
He was very close. But then the party pulls the
plug. He gets abruptly replaced in the fall of
1977 by Hugh Faulkner. And Faulkner immediately
rolls back all the progress Allman made and proposes
a standard, highly limited cash settlement and
reserves instead. Which unfortunately stalled
the talks until 1981. Yeah, Almond was operating
from a baseline of empathy and legal fairness
that was radically ahead of its time for a federal
bureaucrat, but it made him a massive liability
to party leadership who just wanted quiet, traditional
governance. Yeah, he became an absolute nightmare
for party whips. I mean, jump to the Constitution
Act in 1982. Oh, this is a big one. This is his
own party's massive legacy -defining achievement.
Pierre Trudeau's crowning moment, and Allman
votes against it. He does. He hated the inclusion
of Section 33, known as the Not Withstanding
Clause, which essentially lets provincial legislatures
legally override certain charter rights. Right.
He also opposed Section 59, which delayed minority
language education rights in Quebec. Because
he voted against his own party's signature legislation,
he never held a cabinet seat again. He prioritized
the structural integrity of the Constitution
over his own career advancement. He just refused
to endorse a document that he felt contained
legal loopholes for human rights. Andy did the
exact same thing in 1995. He did, yeah. He voted
against his own finance minister, Paul Martin.
over a budget that introduced deep spending cuts
and failed to scrap the goods and services tax,
the GST, which the party had explicitly campaigned
on promising to remove. Right. They promised
the voters. So the prime minister at the time,
Jean Chrétien, retaliated by firing him from
his position as chair of the Justice Committee.
He was entirely willing to publicly embarrass
his own government if he felt they were breaking
traditional party principles or going back on
their word to the voters. OK, but I have to stop
you here on this next detail from the source.
OK, what is it? Because I want to know if this
is actually principled leadership or if he was
just being petty. Oh, the turtleneck. Yes. Yeah.
In 1979, the Speaker of the House refused to
recognize him to ask a question because he was,
quote, improperly dressed. He was wearing a turtleneck
sweater with his suit. instead of a traditional
tie. He argued the ruling, lost, and had to literally
borrow a tie from a rival NDP politician just
to stand up and do his job. That's true. Is refusing
to wear a tie really making a stand or just causing
a scene? I mean, it might seem like a petty wardrobe
malfunction, but... It perfectly encapsulates
his philosophy. Really? How so? He fundamentally
rejected arbitrary rules that lacked logical
sense. If a rule didn't serve a clear moral or
functional purpose, he wouldn't conform to it
just because... That's the way it's always been
done. Oh, OK. It was the exact same logic he
applied to the death penalty or indigenous treaties
just scaled down to parliamentary dress codes.
OK, I see the connection there. He refused to
accept because I said so as a valid argument
from authority. Exactly. We see that internal
logic again with the 1988 abortion vote. As a
devout Catholic, Allmont personally opposed the
act of abortion, but he voted against criminalizing
it, which drew massive ire from conservative
Catholics across the country. And this is a crucial
distinction in his philosophy. He rigidly separated
his personal theological beliefs from his duty
to public law. Right. He did not believe his
personal Catholicism should dictate the criminal
code for all Canadians. He recognized that a
pluralistic society cannot function if one group's
religious doctrine is weaponized as state law.
Wow. It feels like he was a whistleblower inside
his own party. In modern politics, where towing
the party line is everything, could a Warren
All -Man even survive today? That's a great question.
Probably not for very long. Yeah. He retired
from parliament before the 1997 election, essentially
pushed out of federal power. Once you've alienated
your own party and left the federal system, what
is left? Not much for most politicians. Right.
But for All -Man, the transition was completely
seamless. He just took his fight outside the
system, proving his principles weren't just for
a political show. He began scaling his anti -authoritarian
philosophy to different levels. Globally, he
took over as the president of the International
Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development,
replacing Ed Broadbent. He brought his focus
on Indigenous rights to the international stage,
heavily supporting the drafting of the International
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
He was also an active participant in the negotiations
for the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland, wasn't
he? He was, which is actually where he met his
second wife, Rosemary. Oh, wow, that's amazing.
But then we get this incredible full circle moment
on the federal level in 2005. He serves as legal
counsel for the International Civil Liberties
Monitoring Group during the Marr Air Inquiry.
Right. And for context, Mar Air was a Canadian
citizen who was detained during a layover in
the United States and deported to Syria, where
he was tortured for nearly a year. Horrible story.
It is. It later came to light that the RCMP had
provided the Americans with faulty, misleading
intelligence that falsely linked Air to terrorism.
So what does this all mean? The grand irony here
is staggering. Oh, totally. Almond starts his
career in the 1970s, trying to control the RCMP
from the top down, sitting in the Solicitor General's
chair. 30 years later, he is ending his career
fighting them from the outside in a public inquiry.
Arguing that Canada's national security agencies
were once again choosing security over basic
human rights and operating completely unaccountably.
Exactly. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
it shows that for Almond, the venue changed,
but the mission never wavered. Right. Whether
he was sitting in the prime minister's cabinet
or acting as external legal counsel, his goal
was always protecting the vulnerable from institutional
overreach. And he even scaled that mission all
the way down to the municipal level. In 2005,
he ran for Montreal City Council. He did. His
primary goal was to help oversee the city's implementation
of a rights charter that he had personally helped
draft. But true to form, even as a member of
the Mayor's Union Montreal Party, he constantly
criticized his own mayor, Gerald Tremblay, whenever
he disagreed with him. Of course he did. He even
voted against the mayor's motion to rename Park
Avenue. He just couldn't help himself, and if
he thought the boss was wrong, He remained fiercely
independent, constantly scrutinizing the mechanisms
of power. In 2011, he supported the Canadian
vote for Gaza to deliver supplies to Palestinians.
Right. And in 2014, he fought against a Canadian
bill designed to implement a global convention
on cluster munitions. Right, because he actually
read the fine print. He always read the fine
print. He argued that a specific clause in the
bill gave Canada an explicit exemption to use
these weapons during joint military operations
with non signatories like the United States.
Exactly. He pointed out that Australia and New
Zealand had passed similar legislation without
creating that loophole and he warned that Canada's
exemption would just encourage other countries
to ruin the integrity of the treaty. Yeah. He
was sharp on the absolute mechanics of the law
right up until the end. He was. Warren Allman
passed away from terminal brain cancer in December
2016 at the age of 84. His legacy is still highly
visible today though. In 2023 Somerald Park,
which is right in the middle of the Montreal
constituency he represented for over 30 years,
was officially renamed Warren Almond Park. It's
a fitting tribute. It really is a fitting permanent
tribute for a guy who spent his entire life standing
his ground. Which brings us back to where we
started. I want you to think about your own life
and career. Yeah. How often do we accept the
notwithstanding clauses at our jobs? the little
moral compromises, the turning a blind eye to
lazy goobledygook excuses, just to keep the peace
with our bosses or our peers. It happens all
the time. Allman's life is a reminder that you
don't actually have to compromise your core principles,
though you might occasionally have to borrow
a tie from a rival to get your point across.
It is a deeply challenging legacy, and it leaves
us with something critical to mull over, especially
regarding his stance on the death penalty referendum.
It's a Well, Almond warned that ruling by plebiscite,
just doing whatever the polls say in the heat
of the moment, would open the door to dangerous
reactionary governance. In today's hyper connected
world where politicians have instant access to
real time polling. algorithmic feedback, and
constant social media outrage, we have to ask.
Have we completely lost the era of the deliberative
representative? Wow, that's a great point. And
if we replace moral conviction with algorithmic
crowd pleasing, what happens to the minority
voices when the majority decides they are expendable?
That is a heavy but absolutely essential question
to leave on. Thank you so much for joining us
for this deep dive into the source material.
Keep questioning, keep learning, and we will
catch you on the next one.