Madam Speaker, Alan B. Gold, a former judge, passed away on Sunday. He was a great humanist who loved both social harmony and classical music.
He was a great judge and an effective judicial administrator. Beyond applying the law, he was, for me, the incarnation of one of the ideals of the judicial system: peaceful conflict resolution.
Justice Gold gave expression to this intrinsic value through his great talent as a negotiator. The strikes by longshoremen at the Port of Montreal, Canada Post workers, Vidéotron employees and the Oka crisis were all mediated by him and are conclusive evidence of the importance he ascribed to social harmony.
He was considered a wise, empathetic, funny and simple man who had an extraordinary sense of civic duty and was a example for us all. Our society has suffered a great loss.