David Iftody

David Iftody (June 15, 1956 – February 5, 2001) was a Romanian Canadian politician. He served in the Canadian House of Commons from 1993 to 2000 as a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, representing the Manitoba riding of Provencher.

Iftody was born in Winnipeg, with family roots in Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba. He worked at the Manitoba Youth Care Centre from 1977 to 1982, and subsequently received Bachelor of Social Work (1985) and Master of Public Administration (1987) degrees from the University of Manitoba. He later moved to Ottawa, Ontario, where he worked as a management consultant and was owner and president of the firm Animus Research. He also lectured at Carleton University in the Faculty of Law.

Iftody returned to Manitoba to stand as the Liberal candidate for Provencher in the 1993 federal election, and was elected over Reform Party candidate Dean Whiteway. The Liberals won a majority government under Jean Chrétien, and Iftody entered parliament as a government backbencher. He was re-elected in the 1997 election against a strong challenge from the Reform Party, and served as parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development from July 1998 until 2000. He was defeated in the 2000 election, losing to Canadian Alliance candidate Vic Toews.

Issues

Banking

Iftody was appointed to the House of Commons Finance Committee shortly after his election. In this capacity, he called for the creation of a federal ombudsman with the authority to levy fines against major banks that cut off credit to small businesses without due cause. In 1996, he proposed an amendment to Canada's Bank Act that would prevent major Canadian banks from acquiring each other via hostile takeovers. The following year, he argued that the government acted with undue haste in approving the Bank of Nova Scotia's takeover of National Trust. He served on a Liberal caucus task force on financial institutions in 1998, and supported its conclusion that two proposed major bank mergers would be against the interests of Canadians.

Social issues and firearms registry

Iftody was a committed Roman Catholic, and was part of the socially conservative wing of the Liberal Party. In late 1994, he opposed his government's plans to add sexual orientation as a protected category under Canada's hate crimes legislation. He later opposed similar legislation protecting homosexuals under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and was one of 17 Liberal MPs to vote against legislation expanding the benefits of same-sex couples in 2000. Iftody said that he did not support discrimination and denied being part of a parliamentary "God squad", but nonetheless expressed a personal view that homosexuality was "spiritually unhealthy".

He also opposed the Chrétien government's plan to create a national firearms registry, and voted against the bill enabling the registry on its final reading. Some believed that he would be barred from sitting on a Commons standing committee for this decision, but he escaped punishment. Iftody's opposition to the gun registry was popular in his mostly rural riding.

David Iftody

International relations

Iftody was of Romanian background, and was chairman of the Canada-Romanian Parliamentary Group in the 1990s. In 1997, he helped convince the Romanian government to support an international treaty banning land mines. He also criticized Shell Oil for its human rights record in Nigeria, claiming that the company had violated "the elementary standards of the international code of conduct for business" by failing to intervene against government abuses. He supported increased trade between Canada and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Nuclear energy

Iftody supported nuclear energy, and actively campaigned to prevent the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. research station in Pinawa from closing.

Other

In late 1997, Iftody intervened to rescue a woman from a potential sexual assault in an Ottawa boarding house. Hearing a struggle in a room near his own, he discovered an intruder holding the female owner of the establishment against a wall. He stopped the attack, and detained the attacker until the police arrived.

Iftody died unexpectedly on February 5, 2001, after suffering internal bleeding in his liver following a snowmobile accident. The House of Commons paid tribute to him the following day. In 2003, Providence College and Theological Seminary in Otterburne began an annual series called the David Iftody Memorial Lectures.

All electoral information is taken from Elections Canada.