Jean René Allard

Jean René Allard (born September 22, 1930) is a former politician in Manitoba, Canada. He was elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1969 as a New Democrat, but subsequently left to sit as an Independent MLA.

The son of Alfred Allard and Donalda Champagne, Allard was educated at the Collège de Saint-Boniface and at the University of Manitoba. In 1952, he married Catherine Whyte. He fathered six children, Sylvette, Paul, Pierre, Luc, Marika and Marc. He worked as a lawyer, served as leader of the Union Nationale Metisse, and was a member of the Louis Riel Society and the St. Boniface Historical Society.

In 1966, he proposed that a statue of Louis Riel to be erected beside that of Queen Victoria at the Manitoba legislature. This idea was approved, and the statue was unveiled in 1971. The statue depicted a corpus in the nude and was not supported by all Métis. Allard, however, was one of its strongest defenders.[1]

He first ran for the Manitoba legislature in the 1966 election, as a Liberal, and finished second to Progressive Conservative incumbent Joseph Jeannotte in the northern riding of Rupertsland.

Allard subsequently aligned himself with the social-democratic NDP for the 1969 election, and was elected for Rupertsland in a close three-way race. His loyalty to the NDP was tenuous. He was an opponent of socialism, and later claimed that he only joined the NDP because of party leader Edward Schreyer's populism. He was also a social conservative, and strongly opposed to abortion. Allard was an unpopular figure in caucus, and was described by some as difficult to work with.

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