Alan Riddell

<!-- might be good to put most notable facts in lead -->Alan Riddell is a bilingual labour relations lawyer and partner with the law firm of Soloway Wright LLP in Ottawa, Canada. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto and France's Institut d'etudes politiques de Paris. While still a student, he worked for Progressive Conservative Party of Canada Senator and Foreign Affairs Critic Heath MacQuarrie, and later in the office of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. As a young lawyer he successfully argued a number of high profile cases, including the landmark decision of Dagg v. Minister of Finance in the Supreme Court of Canada, which defined the privacy rights of federal public servants under Canada's new Access to Information Act.

In March 2004, Riddell was approached by the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) to run as its candidate in the riding of Ottawa South, which was being vacated by Deputy Prime Minister, John Manley. He handily defeated others, including former Ottawa mayoralty candidate Terry Kilrea, for the 2004 CPC nomination. In the ensuing election, he ran against two nationally known names: David McGuinty, the younger brother of Ontario Liberal Party Premier Dalton McGuinty, and Monia Mazigh, of the New Democratic Party (NDP), best known as the wife of wrongfully imprisoned Syrian-Canadian Maher Arar. Although the riding was traditionally Liberal, it was thought that Riddell's background and dynamism, together with voter backlash...
Read More