Alvin "Al" Mackling (born December 31, 1927) is a longtime Canadian Democratic Socialist and a retired lawyer.
[2] He was a cabinet minister in the New Democratic Party governments of Edward Schreyer and Howard Pawley.
He worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway as a yardman for a year, then entered the Manitoba Law School in 1954, graduating in 1958.
He ran unsuccessfully in several subsequent Provincial elections and once as a Federal CCF candidate in 1957.
He was named Attorney General of Manitoba on July 16, 1969, and held the position for the Schreyer government's first term in office.
[3] As Attorney General, Mackling sought to develop better police-public cooperation introducing a system of cautions for highway traffic first offences and established a Manitoba Police Commission.
He was regarded as unnecessarily dogmatic by some members of the NDP Caucus and by some civil libertarians for shutting down a theatre which was screening the film Last Tango in Paris without consulting other government ministers.
[3] The NDP government was unexpectedly defeated in the Legislature in early 1988 as a result of the defection of Jim Walding, a disgruntled caucus member.
[5] Mackling decided not to contest the 1988 election and has not returned to provincial political life since that time.