Alvin "Al" Mackling (born December 31, 1927) is a longtime Canadian Democratic Socialist and a retired lawyer.
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 in the constituency of Assiniboia and was only narrowly defeated by the incumbent MLA, Reg Wightman.
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.