David Orlikow

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David Orlikow (born April 20, 1918 in Winnipeg, Manitoba; died January 19, 1998) was a Canadian politician, and a long-serving member of the Canadian House of Commons. He represented the riding of Winnipeg North from 1962 to 1988 as a member of the New Democratic Party.

Orlikow was the son of Louis Orlikow and Sarah Cherniack. He was related to Saul Cherniack, also a prominent Manitoba politician and a cabinet minister in the provincial government of Edward Schreyer.

He was educated at the University of Manitoba, and worked as a labour educator and pharmacist. He served as a trustee on the Winnipeg School Board from 1945 to 1951, and was an alderman in the city of Winnipeg from 1951 to 1959. He also served on the board of directors for Winnipeg's John Howard & Elizabeth Fry Society from 1958 to 1961, and was a board member of the Welfare Council of Greater Winnipeg in 1958.

Orlikow was also involved with the Jewish Labour Society and the Canadian Labour Congress. He helped to organize a steelworkers' union in the northern Manitoba town of Thompson, after INCO set up operations in the area.

In the provincial election of 1958, Orlikow was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba for the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in the north-end Winnipeg constituency of St. John's. He defeated his Progressive Conservative and Liberal-Progressive opponents by a significant margin. He was re-elected in the 1959 election, by the reduced margin of 251 votes over Progressive Conservative opponent Dan Zaharia. In 1961, Orlikow took party in Manitoba CCF's transition to the New Democratic Party.

He resigned his legislative seat in May 1962 to run for the Canadian House of Commons. He was elected in Winnipeg North in the federal election of 1962, defeating Liberal Paul Parashin by just under 4,000 votes. He defeated Parashin again by a narrower margin in the 1963 election, but increased his majority to nearly 10,000 votes in the election of 1965.

He came close to losing his seat in the "Trudeaumania" election of 1968, defeating Liberal Cecil Semchyshyn by only 963 votes. After this, he was returned by safe majorities in the elections of 1972 and 1974, 1979, 1980 and 1984.

Orlikow maintained an interest in the Manitoba NDP after switching to federal politics. In 1968-69, he helped facilitate the party's transition of leadership from Russell Paulley to Edward Schreyer.

There was a provincial swing against the NDP in the federal election of 1988, and Orlikow unexpectedly lost the Winnipeg North riding to Liberal Rey Pagtakhan by fewer than 2,000 votes. After a twenty-six year career in the Commons, Orlikow was genuinely surprised by the result.

Throughout his career, Orlikow fought for progressive policies in fields such as immigration, refugees, social justice and labour. During the 1980s, he sought reforms to Canada's Bank Act which would have required banks to invest a portion of their money in local development projects. In the very last week of his life, he was researching ways for the federal and provincial governments to recover monies from tobacco companies for the social costs of cigarette use.

After his death in January 1998, former staffer Dan O'Connor wrote the following elegy:

"David was always on the side of the ordinary person. He was relentless in the pursuit of justice from big government or big business. The most important job in his office was the individual case work, and he didn't trust it to anyone else. He made every phone call and wrote every letter."[1]

The Canadian House of Commons paid tribute to Orlikow on February 4, 1998.

Orlikow married Velma (Val) Kane on June 1, 1946. During the 1950s, Velma Orlikow was a patient at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal at a time when the American Central Intelligence Agency was conducting its notorious MK-ULTRA brainwashing experiments at the facility. She was unwittingly dosed with LSD and was exposed to brainwashing tapes. Along with eight other former patients, she later sued the CIA for mistreatment and won.[2]

Velma died in 1990. Near the end of his life, David Orlikow encouraged NDP MPs such as Svend Robinson to seek government compensation for the Allan Institute's victims, and for their families.