Former Liberal MP Charles Caccia, who represented the Toronto riding of Davenport at the municipal and federal levels for four decades, died Saturday after suffering a stroke.

Caccia was 78.

He was first elected to public office as a member of Toronto city council in December 1964 and then re-elected in 1966. In 1968, he was elected to the House of Commons as the Liberal MP for Davenport and re-elected in nine subsequent elections.

In September 1981, then Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau appointed him minister of labour. He was also appointed minister of the environment in August 1983.

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said in a statement on Sunday that Caccia was a "great Liberal, who dediciated his life to building a better Canada…. His passion for environmental and social justice issues was a great inspiration to all."

Caccia served on several House of Commons standing committees, and was chair of the standing committee on environment and sustainable development from 1993 to 2004.

He was born on April 28, 1930, in Italy and educated in Milan, where he completed high school and graduated in forestry economics at the University of Vienna in 1954. Caccia immigrated to Canada and settled in Toronto, where he was employed first by the University of Toronto's faculty of forestry and later at the Italian Trade Commission. In 1959, he co-founded COSTI, an organization that promotes adult and immigrant education.

At the time of his death, he was a senior fellow at the University of Ottawa's Institute of the Environment.