Alberta Liberal Party

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Alberta Liberal Party
Image:albertaliberallogo.JPG
Active Provincial Party
Founded 1905
Leader Kevin Taft
President Dan Carroll
Headquarters 10247 - 124 Street NW
Edmonton, Alberta
T5N 1P8
Political ideology Liberalism
International alignment None
Colours Red
Website http://www.albertaliberal.com

The Alberta Liberal Party is a political party in Alberta, Canada.

Contents

[edit] Early history

The Liberals formed the government in Alberta for the first 15 years of the province's existence. Alexander C. Rutherford (1905-1910), Arthur L. Sifton (1910-1917) and Charles Stewart (1917-1921) led Liberal governments, until the party was swept from office in the 1921 election by the United Farmers of Alberta.

[edit] Political fortunes since 1921

Currently the party is the Official Opposition in the Alberta legislature, but the party has suffered through some difficult times in the eight decades since their defeat as the province's governing party. In opposition, the party has won up to 32 seats but has also at times been shut out of the provincial legislature altogether. Between 1971 and 1986, the party did not win a single seat in the Alberta Legislature, and did not receive more than 6% of the popular vote. The point is further discussed under the history of the party's leadership.

It is widely argued that the provincial Liberals' popularity in Alberta was especially hurt during the federal government of Pierre Trudeau's Liberal Party of Canada between 1968 and 1984. Trudeau's policies were unpopular in western Canada and especially in Alberta, particularly official bilingualism, and the National Energy Program, which exacerbated feelings of western alienation. During this period, the provincial Liberal party suffered because of its connections with its federal cousins. However, the provincial party had its own internal problems which had to be resolved, and which may be a better explanation as to why it failed to reach anything near the level of support of its federal counterpart during that period.

The Liberals' fortunes improved in the late 1980s and they returned to the Alberta legislature in the 1986 election, when leader Nicholas Taylor led them to win 4 seats and 12% of the popular vote. Following the 1987 leadership review, a leadership contest was held in 1988. The race was contested by Taylor, MLA Grant Mitchell, and Edmonton Mayor Laurence Decore. Decore was elected leader of the party after the first ballot.

The Alberta Liberal Party ran one candidate in the 1989 Senate Election, Bill Code, he finished with 22.5% of the vote.

[edit] The party in the 1990s

In the 1993 election, the Liberals, under former Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore, enjoyed their greatest success since holding power when they swept Edmonton, winning a total of 32 seats, and collecting 39% of the popular vote. This enabled the party to displace the New Democrats to become the Official Opposition to the Progressive Conservative government of Ralph Klein.

In 1994, Decore resigned as leader and four MLA's contested the leadership race: Edmonton McClung MLA Grant Mitchell, Fort McMurray MLA Adam Germain, Edmonton Roper MLA Sine Chadi, and Calgary Buffalo MLA Gary Dickson. After all the ballots had been counted, Mitchell was elected as party leader.

The party continued to hold its position as Official Opposition, but lost 10 seats in the 1997 election. With 18 seats in the Alberta legslature, Mitchell resigned as leader, and another race was declared.

The 1998 leadership race also saw four contestants: former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Nancy MacBeth, Lethbridge East MLA Ken Nicol, Edmonton Meadowlark MLA Karen Leibovici, and Edmonton Riverview MLA Linda Sloan. MacBeth was elected on the first ballot.

[edit] Recent history

In the 2001 election, MacBeth led a campaign which ended with only seven Liberal MLAs being elected. MacBeth also lost her own seat in the election.

In the days following the 2001 election, MacBeth resigned and Ken Nicol was acclaimed leader. Nicol led the party until 2004, when he ran for the federal Liberal Party of Canada in the Lethbridge riding. Edmonton Mill Woods MLA Don Massey briefly stood as interim leader until a leadership race was held.

On March 27, 2004, Kevin Taft was elected the new leader of the Alberta Liberal Party. In the 2004 provincial election, the Liberals more than doubled their seats to 16 and increased their share of the popular vote to 29%. More significantly, and to the surprise of most observers, the Liberals were able to win three seats in the traditionally conservative city of Calgary.

Officially, since 1976, the Alberta Liberal party is not affiliated with the Liberal Party of Canada, although several Alberta Liberals have gone on to run for the federal Liberals.

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[edit] Party leaders

When Charles Stewart resigned as leader after the 1921 election (in 1922), John R. Boyle, a former Attorney-General, led the legislative caucus until he was appointed to the judiciary in 1924, and Charles R. Mitchell, also a former cabinet minister succeeded him. John Bowen acted in the interim until a party convention chose Joseph T. Shaw, a former M.P.

In the lead-up to the 1930 election, the party chose George H. Webster, M.L.A. for Calgary City. He resigned in favour of William R. Howson, who led the party energetically if unsuccessfully in 1935. When he was appointed as a judge in 1937, Edward L. Gray succeeded him. Gray strongly favored the formal anti-Social Credit coalition with the Conservatives and some UFA and Labour figures. Gray himself was successful in a byelection in Edmonton, but transferred to Bow Valley, the seat formerly held by C.R. Mitchell and Shaw, for the 1940 election. He was defeated.

The coalition, the Independent Citizens' Association, slowly lost any noticeably Liberal figures, while a small group resisted being part of it. Leonidas-A. Giroux of Grouard represented this group in the legislature from 1940 until 1944, when he retired. No candidate identifying himself or herself as a Liberal stood in 1944, although some recognizably Liberal figures were candidates for the ICA. None were successful, and the party was completely dormant until refounded in 1948 by James Harper Prowse, elected as a non-partisan Armed Forces' Representative in 1944.

Internal battle squabbles had more to do with the near-extinction of the Liberals at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, than did the local unpopularity of the Trudeau government. The party's worst days at a provincial level began at a time when the Trudeau government was relatively popular. The history of the party's leadership had much to do with it.

Prowse had some severe personal difficulties which forced him to take some time away from public life, and was succeeded by John Walter Grant MacEwan, M.L.A. for Calgary City. MacEwan was beset by problems entirely beyond his ability to control. The electoral ability of any opposition party leader became very chancy with the abolition of the STV electoral system used for Edmonton and Calgary cities. The Manning government had successfully renewed and reinvigorated itself, and recovered much of the ground it had previously lost, while the recent Diefenbaker landslide made the Progressive Conservative Party seem a more attractive vehicle for the party's traditional supporters. MacEwan was the first of many leaders who faced a problem similar to those of Liberals in Britain and other Western Canadian provinces. Ideologically, the party was being squeezed between traditional conservatism, and social democracy. In a social sense, the party presented an older and more traditional image in comparison to the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, who, given the predominance of Social Credit, seemed fairly liberal. Almost inevitably, the Liberals were reduced to a single member, Mike Maccagno of Lac La Biche. MacEwan retired shortly after this disaster.

He was succeeded by David B. Hunter, then mayor of Athabasca, who campaigned aggressively on the creation of a publicly owned electrical power company, with strong environmentalist overtones. This likely limited any growth by the Alberta New Democrats in the 1963 election, and it established the party with a distinct image and identity separate from the Progressive Conservatives. However, it was internally divisive, and a number of candidates, including one of its two successful ones, repudiated the platform's main plank. Hunter himself was defeated personally in Athabasca. He did not resign until after he lost a later byelection, when he decided to run for Parliament (unsuccessfully).

Maccagno, who was leader of the minuscule opposition in the Legislature, served as interim leader, but did not regard himself as leadership material. In a convention which exposed the deep ideological fault lines within the party, Adrian Berry, a Calgary lawyer, emerged as leader from a highly acrimonious contest. Internal dissensions continued, and late in 1966, Berry resigned under circumstances still not explained. As a provincial election could be expected within months, Maccagno became leader almost by default, and somewhat unwillingly.

Maccagno was elected, the first Liberal leader since 1955 and the last until 1986 to achieve the feat. So were his two colleagues. However, the party placed fourth in the popular vote, and had lost it status as the apparent alternative, albeit a weak one to Social Credit. Peter Lougheed and the Progressive Conservatives presented the attraction of a modern, urban -based party, which was decidedly more liberal than the Social Credit government. While the sitting Liberals had considerable personal support, that appeared to be the party's last base of strength. They lost that in short order, when Maccgano decided to run for Parliament (unsuccessfully), and another died. The third drifted into the Conservative Party.

In 1969, the party chose a Calgary clergyman turned businessman, John T. Lowery, to succeed him. The party placed very poorly in a byelection to replace the Liberal MLA who had died, and Lowery thought he saw some hope in an electoral arrangement with Social Credit, which he believed was showing signs of modernization and rejuvenation under Harry Strom. He was likely encouraged in this by the federal party's two Alberta cabinet ministers, H.A. Olson and Pat Mahoney, who had Social Credit pasts. When word of negotiations to that effect came out, it became evident that any such proposal was deeply opposed by the core membership of both parties. Lowery resigned in the face of it.

The following year saw the provincial Liberal party come very close to extinction. Its political credibility had been steadily eroding, and with the negotiations with Social Credit, it was not immediately clear that it had any ideological purpose. There was much discussion of the party abandoning provincial politics altogether (there was only one organization at federal and provincial levels), and concentrating on federal politics, which looked a great deal more hopeful at the time than they did two years later.

It took a major act of will for the party to decide to soldier on as an independent force, which it did in repudiating Lowery, and deciding to contest the 1971 election, however hopeless the prospects might be. The party chose, almost by default, Robert Russell of St. Albert, admittedly a highly controversial figure who had been passed over twice, but who had a strong desire for the position, and who had strongly supported David Hunter's vision for the party.

The party suffered as bad a defeat as anyone could have expected in the 1971 election, but it was with a sense that it had seen the worst, and for the next 15 years, it began to work at regaining both an intellectual and political credibility which it had nearly completely surrendered.

[edit] Current Alberta Liberal MLAs

  • Bharat Agnihotri (Edmonton-Ellerslie): Community Development Critic
  • Laurie Blakeman (Edmonton-Centre): House Leader; Health and Wellness Critic
  • Bill Bonko (Edmonton-Decore): Sustainable Resource Development Critic
  • Harry B. Chase (Calgary-Varsity): Infrastructure and Transportation, Parks Critic
  • Mo Elsalhy (Edmonton-McClung): Innovation and Science, Government Services Critic
  • Jack Flaherty (St. Albert): Education Critic
  • Hugh MacDonald (Edmonton-Gold Bar): Chair, Standing Committee on Public Accounts; Energy, Agriculture Critic
  • Weslyn Mather (Edmonton-Mill Woods): Children's Services Critic
  • Bruce Miller (politician) (Edmonton-Glenora): Deputy Whip; Justice, Solicitor General Critic
  • Rick Miller (Edmonton-Rutherford): Whip; Finance Critic
  • Bridget Pastoor (Lethbridge-East): International and Intergovernmental Relations, Seniors Critic
  • David Swann (Calgary-Mountain View): Environment Critic
  • Kevin Taft (Edmonton-Riverview): Leader; Municipal Affairs, Government Restructuring, Community Development Critic
  • Dave Taylor (Calgary-Currie): Deputy Leader; Advanced Education Critic
  • Maurice Tougas (Edmonton-Meadowlark): Aboriginal Affairs, Gaming Critic

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


v • d • e
Politics of Alberta
Lieutenant-Governor Norman Kwong • Former lieutenant-governors
Premier Ed Stelmach • Former premiers
Opposition Leader Kevin Taft • Former Opposition Leaders
Speaker of the Assembly Ken Kowalski
Legislature Current assembly • Former legislatures • Executive Council (Cabinet)
Political parties Progressive Conservatives • Liberals • New Democrats • Alliance
Alberta Party • Communists • Greens • Separation • Social Credit
Elections 2004 general election • Past elections • Electoral districts • Current electoral divisions
Current issues Equalization payments • Prosperity Bonus • Same-sex marriage • Separatism
Other Canadian politics Federal • BC • AB • SK • MB • ON • QC • NB • NS • PEI • NL • YU • NT • NU
Provincial and territorial Liberal parties (edit):
Manitoba - New Brunswick - Newfoundland and Labrador - Nova Scotia - Prince Edward Island - Saskatchewan - Yukon
Allied, autonomous Liberal parties: Alberta - Ontario
The Liberal parties in British Columbia and Quebec are not affiliated with the federal Liberal Party.
The Northwest Territories Liberal Party dissolved in 1905 when Alberta and Saskatchewan were formed.
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