Howard Sapers

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Howard Sapers is a civil servant and former provincial level politician from Alberta, Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1993 until 2001.

1 Political career
2 Late life
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Political career

Sapers was first elected to the Alberta Legislature in the 1993 Alberta general election. He won a large plurality defeating five other candidates. The race was primarily contested between Sapers and Progressive Conservative candidate Gwen Harris. Sapers beat Harris by a margin of 2600 votes to win the Edmonton Glenora electoral district.^[1]

On March 19, 1996 Sapers along with Liberal leader Grant Mitchell were sued by a company called Hotel de Health. After the company CEO belived that the member made defamatory remarks after the company investigated building and operating private hospitals in Alberta.^[2]

Despite the lawsuit Sapers would win his second term in office a year later with a substantially reduced plurality in the 1997 Alberta general election. That race was hotly contested with Sapers defeating Progressive Conservative Kim MacKenzie and three other candidates by almost 1400 votes.^[3]

In November of 1999, Sapers came under investigation by ethics commissioner Robert Clark for the financing of his legal defence in the 1996 defamation suit. He was found to have breached the Conflict of Interest Act after he was given bad advice by Public Security Minister Stockwell Day. Clark recommended that there be no punishment for Sapers violation.^[2]

Sapers would be defeated in his bid for a third term in office by Drew Hutton in the 2001 Alberta general election.^[4]

[edit] Late life

After being defeated Sapers was appointed by the federal government to be the ombudsmen criminal investigator to oversea and investigate mistreatment of Canada's prison population.^[5]