Everything about The Alberta Liberal Party totally explained
The
Alberta Liberal Party is a political party in
Alberta,
Canada.
Early history
The Liberals formed the government in Alberta for the first 16 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.
1921: Loss of power
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 didn't win a single seat in the Alberta Legislature, and didn't receive more than 6% of the popular vote. The point is further discussed under the history of the party's leadership.
When Premier
Charles Stewart resigned as leader after his government's defeat at the hands of the
United Farmers of Alberta in the
1921 election,
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 Tweed Shaw, a former independent
left-wing 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. After he was appointed to the provincial superior court in 1936,
Edward Leslie 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.
Joseph Tremblay 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 the
1944 election.
Post-war
Internal 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,
Michael Maccagno of
Lac La Biche. MacEwan retired shortly after this disaster.
1960s
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 didn't 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 didn't 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 led the party into the
1967 provincial election.
Maccagno was elected, the first Liberal leader since 1955 and the last until 1986 to achieve the feat and the party increased its representation from two to three seats. 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, and displaced the Liberals to become Alberta's official opposition and government-in-waiting.
Shut out
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 a Liberal MLA who had died, and the party had lost its other two seats when Maccagno resigned to run in the 1968 federal election and then in November 1969 the last remaining Liberal MLA,
Bill Dickie,
crossed the floor to join Lougheed's surging Progressive Conservatives. 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 wasn't 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, 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 winning no seats in an election that saw Social Credit defeated after 36 years in power at the hands of Lougheed's Progressive Conservatives.
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.
1986: Return to the legislature
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.
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 MLAs 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.
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. Additionally, in June of 2007, Craig Cheffins won in a by-election, making him the fourth Alberta Liberal MLA in Calgary.
The
provincial election of March 3, 2008 proved to be another setback for the party. Going up against rookie Premier
Ed Stelmach, the Alberta Liberals had high hopes of increasing their seat count dramatically, particularly with the supposed discontent with the Tories in Calgary. However, the result was humbling for the Alberta Liberals. The party ended with only nine seats, down from 16 when the election was called. The party's power based in Edmonton was hit especially hard, with eight seats won in 2004 going Conservative.
Since 1976, the Alberta Liberal Party is no longer formally affiliated with the
Liberal Party of Canada.
Party leaders
Current Alberta Liberal MLAs
Laurie Blakeman (Edmonton Centre)
Harry B. Chase (Calgary Varsity)
Darshan Kang (Calgary McCall)
Hugh MacDonald (Edmonton Gold Bar)
Kent Hehr (Calgary Buffalo)
Bridget Pastoor (Lethbridge-East)
David Swann (Calgary Mountain View)
Dave Taylor (Calgary Currie)
Kevin Taft (Edmonton Riverview): LeaderFurther Information
Get more info on 'Alberta Liberal Party'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://alberta_liberal_party.totallyexplained.com">Alberta Liberal Party Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
