Beleaguered Alberta premier says he’ll quit

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This article was published 26/01/2011 (5615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach — pilloried as a hayseed lightweight and wounded by personal poll numbers that threaten his party’s 40-year dynasty — says he has answered the bell for a quarter century, but now it tolls for him.

“After 25 years of public service, I am not prepared to serve another full term as premier,” Stelmach told a news conference Tuesday.

It was a surprise announcement that delivered a tectonic jolt to Alberta’s political landscape just as it enters an election cycle for a vote Stelmach had previously pledged would come in March 2012.

By law the date could now be pushed out as far as March 2013.

Stelmach said he will submit his resignation papers soon, triggering a leadership race to replace him.

He fingered the Tories’ political rival on the right, the Wildrose Alliance, as one of the reasons he is going.

“There is a profound danger that the next election campaign will focus on personality and U.S.-style, negative-attack politics that (would be) directed at me personally,” he said. “The danger is that it could allow for an extreme-right party to disguise itself as a moderate party by focusing on personality — on me.”

The Wildrose Alliance, a right-of-centre party composed mainly of disillusioned Tories who broke away under Stelmach’s administration, has been matching the Tories in polls for more than a year.

Under telegenic Calgary business leader Danielle Smith, the Wildrose Alliance has tagged Stelmach’s team as faux-Conservatives, reckless spenders running multibillion-dollar deficits with no plan or vision to fix critical issues like health-care wait times.

Stelmach’s remark was surprising, given that the Wildrose Alliance in the last legislature session focused on its own policy alternatives, particularly health care.

Smith said Tuesday she was puzzled by Stelmach’s remarks.

“I’m not sure exactly what he’s referring to,” she said. “We have stayed completely focused on the issues and we intend to continue staying focused on the issues.”

Political scientist Duanne Bratt said Stelmach will be remembered as a man who didn’t catch a break.

“A lot of it was bad timing. He was the accidental premier, a compromise candidate, who came in after a charismatic leader just as a recession was hitting and the price of oil and gas dropped,” said Bratt, with Mount Royal University in Calgary.

“But having said that, some of his wounds were self-inflicted.”

Stelmach, 59, is a man of the soil, a farmer from east of Edmonton who served former premier Ralph Klein as a cabinet minister in three portfolios before winning the vote to replace him in 2006.

At that time, Alberta had enjoyed years of multibillion-dollar surpluses along with a soaring population that topped the three-million mark.

As premier, Klein had wiped out Alberta’s $23-billion debt, but his administration was viewed in 2006 as rudderless. Klein quit after a lukewarm vote at a party policy conference.

Stelmach was seen as a long shot to replace Klein but used a strong organization to get out the vote.

When federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice told the House of Commons last fall he was resigning to take an executive job at CIBC, Tory party insiders in Alberta said that was a way for him to keep his provincial options open should Stelmach leave.

The high-profile Prentice would present a formidable foe for the Wildrose Alliance. He is seen as a centrist Conservative and hails from Calgary.

 

— The Canadian Press