Alison Redford
Alison Merrilla Redford is a Canadian lawyer and former politician. She was the 14th premier of Alberta, having served in this capacity from October 7, 2011, to March 23, 2014. Redford was born in Kitimat, British Columbia, and grew up all over Canada and overseas before settling in Calgary as a teenager.
In the 2008 provincial election, Redford was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly for the district of Calgary-Elbow. She served in the cabinet of Ed Stelmach as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General. Redford became premier upon winning the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta, and on April 23, 2012, she led her party to victory in the 2012 provincial election. Redford is the first female premier in the province's history and the eighth woman to serve as a premier in the history of Canada. Of the Alberta premiers with an elected mandate, her term in office was the shortest.
On March 19, 2014, Redford announced that she would resign as premier of Alberta effective March 23, 2014. She was succeeded by Deputy Premier Dave Hancock on an interim basis. She announced her resignation as an MLA on August 6, 2014.
Early life
Redford was born March 7, 1965, in Kitimat, British Columbia, the daughter of Helen Kay and Merrill Redford. Her mother was a Scottish immigrant, originally from Glasgow. Redford's family moved to Nova Scotia and Borneo, and to Calgary by the time Redford was 12. She graduated from Bishop Carroll High School, Calgary, and the College of Law at the University of Saskatchewan in 1988.Throughout the 1990s, Redford worked as a technical adviser on constitutional and legal reform issues in various parts of Africa for the European Union, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Canadian Government and the Government of Australia. Her work in Africa focused on human rights litigation, developing education programs, and policy reform with respect to gender issues.
One of Redford's most notable appointments was by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as one of the four International Election Commissioners to administer Afghanistan's first parliamentary elections, held in September 2005. Political issues in the elections program within Alberta at that time were under question by the Elections Commissioner. She also served as an adviser to the Privy Council Office on Canada's future involvement in Afghanistan subsequent to the elections. Her work has included assignments in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Namibia, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Philippines. Before her most current post, Redford managed a judicial training and legal reform project for the Ministry of Justice and the Supreme People's Court in Vietnam.
Redford is also a past member of the Girl Guides of Canada and was featured in a museum exhibit about prominent Girl Guides at the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery.
Political career
Federal politics
In the 1980s Redford served as Senior Policy Advisor to former Prime Minister Joe Clark, who was the Secretary of State for External Affairs. She went on to work in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada from 1988 to 1990, under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. In this capacity, Redford organized a series of national foreign policy consultations facilitating public input on the Government of Canada's White Papers on Foreign Affairs and Defence. In the Canadian Parliament, she was also the Principal Legislative Advisor to the Secretary of State for External Affairs.In 2004, Redford unsuccessfully challenged Member of Parliament Rob Anders for the federal Conservative nomination in Calgary West.
Provincial politics
On March 13, 2008, after being elected MLA for the constituency of Calgary-Elbow, Redford was named Minister of Justice and Attorney General by Premier Ed Stelmach. In addition, she also served as a member of the Agenda and Priorities Committee, the Treasury Board, and the Cabinet Policy Committee on Public Safety and Services. She resigned from the cabinet in early 2011 to devote herself to her campaign to succeed Stelmach as leader of the governing Progressive Conservative Party.Premier
Party leadership
On February 16, 2011, Redford announced she would be a candidate in the Progressive Conservative Association leadership race to succeed Stelmach, who had announced in January he would resign as leader and premier once his successor was chosen. Redford was largely considered an outsider and had the support of only one MLA in her leadership campaign.In the first round of voting held on September 18, 2011, Redford placed second behind Gary Mar, the perceived frontrunner and the preferred candidate of caucus, with 19 per cent of the vote compared to 41 per cent for Mar. Redford's supporters included a large percentage of new members who had purchased party memberships solely to support her bid to provide progressive new leadership to a party which had held power in the province since 1971. Redford's promise to reverse the government's $107-million education cut gained the support of teachers and appealed to many Albertans who had lost confidence in the party establishment. With no candidate winning the necessary 50 per cent plus one on the first ballot a second and third round of voting was held on October 2, 2011. After the third round of voting Redford beat Mar, winning 51 per cent of the vote.
Redford was sworn in as Alberta's 14th Premier at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton on October 7, 2011.
2012 election
On March 26, 2012, Redford met with Lieutenant Governor Don Ethell, who dissolved the current legislature and called an election for April 23, 2012. After the election was called, support for the Wildrose Party supposedly surged past Redford's Progressive Conservatives. Throughout the campaign it was thought by some that the Wildrose, led by Danielle Smith, would win a majority government, ending the PC's 40-year reign.However, on election night, the Progressive Conservatives shocked pollsters and media pundits, by winning a twelfth majority government, taking 61 of the 87 seats in the provincial legislature—a loss of only five seats. The Wildrose Party accused her of pursuing moderate policies to attract Liberal and NDP supporters in an attempt to prevent the right-wing Wildrose Party from gaining a foothold. Wildrose lost momentum in the final weeks of the campaign, due to Smith's defence of two Wildrose candidates who had made controversial remarks. According to the National Post, two of the Wildrose candidates' extreme views, as well as Smith's refusal to condemn them, cost her a chance of unseating Redford. Ultimately, Wildrose failed to get much support in the urban areas, winning only two seats in Calgary and being shut out in Edmonton. With this win, Redford became the fourth woman in Canadian history to lead a political party to victory in an election, after Catherine Callbeck in Prince Edward Island, Pat Duncan in Yukon, and Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador.
As part of the PC campaign platform, Redford expressed her intentions to work with nonprofits, calling for the creation of a new Department of Human Services as a "single point of entry" for non-profits. Redford promised to build, of which some have now opened, 50 new schools, and renovate 70 more over the next four years.
Post-2012 election Premiership
Fiscal policy
One of Redford's first actions as Premier was to abolish extra pay for committee work by Members of the Legislative Assembly. The issue of committee pay had been contentious during the 2012 election, and news of a so-called "No-Meet Committee" in which MLAs were paid handsomely for little or no actual work had prompted wide public outrage. Another election issue had been "gold-plated pensions" and Redford rejected the advice of a panel of experts to reinstate handsome pensions for MLAs, as well as a suggestion she hike her own salary in excess of $300,000, instead vowing not to take a pension at all. In the wake of public spending scandals involving the Minister for Tourism and senior executives with Alberta Health Services, Redford also instituted new transparency measures and accountability in the form of public disclosure of expense spending. In 2013, after much public discussion following the dismissal of her chief of staff and the refusal to discuss his severance, Redford announced the creation of a "sunshine list" - a public disclosure of salaries and severances for public sector workers in the highest levels of Alberta's public sector.A year after she resigned her role as Premier, Redford reflected on her tenure in a Globe and Mail interview:
After a long stretch of soul-searching, she was reluctant to identify specific mistakes she made, but did point to a range of other factors contributing to her difficulties, from her gender to back-stabbing in her own caucus.