Strong and Free : My Journey in Alberta Politics

Abstract

Ted Morton has spent 30 years in Alberta politics. He was elected as a Reform Party senator-in-waiting in the 1998 Alberta Senate election. In 2001, Stockwell Day appointed him as Parliamentary Director of Policy and Research for the federal Canadian Alliance Party in Ottawa. From 2004-2012, Ted represented Foothills-Rocky View in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party. During these years, he also served in cabinet as Minister of Finance, Minister of Energy, and Minister of Sustainable Resources Development. In 2006 and again in 2011, Morton ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives. In Strong and Free, Ted Morton shares the lessons learned from this journey, both his successes and his disappointments. Informed by his background as professor of political science, Morton recounts his early involvement with Preston Manning and the Reform Party, his friendship with Stephen Harper, and the infamous Alberta Agenda or Firewall Letter of 2001. He explains how the Progressive Conservative Party’s flawed leadership selection process eroded party support, and how the PC’s refusal to acknowledge and accommodate the growth of Albertans’ support for the federal Reform Party led to vote splitting with the Wild Rose Party and the end of the PC dynasty in 2015. Openly discussing his conservative ideological principles and goals, Morton provides an account of thirty years of Alberta politics as seen from the inside by someone who reached for the top—and almost made it. Strong and Free argues that an independent, prosperous Alberta makes a strong and prosperous Canada. Ted Morton has spent thirty years fighting for both.