Ted Morton

Ted Morton at the Calgary Stampede

Frederick Lee (Ted) Morton, PhD. (born March 28, 1949, Los Angeles, California) is a former university professor, an Albertan politician and currently a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. He is currently the Minister of Sustainable resource development. Morton was candidate for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta but was ultimately defeated by leadership candidate Ed Stelmach when party members voted for Ralph Klein's replacement on 2 December 2006.

Morton moved to Wyoming in 1952, where his father worked in the oil and gas exploration business. He moved to Canada in the 1980s. In 1991, Morton and his wife Bambi became Canadian citizens.

Academic career

Morton obtained his B.A. from Colorado College and earned his Masters and Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Toronto. During university Ted was active in the anti-Vietnam war effort. In 1981, Ted joined the faculty of the University of Calgary as a political science professor. He is currently on an extended leave of absence so that he can carry out political duties.

Morton is part of a group of academics called the Calgary School whose teaching and writing exercised a very significant influence on the future of conservatism in Canada.

He has published five books, one of which won the 1992 Alberta Writers' Guild award, and more than fifty scholarly articles. His columns have appeared in the National Post, the Calgary Herald, the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Sun.

Political career

Morton was an early supporter of the Triple-E Senate Committee and a public critic of the Meech Lake (1987) and Charlottetown (1992) Accords.

He was elected as a Reform Party Senator-in-Waiting in the 1998 Alberta Senate nominee election.

In 2001, Canadian Alliance leader Stockwell Day appointed him Parliamentary Director of Policy and Research for the party. That same year, he was one of a group of six Albertans (including Stephen Harper—later to become Prime Minister in 2006) who authored the “Alberta Agenda“, also known as the "firewall letter", a manifesto that calls on the government of Alberta to use all of its constitutional powers to reduce the influence of the Federal government on the lives and personal finances of Albertans.

In the 2004 Alberta general election, Morton won the newly created seat of Foothills-Rocky View and now sits as an MLA for the Alberta Progressive Conservatives. In that role, he has advocated for tax cuts, against same-sex marriage, for increased saving of energy revenues, for a lobbyist registry, and for fixed election dates. A primary facet of his environmental policy is the revocation of Métis hunting rights [1]. He was the only Conservative MLA to publicly oppose the Prosperity Bonus. Within six months of his election, the Calgary Herald gave Morton the highest grade of all new Calgary-area MLAs and rated him “Most likely to succeed.”

On December 15th 2006 he was named Minister of Sustainable resource development.

Alberta Progressive Conservative leadership campaign

As a candidate in the 2006 Progressive Conservative leadership race Morton placed second to front runner Jim Dinning on the first ballot. The second ballot took place Saturday, 2 December, 2006. In the leadership campaign Morton's primary policies include:

• Maintaining publicly funded health care, while allowing private health care for non-emergency procedures.
• Providing fixed election dates, and maximum term lengths for the office of Premier.
• The creation of a lobbyist registry and strengthening of the office of auditor general.
• Promoting a bill that would ensure no Alberta laws penalized someone expressing disagreement with same-sex marriage, allow provincially appointed marriage commissioners to refuse to marry same-sex couples, and place restrictions on the teaching of marriage as including same-sex couples.
• Advocating "more Alberta, less Ottawa," including starting an Alberta pension plan, replacing the RCMP in Alberta with a provincial police force, and exercising greater provincial influence in the area of immigration.
• Ensuring that Alberta has greater control over its non-renewable energy resources.

Morton has referred to Edmonton as "the capital city of northern Alberta." [2]

Criticism

Several figures have publicly expressed worry that Morton's private member Bill 208 would have the effect of protecting, in statute, public discrimination against gays and lesbians.[3]. Morton has been criticized by his constituents on the issue of logging in the beloved Kananaskis region. Under his watch, critics argue that part of Kananaskis Country, including part of the Trans Canada Trail, has been logged. Morton argues that the logging was done to prevent pine beetles, but many experts in the area disagree [4], [5].

External links

• Biography for Dr. Ted Morton on the website of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
• Ted Morton Official Website

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