Edward Michael Stelmach (; born May 11, 1951) is a Canadian politician who served as the 13th premier of Alberta, from 2006 to 2011. The grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, Stelmach was born and raised on a farm near Lamont and fluently speaks the distinctive Canadian dialect of Ukrainian. He spent his entire pre-political adult life as a farmer, except for some time spent studying at the University of Alberta. His first foray into politics was a 1986 municipal election, when he was elected to Lamont County council. A year into his term, he was appointed reeve. He continued in this position until his entry into provincial politics.
In the 1993 provincial election, Stelmach was elected as the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Vegreville-Viking (later Fort Saskatchewan-Vegreville). A Progressive Conservative, he served in the cabinets of Ralph Klein—at various times holding the portfolios of Intergovernmental Relations, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Agriculture, Food, and Rural Development—where he developed a reputation as a low-key politician who avoided the limelight. When Klein resigned the party's leadership in 2006, Stelmach was among the first to present his candidature to replace him. After a third-place finish on the first ballot of the leadership race, he won an upset second ballot victory over former provincial treasurer Jim Dinning.
Stelmach's premiership was heavily focused on management of the province's oil reserves, especially those of the Athabasca Oil Sands. He rejected calls from environmentalists to slow the pace of development in the Fort McMurray area, and similarly opposed calls for carbon taxes. Other policy initiatives included commencing an overhaul of the province's health governance system, amendments to the Alberta human rights code, a re-introduction of all-party committees to the Legislature, and the conclusion of a major labour agreement with Alberta's teachers. His government also attracted controversy for awarding itself a 30% pay increase shortly after its re-election, and featured strained relations with Calgary, one of Klein's former strongholds. Despite this, Stelmach increased the Progressive Conservatives' already substantial majority in the 2008 election. With the advent of the late-2000s recession, Stelmach had to cope with a deteriorating economic situation and the Alberta government's first budget deficit in 16 years.
Stelmach was succeeded as Premier by Alison Redford on October 7, 2011. He joined the board of Covenant Health a year later, and has been its chair since January 2016.
Background Edward Michael Stelmach was born on a farm near Lamont, Alberta, the grandson of immigrants from Zavyche, Ukraine. His grandparents settled near Andrew, Alberta in 1898, after bypassing Saskatchewan because they did not care for the terrain. His parents, Nancy (née Koroluk) and Michael N. Stelmach, had five children, of whom Edward was the youngest, ten years younger than his closest sibling. Stelmach was raised speaking Ukrainian, and did not learn English until he started attending school. He was raised a Ukrainian Catholic, and continues to attend church regularly, sing in the church choir, and act as a volunteer caretaker for the cemetery. Through high school, he worked as a well-digger and a Fuller Brush salesman, where he said his grasp of Ukrainian helped him make sales. After graduating high school—his grade 12 yearbook called him a future Prime Minister of Canada—he attended the University of Alberta, intending to become a lawyer. He continued there, working as an assistant manager at Woodward's, until 1973, when his oldest brother, Victor, died. While his family had intended for Victor to take over the farm that his grandparents had settled 75 years before, Stelmach dropped out of university, returned home, and bought the land from his parents. He continues to farm the land today.
As a teenager, he met Marie Warshawski at the wedding of a mutual friend. They married in 1973, and have three sons and a daughter.
Stelmach entered politics in 1986 with his election to the council of Lamont County; one year later, he was appointed county reeve, a position he held until his entry into provincial politics in 1993.
MLA and minister Stelmach ran for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a Progressive Conservative in the 1993 provincial election, defeating incumbent New Democrat Derek Fox in the riding of Vegreville-Viking. Stelmach became a member of the Deep Six, a group of enthusiastically fiscally conservative rookie MLAs; in addition to supporting Premier Ralph Klein's aggressive deficit-cutting, Stelmach practiced fiscal restraint himself, incurring low office expenses and declining a government vehicle. During his first term, Stelmach served as Deputy Whip and, later, Chief Government Whip for the P.C. caucus. As a backbencher, he sponsored the Lloydminster Hospital Act Repeal Act. This was a government bill that dissolved the then-existing Lloydminster hospital board in preparation for an arrangement compliant with both the Alberta government's new system of regional health authorities and the Saskatchewan government's system. Lloydminster sits on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan, and the hospital, although built and operated by the Alberta government, sits on the Saskatchewan side. Retrieved on July 4, 2008 It passed the legislature with little debate. In 1996, shortly before an April by-election in Redwater, Stelmach was accused of "pork barrel politics" for presenting, along with colleague Peter Trynchy and P.C. candidate Ross Quinn, a large cheque to a local seniors centre. Stelmach said that he had only stepped in to help the riding after its MLA, Nicholas Taylor, had been appointed to the Senate.
After the 1997 provincial election, Klein appointed Stelmach Minister of Agriculture, Food, and Rural development. While he held this office, his department encouraged the establishment of feedlots. The opposition parties charged that the government was not regulating these sufficiently, but Stelmach responded that municipalities had the authority necessary to effectively regulate them. On the Canadian Wheat Board controversy, Stelmach sided with farmers who wanted an end to the federal body's monopoly on grain sales in the western provinces. Legislatively, Stelmach sponsored five bills while in the Agriculture, Food, and Rural Development portfolio, all of which passed through the legislature. 1997's Meat Inspection Amendment Act required meat inspectors to acquire a search warrant before entering a private dwelling, but also allowed for fines to be voluntarily paid without requiring a court case. Retrieved on July 4, 2008 It was called by Liberal agriculture critic Ken Nicol "a really good bill". The Livestock and Livestock Products Amendment Act of the same year eliminated government guarantee of the Livestock Patrons' Assurance Fund, designed to protect cattle producers from payment defaults by livestock dealers, in favour of leaving the Fund entirely in the hands of the industry. Retrieved on July 4, 2008 It too was supported by the Liberals, with Nicol calling it "very easy for us to accept". Retrieved on July 4, 2008 In 1998, Stelmach sponsored the Agriculture Statutes (Penalties) Amendment Act, which overhauled the penalty system for violation of various agricultural statutes, setting maximum fines and leaving the precise amount up to judges on a case-by-case basis. Retrieved on July 4, 2008 It also passed with Liberal support, as MLA Ed Gibbons said that it "really makes a lot of sense". Another 1998 bill was the Marketing of Agricultural Products Amendment Act, which allowed provincial agricultural marketing boards to revise their marketing plans, and was supported by the opposition. Finally, Stelmach initiated the Agriculture Statutes (Livestock Identification) Amendment Act, which allowed the government to delegate the inspection of branding to the cattle industry. Retrieved on July 4, 2008 The bill was the subject of considerable debate on second reading, but was ultimately supported by the Liberals on the third and final reading. Retrieved on July 4, 2008
In 1999, Klein shifted Stelmach to the new Infrastructure portfolio, where he made traffic safety a priority, increasing fines for traffic offenses, sometimes by as much as 700%. He also briefly aroused controversy by proposing reversing the slow and fast lanes on provincial highways, on the grounds that this would equalize the rate at which the lanes broke down and therefore save on maintenance costs; nothing came of the proposal. He established a fund for capital projects, but was criticized for not doing enough to address the deterioration of the province's infrastructure. In 2001, Klein separated Transportation out of the Infrastructure portfolio and appointed Stelmach to it, where the new minister advocated the use of public-private partnerships to build ring roads around Edmonton and Calgary. He also introduced a program of graduated driver licensing and initiated a review of traffic safety programs. Stelmach was re-elected by his largest majority yet during the 2001 election, and retained the Transportation portfolio until 2004, when he was reassigned to the position of Minister of Intergovernmental Relations. He resigned this position in 2006 in order to contest the P.C. leadership election (Klein had required that ministers intending to campaign to succeed him resign from cabinet).
As minister, Stelmach kept a low profile. Mark Lisac, who was the Edmonton Journal's provincial affairs columnist during much of Stelmach's time in cabinet, later recalled that Stelmach "never did anything that was flashy or controversial in any way" and that "not a thing" stood out about Stelmach's ministerial service. This low-key style earned Stelmach the moniker "Steady Eddie", which would follow him to the Premier's office.
2006 leadership election
Stelmach was the first candidate to declare his intention to run for the P.C. leadership, and picked up endorsements from nineteen members of his caucus (including cabinet ministers Pearl Calahasen and Iris Evans). However, former provincial Treasurer Jim Dinning had twice as many caucus endorsements (despite not having held elected office since 1997) and was generally considered the race's front-runner. Stelmach ran a low-profile campaign, touring the province in a custom-painted campaign bus, while most media attention was focussed on the rivalry between and the socially conservative Ted Morton.
According to the race's rules, the three candidates receiving the most votes on the first ballot would move on to a second ballot, which would use a preferential voting system to select a winner. Stelmach finished third on the first ballot with 15.3% of the vote, 3,329 votes ahead of fourth place Lyle Oberg and 10,647 votes behind second place Morton. However, the fourth, fifth, and sixth place candidates (Oberg, Dave Hancock, and Mark Norris) all endorsed Stelmach for the second ballot. On this ballot, he finished in first place on the first count, fewer than five hundred votes ahead of Dinning. A majority of Morton's votes went to Stelmach on the second count, and he was elected leader.
Financing