9The Prairie Putsch (2011)

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the ‘Dead Wolf’ as long as he lives, which is not long.

—Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book

When to Leave

While Premier Stelmach’s December 20 interview was the final straw in my decision to resign as finance minister, I’d been considering that option for some time. And not just because of the deteriorating budget situation. The defection of two backbench Calgary MLAs—Rob Anderson and Heather Forsyth—to the Wildrose in January was the beginning, not the end, of Ed Stelmach’s troubles in 2010. The February budget was unpopular on both the Right and the Left, for opposite reasons. The negative impact of Stelmach’s New Royalty Framework was causing layoffs in the oil patch. There was growing unhappiness with the perceived negative effect of the Alberta Land Stewardship Act on property rights in the farm and ranch communities. The government’s plan (Bill 50) to build two new 500 kV DC power lines between Edmonton and Calgary excited NIMBY opposition amongst thousands of affected landowners.

Now led by the younger, media-savvy Danielle Smith, the Wildrose effectively exploited all these issues. This political turmoil ratcheted up a notch in November 2010, when PC MLA Raj Sherman went rogue and began criticizing his own government for emergency room wait times. Sherman was suspended and then booted from the PC caucus, but not before taking down the CEO of Alberta Health Services (AHS), Stephen Duckett, who had become a lightning rod for all the unhappiness with health care delivery in Alberta. Three AHS board members also resigned. To ice the cake, Duckett received one year’s salary for severance—$735,000—sending howls of protests from angry bloggers and tweeters. The Alberta media—sensing blood and hungry for political change—had a field day.

As the PCs’ fortunes waned over the course of 2010, prospects for leadership change grew. On December 3, an Angus Reid poll reported that Stelmach’s approval rating had dropped to only 21 percent.¹ His approval ratings were consistently ten points lower than support for the PC Party, which now led the Wildrose by only six points.²

Just days before Christmas, Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid provocatively predicted, “Stelmach is almost certain to face a severe challenge to his leadership in the next few months. The talk is everywhere. Many Tories won’t wait any longer for the popularity bounce that never comes.” Unfortunately, he then fingered me as the most likely challenger.³

Encouraged by key advisors and political friends—and my own ambition for a second opportunity to become premier—I began to make contingency plans in case this happened. As early as September, I had asked my two executive assistants, Eric Taylor and Tom Kmiec, to contact Hamish Marshall to reactivate my political website. A month later, we met again to discuss the deteriorating political situation and how I should position myself. Additional plans were made to do a massive Christmas card mailing—over 3,000—to my 2006 supporters list.

Later in October, I was pheasant hunting with the late Stan Grad, a friend and constituent in Foothills-Rocky View. Also hunting with us were several other friends and financial supporters who had been active in both the UBA and Kids Can Catch Trout Pond initiatives. At dinner that evening, I brought up my concerns about Stelmach and my own future. This provoked a torrent of condemnations of Stelmach and encouragement for the resignation option. I countered that there was no telling what would happen if I resigned. It might be the catalyst for other resignations and the beginning of the end for Stelmach. Alternatively, I might just be kicked out of caucus and be left sitting by myself on the other side of the Legislative Assembly as an Independent. In other words, there was a real risk that it would be the beginning of the end of my political career. Stan’s retort: “Ted, this is Alberta. Taking risks is what we do.”

I took this advice to heart. Two weeks later, on November 4, I met again with Eric and Tom to discuss the logistics of vacating my office. We would need to get out all my records and files before I resigned, but how and when? We couldn’t afford to be seen carting dozens of boxes out of my fourth-floor office in the legislature. (We eventually did this late one night in mid-January when the legislature was not sitting, and the rest of my office staff were still out of town on vacations.) We also decided to do a video Christmas greeting rather than send cards, as it would be less expensive, more effective, and could be delivered after the legislature closed for Christmas. I also agreed that Tom could resign his position effective January 7, to take a new job in Calgary where his wife (and former Morton leadership volunteer), Evangeline Winfield, was about to give birth to their second child.

That same week I met with Devin Iversen and Sam Armstrong, my 2006 leadership campaign managers, and close friends and confidants, to discuss the pros and cons of resigning. By early December, we developed the first version of what we came to call the “Waves” document—a list of other MLAs who were unhappy with Stelmach. If I were going to jump ship, it would be best to have some company. And before Christmas, I met with Greg Fletcher, Stan Church, and Rick Sears—all of whom were major fundraisers for me in 2006—to seek their advice. They all supported resigning.

Recruiting Allies

I actually left the province on December 23 for a previously planned family Christmas holiday in California and didn’t return home until January 12. But the “when” and the “how” of my resignation strategy were basically worked out via conference calls and emails over this two-week period.

The metaphor we used—and laughed (nervously) about—was me jumping off “the Good Ship PC,” and then the ship just sailing on, leaving me behind and alone in the deep “Blue” sea. To avoid that, I needed some others to join a “mutiny.” Since we couldn’t push the ship/ocean/mutiny metaphor much further (we were, after all, in the middle of the Prairies), we soon began to refer to the project as the “Prairie Putsch”—again with nervous laughter. We all knew what happens to the “traitors” when a putsch fails.

My objective in resigning as minister of finance was to avoid delivering a budget I could no longer support, but without my resignation becoming a one-way ticket to political oblivion. This meant that my resignation had to be not just the end of one story, but the beginning of another; the catalyst for a chain of events that would eventually end—maybe in several weeks, maybe in several months—with Ed Stelmach being forced to resign because he no longer had the support of his caucus.

In an attempt to recruit some allies, we took what was potentially a risky step, but one that turned out to be well worth the risk. On January 14, we met for lunch with Rod Love, Alan Hallman, and Morten Paulsen in the very private Mary Dover Room at the Calgary Ranchmen’s Club. This was basically the 2006 Dinning leadership team—the team that would have won if it had not been for us. While I was far from their favourite PC MLA, we suspected—correctly, it turned out—that they were even more unhappy with Premier Stelmach.

As chief of staff in the previous Klein regime, Rod Love had virtually run the government from the premier’s office. Since 2006, however, the Stelmach team had basically frozen Love and his associates out of any access to either the premier or other cabinet ministers. And, like more and more PCs around the province, they were dismayed at the prospects of losing the next provincial election.

By the end of the lunch, they were on board for helping us to make my pending resignation the first step in pushing out Stelmach. The bonus was Rod Love’s extensive (and to me, surprising) knowledge of British parliamentary precedents of ministers resigning but remaining in caucus. Rod gave us the historical materials to craft the argument that a minister’s disagreement with the leader is not automatically deemed disloyalty to the party—a message that became a central theme in our communications strategy.

We assumed, other things being equal, that my resignation would result in my immediate expulsion from the government caucus. To make my exit from caucus the beginning of the end for Stelmach, I would have to take some other MLAs with me. It did not have to be a lot—only a few to start with. But we believed that once the defections started, the numbers would grow.

We had already identified several “true-blue” Morton supporters who would almost certainly have followed me regardless of the chances for success. But as the previous months’ caucus deliberations had proven, “true-blue” Tories were in a distinct minority in the PC caucus. To dislodge Stelmach from the premier’s office, we would need to tap into the larger number of MLAs who, out of their own keen sense of political self-preservation, were increasingly anxious to dump the floundering Stelmach before the next election.

To do this, we undertook to craft a communications strategy that would make the initial narrative be about the budget and Ted Morton standing up for his principles, and not about Ted Morton’s leadership ambitions. Of course, it was both. But to attract broader support from caucus and PC party members, we believed that for the first few rounds of media coverage, we needed to shape a narrative that was high minded and public spirited, not just another seedy round of ambition-driven caucus assassination of faltering leaders.

To this end, we crafted my resignation letter—and my media talking points—around two themes. The first was the budget, Stelmach’s reversal, and my standing on principle. But the second was a strong statement that I wanted to remain in the government caucus. We doubted Stelmach would allow this, but it would look better—support our desired narrative—if he kicked me out than if I left on my own volition. The latter scenario would look like the calculated first step in an intentional leadership challenge. In the former, I would just be a victim of the premier’s own insecurities.

As a complementary recruitment strategy, we continued to build what we called our “Waves” document—a list of MLAs ranked in order from the least loyal / most unhappy with Stelmach to the most loyal / least unhappy. Our hypothesis was that while the political risk for “first movers”—myself and a few close supporters—was high, there would be security in numbers. The more of us that “abandoned ship,” the lower the risk for those who followed. The risk threshold would be different for each MLA, depending on their level of unhappiness with Stelmach and their assessment of the negative effect that his continued leadership would have on their 2012 re-election chances.

Initially, I used the Waves List to approach those at the very top of the list (the most unhappy and/or least loyal) to discuss discreetly my dilemma with the budget, and—if they seemed sympathetic—to broach the possibility of my resigning, and then to assess their reaction. Those who indicated enthusiasm for abandoning Stelmach we categorized as “Floor Crossers,” and then further subdivided these into First, Second, and Third Waves—reflecting the order in which we predicted they would follow me to sit (temporarily) as Independent MLAs. The rest were categorized, in descending order, as Sympathizers, Fence-Sitters, and No-Nevers.

These conversations were risky for me, because if I went too far down the “putsch path” with the wrong person, it would get back to the premier’s office. Which, in the end, it did. The Waves document went through numerous revisions, but here’s what the final version looked like the weekend before I resigned.

How to Leave

In the end, we came up with three options. The first was the “solo” option: for me to resign as finance minister, and also as the Foothills-Rocky View MLA. I would return to my position at the University of Calgary and then wait to see how events unfolded up to and including the 2012 election. If the PCs lost or did poorly—which seemed certain—Stelmach would have to resign, and then I could return to enter the next leadership race, reputation intact. We abandoned this for several reasons. We would have little to no control of how events would unfold. Secondly, I wanted to be able to run in the 2012 election against David Swann while he was still leader of the Liberal Party because he was so beatable. Also—and most ironically in retrospect—we were nervous that Jim Prentice, who had just resigned from the federal Conservative cabinet, would run for the provincial PC leadership if the opportunity arose. For those readers not from Alberta, this is exactly what he did—three years later, when the next PC premier, Alison Redford, was forced to resign.

The second option was to assemble a “Committee of Wise Persons”—other disillusioned MLAs—and go to the premier as a group before the caucus meeting scheduled for Wednesday, January 26, and inform him that if he did not agree to resign, we would all leave the PC caucus and sit as Independents. Under this scenario, I would make an impassioned last-ditch effort at Tuesday’s Treasury Board meeting for both my budget and the Fiscal Framework. Assuming this would fail (a safe bet), we would then invite a carefully selected number of pre-screened MLAs (See list of “First and Second Waves”) to my house that evening to recruit them into the “Wise Persons” plan.

The appeal of this plan was security in numbers and not leaving Stelmach time to plan a counterattack. The downside was that it would come across in the media as a straight power play by an overly ambitious Ted Morton, and the “standing on principle” narrative would be lost. There was also a real risk that our “Wise Persons” committee might suddenly become very small at the last minute, as erstwhile members lost their courage and bailed out.

The third and final option—and the one I chose—we tagged as the “Raucous Caucus.” Under this scenario, I was to meet with the premier before Tuesday’s scheduled Treasury Board meeting in Calgary and hand him my letter of resignation. A copy of the letter would simultaneously be leaked to Don Braid, political columnist for the Calgary Herald. This would ensure that there would be no turning back. The letter would stress that while I could not deliver the red-ink budget that the premier wanted, I wished to remain in the government caucus. My disagreement was with the budget, not the party.

Next, in Wednesday’s caucus meeting, a group of supportive MLAs would use my resignation—and the accompanying media storm—as a reason to raise the leadership issue. If I were still in caucus (post-resignation), I would remain silent. Their argument would be that the political bleeding would only get worse, and that it would be better for the party if the premier were to leave now rather than later. While Stelmach loyalists would aggressively challenge this, we believed there would be other MLAs—such as Liepert and Redford—who would join the “resign now” chorus, not out of any love for me or my budget, but because they feared they would lose their seat in the next election.

If Stelmach were to survive the “Raucous Caucus,” the First Wavers would either be kicked out of caucus or leave of their own volition to sit as Independents—thus fulfilling their own prediction that it was too late for Stelmach to stop the political bleeding. They would then be followed by “Second Wavers” a week or two later, further undermining Stelmach’s position. Regardless of whether I had been kicked out of caucus or allowed to stay in, I would stay out of this debate, thus separating the leadership issue from the budget issue, the ambition narrative from the “standing on principle” narrative. As noted, this is the option we chose to go with. While it had its risks, we thought that—sooner or later—there would be enough defections to force Stelmach to resign. After all, taking risks is what Albertans do.

January 25: The Putsch

January 25 finally arrived. Officially, my calendar indicated lunch with the Walton Group at a downtown event featuring the ex-governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger; the Treasury Board meeting in the afternoon; and later a dinner with Bill Rice, CEO of the Alberta Stock Exchange. These were left on my calendar to make my day look normal, but we had already arranged phone calls to cancel the first and last.

My wife was still in California, so I woke up, showered, dressed, and had coffee by myself. When I put the envelope with my resignation letter in my jacket pocket, I felt like an assassin holstering a concealed weapon. At 7:45 a.m. sharp, as planned, Eric arrived to pick me up and drive to McDougall Centre. On the ten-minute drive to the underground parking garage at McDougall, neither of us said a word. There was nothing left to say. Plus, both of us were too nervous to make small talk.

At the garage door, Eric rolled down his window and pressed the speaker box to ask security to let us in. We could see the security cameras activate as we pulled up. When security responded, Eric said in a loud, cheerful voice: “Hi, Eric Taylor here with Minister Morton for our morning meetings.” As the door opened, we both involuntarily roared with laughter. We were laughing so hard we were almost crying. But again, neither of us said a word to the other. We were more than a little nervous. We quickly composed ourselves and went upstairs to meet with Tim Wiles, my deputy minister, to prepare for the Treasury Board meeting later that day—a meeting I had no intention of attending.

The premier was supposed to be flying down from Edmonton and was scheduled to arrive at McDougall by 10:00 a.m. I was planning to meet him then to hand him my resignation letter. At 9:30 and again at 10:00, we were told that his plane was delayed because of weather. This was not unusual, and I was not concerned. But then at 10:30, we were told that the premier had scheduled a televised press conference for 11:00. That news sent my blood pressure soaring. A televised press conference? These aren’t planned at the last minute. Clearly, we had been intentionally misled by the earlier messages. We realized immediately that someone must have leaked my resignation plans to the premier’s office.⁴ The only reassuring thing was that everyone else at McDougall seemed equally mystified.

As we crowded into the premier’s McDougall office suite—the only room that had a television and was also large enough to handle the dozen or so of us—I was prepared to watch myself be fired on television. Instead, to the shock of everyone in the room, Stelmach announced his intention to resign later in the year. Instead of firing me, he was firing himself. For me, the irony was palpable. Four years earlier, I had effectively made Ed Stelmach premier with my supporters’ second preferences. Now, I had deposed him.

A tired-looking Ed Stelmach told Albertans that “after twenty-five years of public service,” he and his family had decided that he would not run in the next provincial election, scheduled for 2012. The Progressive Conservatives would have to choose a new leader, and to give the party time, he would retire later this year. He did not give a date. Stelmach said he was tired of “personal attacks,” criticized “US-style wedge politics,” and warned against the threat of “an extreme-right party.” But, he said pointedly, he would remain premier long enough to deliver the next budget, a budget that would allow Alberta to return to a balanced budget in 2013, not 2012.

This was the premier’s official version of events. But the media was not buying it. The unofficial version was that his finance minister, Ted Morton, had planned to resign that morning. If Stelmach then kicked him out of caucus, Morton would take at least a dozen PC MLAs with him. This would precipitate a war of attrition within the caucus, a war Stelmach could not win and a war the party could not afford. It was not an accident that the unofficial version bore a strong resemblance to our “Raucous Caucus” plan. Armstrong and Iversen had leaked all of this to Globe and Mail reporter Josh Wingrove by mid-morning, and his story was online by mid-afternoon.⁵

This made for a very awkward moment later that afternoon when I made the mistake of leaving McDougall Centre alone and on foot. I was swarmed by a media scrum demanding to know if the “unofficial version” was accurate. Without any aides to fend off the media, I did my best to avoid answering that question, as I sprinted two blocks down Fifth Avenue to the hotel where Iversen and Armstrong were waiting in a fifth-floor suite to figure out our next move.

But what was our next move? In one sense, we had won and won big. Stelmach was leaving, and I hadn’t even resigned. But that was the problem. I was still finance minister with a budget I could not support. With a new leadership contest now guaranteed, it was even more imperative that I NOT deliver Budget 2011, as it would destroy whatever base I had left with fiscal conservatives in both the PC and Wildrose parties. To resign on principle now, as originally planned, would simply confirm the “unofficial version” of events, and make me the ambitious political assassin who took down the likeable Ed Stelmach. In a perverse but clever way, Stelmach’s surprise resignation had boxed me in. That evening in Calgary, Ron Glen was overheard boasting that this was exactly what he and Stelmach had done. But this lasted less than twelve hours.

That evening we took a break to watch the 10 p.m. local news. Most of it was a rerun of the earlier 6 p.m. news, covering Stelmach’s surprise announcement and reactions from other party leaders and talking heads. But our ears perked up when we heard the one piece of new news. In an interview with a local Edmonton radio station, Stelmach had said that any of his current cabinet ministers who planned to run to replace him should resign in order to avoid the perception of any conflict of interest in the exercise of their ministerial powers. Bingo! This was my way out of the “box” predicament, and we immediately set to work drafting a new resignation letter. Stelmach’s comment, while no doubt sincere, had to have been completely unscripted, and must have driven his advisors wild. But unscripted comments were Ed’s specialty.

Raucous Caucus

First thing Wednesday morning, I went to McDougall Centre and met with the premier. I handed him my letter of resignation and explained that, based on his comments the previous night, I felt compelled to resign now, before delivering the budget, because I knew already that I would run for the now open leadership. I was surprised at how friendly and relaxed Stelmach was, and he accepted my resignation amicably. When he called in Ron Glen to inform him of my resignation, I could see that his chief of staff was anything but happy. Glen saw that I had escaped the trap he had laid.

What followed was the most bizarre press conference I have ever been part of. Just before noon, Stelmach, Lloyd Snelgrove, and I met with the media to announce my resignation. Stelmach explained that Snelgrove, who was already president of Treasury Board, would become the new minister of finance and deliver the 2011 budget. We assured them that there was no bad blood between us; that my resignation was just normal protocol for a minister planning to run for leadership; and that it was all business as usual. Of course, none of them believed us.⁶

I also stated that my intent in running for the leadership would be to bring back Wildrose conservatives to the PC Party. I warned of the risks of vote splitting on the Right. Since many of my friends and supporters from the 2006 leadership were now with the Wildrose, I was optimistic that I could succeed in bringing us back together. Danielle Smith, who was present at the press conference, immediately threw cold water on that idea. She dismissed the prospects of a merger as “highly optimistic and also a little patronizing. … I gather he figures he’ll win the leadership and then I’ll just roll the party into the PCs. I think that is pretty delusional.”⁷

Reflecting back now, I have to wonder what might have happened if Smith had embraced my resignation, worked with me to help win the PC leadership, and then joined a Ted Morton–led PC government. Three years later she did just this—joining the Jim Prentice–led PC government. But by then it was too late to stop the vote splitting on the Right, which led to the demise of the PC dynasty in the 2015 election.

Following the press conference, we proceeded directly to the previously planned 1 p.m. caucus meeting. The premier explained his own decision, and then informed caucus that he had just accepted my resignation. As with the press conference, he assured everyone that this was all business as usual. As with the press conference, no one believed him. He then announced for the first time that his departure date would not be until October 1. This caught almost everyone by surprise, including me, and provoked a new discussion. Could the government—could the party—survive eight months with a lame-duck premier?

Having caused enough trouble for the day, I chose to remain silent. But others voiced legitimate concerns about the public’s reaction to an eight-month caretaker government, while now-former cabinet ministers were slugging it out to be the next leader and premier. As was his way, Ron Liepert was the most outspoken, stating that for the good of the party, Stelmach should leave no later than June. Calgary MLA Dave Rodney rose to support Liepert’s position but was cut short by the premier. For the first—and last—time in his tenure as premier, Stelmach lost it in front of caucus. He let fly a few F-bombs, at least one of which was about how he was sick and tired of F-ing Calgarians. A stunned caucus went uncharacteristically silent. No one spoke further on the October 1 departure date, and we adjourned shortly thereafter.

Our acquiescence in Stelmach’s stubborn and self-indulgent plan to remain in the premier’s seat until October 1 was understandable. We all knew Ed Stelmach to be a decent and good man, and he had just been dealt some nasty cards. Some kindness was in order. Understandable, but a huge mistake, not just for the PC party but also for me. By the end of February, my leadership campaign had already raised $100,000, and I was an early favourite to win a short leadership race.

That was certainly my team’s plan. But it didn’t happen. My electoral base from the 2006 leadership had evaporated. The eight-month campaign created the time needed for long-shot candidate Alison Redford’s campaign strategy of buying off public sector unions to win the PC leadership. While Redford’s new centre-left strategy helped her to win the 2012 provincial election, it cost her the leadership less than two years later. An eleventh-hour rescue attempt by ex–federal MP Jim Prentice, another Red Tory, failed to stem the tide, and the vote splitting with the Wildrose that I had warned about opened the door for an NDP majority government in 2015. How this unfolded is the subject of the next chapter.