Ted Morton

Personal life

Morton was born in Los Angeles in 1949. In 1952, Morton moved with his parents to Casper, Wyoming, where his father, Warren A. Morton (1924–2002), worked in the oil and natural gas exploration business and was the Republican Speaker of the Wyoming House of Representatives from 1979–1980 and his party's gubernatorial nominee in 1982. Morton's mother, Katharine Allen Morton (born 1926), was the daughter of former U.S. Representative Robert G. Allen, a Democrat from western Pennsylvania.

Morton moved to Canada in 1981 and became a Canadian citizen in 1991. Morton and his wife Patricia have three children.

Political views

In 2001 Ted Morton (who at the time was Alberta Senator-elect), Stephen Harper (then-President of the National Citizens’ Coalition), Tom Flanagan, (then head of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation), and Ken Boessenkool, (Chief of Staff to Premier Christy Clark’s) sent a letter to Alberta's former Premier Ralph Klein, in which they called for Alberta to exercise its Constitutional provincial powers including: "withdrawal from the Canada Pension Plan, ending the provincial contract with the RCMP, a provincial take-over of health care decision-making, and collecting revenue for the province from income tax" in order to "limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach on legitimate provincial jurisdiction."

Academic career

Morton obtained his B.A. from Colorado College and earned his Masters and PhD in political economy from the University of Toronto. During his time in college, Morton was involved in protests against the Vietnam War. In 1981, Morton joined the faculty of the University of Calgary as a political science professor.

He has published several books, often focusing on criticisms of the role of the judiciary and Charter of Rights jurisprudence, including The Charter Revolution and the Court Party (with Rainer Knopff, 2000), Morgentaler v. Borowski: Abortion, the Charter and the Courts (1992, winner of the 1993 Writer Guild of Alberta's Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction), and Law, politics, and the judicial process in Canada (1984). Morton has published more than fifty scholarly articles and his columns have appeared in the National Post, the Calgary Herald, the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Sun.

Like many neoconservatives, Morton embraces the practice of judicial restraint, claiming that the Charter has become a political instrument and that the locus of policy should move away from activist courts back to elected officials. Much of the analysis is devoted to questions of symbolism and ideology that were embedded in the Charter's introduction. By changing both the symbolic framework and the institutional structures of Canadian politics, the Charter of Rights has permanently altered the way Canadians organize their political life (Knopff and Morton 1992, 3).

Calgary School

By the late 1990s, Morton along with conservatively inclined University of Calgary colleagues (many of whom were also in the Political Science Department) Tom Flanagan, Barry F. Cooper, Rainer Knopff, Roger Gibbins and history professor David Bercuson, became known as the Calgary School, a phrase coined by Johns Hopkins University Political Science professor David Rovinsky, Morton is "pro-life, anti-gay-marriage, anti-deficit at all costs and open to more private health care." in a 1998 The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) paper. At that time Western Canada was of heightened importance to Americans, not only for its increasing political weight but also because of its population and economic growth. The Washington, DC based (CSIS) was investigating Western Canada's increasing weight in forming Canadian national public policy. who are strongly committed to strategic and direct influence on public affairs with a long term vision. By 1998, CSIS, a public policy research institution based in Washington, DC had already observed the ascendancy of the role of Calgary-based academics on Canadian public policy, specifically the Calgary School of political science.

In The Court Party, Knopff and Morton took on judicial activism. Cooper and Bercuson’s Deconfederation undermined the Meech Lake agenda of endless concessions to Quebec. In First Nations? Second Thoughts, I stood up against the juggernaut of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. All these books were widely discussed in the media and have had some impact on the course of public affairs.

Political career

Morton 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 called on the government of Alberta to use all of its constitutional powers to reduce the influence of the Federal government in the province, including the creation of a provincial police force to replace the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and withdrawal from the Canada Pension Plan in favour of a provincial pension plan.

MLA for Foothills-Rocky View

In the 2004 Alberta general election, Morton won the newly created seat of Foothills-Rocky View and now sits as an MLA for the Progressive Conservatives. In that role, he has advocated for tax cuts, for increased saving of energy revenues, for a lobbyist registry, for fixed election dates, against the 2005 Prosperity Bonus, and against same-sex marriage. He introduced Bill 208 (2006), which would have legislated protections for individuals who oppose gay marriage, allowed provincial marriage commissioners to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, and added an opt-out clause for students and teachers where same-sex marriage is included in the curriculum. This Bill was criticized by some public figures as legalizing discrimination against gays and lesbians, and failed to come to a vote due to procedural tactics employed by opposition members.

PC leadership candidate, 2006

As a candidate in the 2006 PC leadership election to replace Ralph Klein, Morton placed second to front runner Jim Dinning on the first ballot, and third behind Dinning and winner Ed Stelmach on the second ballot. His platform included implementing the components of the Firewall Letter, opposing judicial activism, implementing the provision of Bill 208, introducing fixed election dates, lowering taxes and capping public spending growth, and introducing private health insurance and clinics.

Minister of Sustainable Resource Development

On December 15, 2006, Morton was named Minister of Sustainable Resource Development (SRD). In this position, Morton developed a land use framework in 2008 and the legislation that implemented this policy, the Alberta Land Stewardship Act, which passed in the 2009 Spring session of the Alberta Legislature.

Morton also introduced an online licensing system and community website for fishing and hunting, and expanded youth hunting opportunities by allowing Sunday hunting and introducing an official Provincial Hunting Day and Waterfowler Heritage Days. He also oversaw the opening of the Bow Habitat Station, an aquatic ecosystem interpretive centre that promotes the education of stewardship to youth. With the government's 2007 cancellation of the Interim Métis Harvesting Agreement, SRD adopted a replacement policy which Morton contended complied with Métis hunting rights as set out in the Supreme Court of Canada's Powley decision, but which Métis organizations contend is a violation of their constitutional harvesting rights.

Minister of Finance

On January 15, 2010, Morton was sworn in as minister of finance and enterprise by Premier Ed Stelmach in a major cabinet shuffle. In this position, Morton discussed plans for dealing with Alberta's large deficit, criticized the Canada Health Transfer, and released a joint statement with Quebec Minister of Finances and Revenue Raymond Bachand opposing the creation of a federal securities regulator.

PC leadership candidate, 2011

On January 27, 2011 he resigned his cabinet post as minister of finance to seek the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. His renewed leadership bid coupled with his 2006 support for bringing private health care into Alberta's public health care system has raised concerns by Friends of Medicare, and others about the negative consequences of American-style health care being brought to Alberta. He finished fourth out of six candidates on the ballot with 11.7% of the vote and was eliminated from the second round ballot.

Energy Minister

On October 12, 2011, he was sworn in as Energy Minister and served in that role until the provincial election that was called for April 23, 2012. He lost his seat in that election to Bruce McAllister of the Wildrose Party.

After politics

Dr. Morton is currently an Executive-in-Residence at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary and Senior Fellow, Energy and Environment, at the Manning Foundation. He also serves on the Board of the Alberta Land Institute and the Board of Governors of the Council of Canadian Academies.