Peter Lougheed - Early Political Career

Early Political Career

Lougheed was of Conservative stock, and it was with that party that he decided to pursue his political career. At the time, Alberta was represented almost entirely by Progressive Conservatives in the Canadian House of Commons. While this might have made federal politics appealing to Lougheed, he viewed it as a drawback; he considered the field of federal P.C. politicians from Alberta to be crowded, and the life of a backbencher held little appeal for him. Instead, he turned his attention to the provincial Progressive Conservatives, who held no seats in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and who had captured only 13% of the vote in the 1963 election (when it had contested only 33 of the province's 63 constituencies). The province had been governed by the Social Crediters since 1935, with the government having been led for all but the first eight years of that period by Premier Ernest Manning. Manning was popular, and had won 60 of 63 seats in the legislature in 1963, but Lougheed felt that the time was ripe for change. He believed that Albertans were beginning to find Social Credit too rural and insufficiently assertive in intergovernmental relations. In Lougheed's view, Alberta should be a senior partner in Confederation, and Social Credit was out of touch with the province's potential.

He resolved to capture the leadership of the provincial Progressive Conservative party and to navigate it into government. The first phase of this was not difficult; despite having no provincial profile and little organization, Lougheed defeated Duncan McKillop, a former P.C. candidate (Calgary Queens Park 1963) and fellow Calgary lawyer, on the first ballot of the party's 1965 convention. Another candidate, Edson town councillor John Scott, had withdrawn on the convention's first day. Lougheed was nominated from the floor by Lou Hyndman and Charles Arthur Clark, father of future Prime Minister Joe Clark. Vote totals were not released.

Lougheed's first challenge as leader was a 1966 by-election in Pincher Creek-Crowsnest. The riding had been represented by Social Crediter William Kovach, who had died. While the Tories finished third, Lougheed viewed it as only a minor setback; his real focus was building up momentum for a general election due a year later. In that race, Lougheed was elected to the legislature for Calgary-West along with five other PCs, becoming Leader of the Opposition. In a harbinger of things to come, all but one of the new PC MLAs were from either Calgary or Edmonton.