The 2004 Alberta Senate nominee election, formally the 3rd Alberta Senate nominee election of Alberta was held on November 22, 2004, to nominate appointments to the Senate of Canada. The Senate nominee election was held in conjunction with the 2004 Alberta general election.
The 3rd Senate nominee election took place six years following the 2nd Senate nominee election held in 1998, and 15 years after the first Senate nominee election held in 1989.
The election came five months following the 2004 Canadian federal election which saw the Liberal government secure a minority under new Prime Minister Paul Martin. Previous Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien refused to appoint senators elected in Alberta in 1998. Previous Senate nominees from 1998 Bert Brown and Ted Morton, both of the Reform Party failed to be nominated before their five-year term expired. Brown, one of the four nominated senators was subsequently appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper on July 10, 2007, and Betty Unger was appointed to the Senate on January 6, 2012, becoming the second and third elected senators in the upper chamber.
Background
In the late-1980s, the Government of Alberta under Premier Don Getty had made vailed statements about holding a province-wide election to select nominees for the Senate with the expectation that Meech Lake Accord would be ratified and the Prime Minister would make appointments to the Senate on the basis of names submitted by each province's premier. The Senate nominee election was featured in the Speech from the Throne in February 1989 for the fourth session of the 21st Alberta Legislature, but died on the order paper when the Legislature was dissolved to hold an early provincial election. The bill was reintroduced in the summer of 1989 during the 22nd Alberta Legislature, which permitted the vote to take place during the October 1989 Alberta municipal elections.
Stan Waters, nominated by the Reform Party, won the 1989 Senate nominee election, with 41.7 per cent of the popular vote. On October 17, 1989, one day after the Senate nominee election, Mulroney stated he was not bound to appoint a senator by the results of the election, and instead intended to follow the process in the Meech Lake Accord. Getty responded to the comments by Mulroney by stating he would provide a list to the Prime Minister with a single name, Waters. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had criticized the electoral process, although he nonetheless made a public announcement agreeing to advise Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn to appoint Waters to the Canadian Senate on June 11, 1990.
Waters time in the Senate was cut short when he was diagnosed with brain Cancer in the Summer of 1991, and died months later in Calgary on September 25, 1991, at the age of 71, four years before the mandatory retirement age for Canadian senators.
Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed four senators from Alberta prior to the 1998 Alberta Senate nominee election, including Nicholas Taylor on March 7, 1996, Jean Forest on May 17, 1996, Thelma Chalifoux on November 26, 1997, and Douglas Roche. Roche, a former Member of Parliament for the Progressive Conservative Party was appointed to the Senate on September 17, 1998, one month before the 1998 Alberta Senate nominee election was held. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark criticized the appointment as a "cynical, provocative and wrong". Alberta Premier Ralph Klein penned an open letter to Chrétien criticizing the appointment and calling for Senate reform. Klein went on to criticize Chrétien stating "the prime minister of this country is saying that democracy is a joke".
Candidates
Both of Alberta's opposition parties, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP), boycotted the election in demonstration of their opposition to the process. As a result, the only candidates to contest the election were representatives of the right-of-centre Alberta Progressive Conservatives, Alberta Alliance Party and Social Credit parties, and a number of independents. After pressure from the Liberal and NDP camps (who did not want their supporters to feel compelled to vote for a right-of-centre candidate), polling officers were instructed to advise voters on election day that they did not have to vote in the Senate election.