Popular southern Alberta Conservative MP Ted Menzies, junior finance minster in the Harper government for more than two years, says he is in his final term in Parliament.
He will stay on as MP for the Macleod riding south of Calgary until the 2015 election but has asked prime minister Stephen Harper to replace him in cabinet when the summer cabinet shuffle occurs, he said in a July 2 announcement.
Menzies was elected in 2004. Under redistribution, his new riding would have been Foothills.
In recent weeks as a summer cabinet shuffle was anticipated in Ottawa, he often was speculated as a replacement for finance minister Jim Flaherty if he steps down because of health issues.
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Menzies, 61, said his decision was influenced by work in his riding during the past two weeks of flood damage. Many communities in his riding were among the most damaged because of the floods that devastated southern Alberta.
“Witnessing the effects of the floods across southern Alberta and the devastation of High River and other communities, I have decided that it is important for me to be here more often,” he said. “What brought me to Ottawa was a love of community and the desire to help Albertans and Canadians the best way I knew possible.”
As a farm leader and president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers’ Association, he was a leading advocate of ending the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly and saw his dream accomplished last year.
His advocacy made him a divisive prairie politician during the CWB debate but not in his own riding, where he pulled in 78 percent of the vote in 2011.
Menzies also was an early advocate of liberalized trade as president of a predecessor to the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance. His wheat industry roots from a farm at Claresholm, Alta., made him a skeptic about supply management protectionism but in Ottawa, he supported the Conservative party decision to embrace supply management as an important part of the agricultural system in vote-rich Central Canada.
