Agriculture, energy, health and finance | Peter Lougheed will be remembered for his commitment to the rural quality of life
Former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed’s legacy on energy is well known, but his impact on agriculture is just as large.
Former agriculture minister Marvin Moore said Albertans can thank Lougheed and his team for hundreds of hopper cars, the Prince Rupert, B.C., grain terminal, agricultural lending, natural gas co-operatives, rural hospitals, provincial buildings and seniors lodges.
“There was a revitalization of rural Alberta in the first eight years of Lougheed’s legacy,” Moore said the day after Lougheed died Sept. 13 in the hospital named in his honour. He was 84.
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When Lougheed led the Progressive Conservative government to victory in 1971, Dr. Hugh Horner, a former member of Parliament, was appointed deputy premier and agriculture minister as an acknowledgment of the importance of agriculture.
“That was a huge thing to have the deputy premier also the minister of agriculture and be the most experienced guy, the number one guy in your cabinet,” said Moore, who was also elected in 1971.
Doug Horner, now Alberta finance minister and president of the Treasury Board, said Lougheed leaned on his father as the rural lieutenant to bring forward their vision for rural Alberta.
“They did act in a very collaborative way, but to Mr. Lougheed’s credit, he understood the importance of where my dad wanted to take rural Alberta. My father couldn’t have done what he did if it hadn’t been for Peter Lougheed,” said Horner.
“He led the team that recognized that rural Alberta is where the economic activity happens and therefore can’t ignore the needs of rural Alberta,” said Horner.
During Lougheed’s first term in office, the Alberta Opportunity Co. and the Agriculture Development Corp., now AFSC, were formed with the mandate to lend money in rural Alberta.
“Those were the first two big financial institutions developed by Loug-heed that financed a whole raft of things in rural Alberta,” said Moore.
Farmers and rural Albertans are still benefiting from Lougheed’s vision during his time as premier from 1971 to 1985, he added.
Rural gas lines were trenched in to most farms, towns and villages with the help of provincial government money.
During the 1970s, Lougheed and his ministers pushed to build a grain terminal in Prince Rupert, as another option for Alberta grain.
At the same time, the province bought hundreds of grain hopper cars to replace aging box cars and help boost grain exports.
The bright blue hopper cars, painted with the names of Alberta towns, can still be seen on tracks hauling grain.
“While Lougheed was from Calgary and he was a Calgary lawyer, and his association was essentially with the city of Calgary and urban things, he had a tremendous number of people from rural Alberta in his cabinet,” said Moore.
He said what’s often missed in discussing Lougheed’s legacy is his social conscience. The Alberta Bill of Rights and the Alberta Rights Protection Act, ensuring personal freedoms, were the first two pieces of legislation brought in after 1971.
He also brought in the Assured Income for Severely Handicapped income guarantee program and oversaw the development of hospitals and seniors’ lodges in rural Alberta.
“Senior citizens accommodations, which were mostly lacking in almost every community in rural Alberta, Lougheed pushed hard to get those constructed and approved by cabinet. There was a lot of legacy on the social conservative side,” said Moore.
University of Alberta political science professor Roger Epp said there was an amazing amount of investment in rural infrastructure during Lougheed’s time as premier.
“There was a realization that if this was going to be a resource based province and you were going to be extracting energy resource from under farmers’ land and transporting it under farmers’ land, they needed to also visibly share in the prosperity that followed and the quality of life that followed,” said Epp.
“The commitment to rural quality of life to put it on par with urban was a pretty important signal.”
