Peter Lougheed

Who was Peter Lougheed?

Edgar Peter Lougheed, PC, CC, AOE, QC, was a Canadian lawyer and politician. He served as the tenth Premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985 as a Progressive Conservative.

Lougheed was the grandson of Sir James Alexander Lougheed, an early Senator and prominent Alberta businessman. After a short football career he entered business and practised law in Calgary. In 1965, he was elected leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. The party won the 1971 provincial election, with 49 of the 75 seats in the legislature, defeating the Social Credit Party which had governed the province since the 1935 election. Lougheed established a Tory dynasty in the province that has continued uninterrupted since then. Lougheed led his party to victory in the 1975, 1979 and 1982 provincial elections.

As premier, Lougheed furthered the development of the oil and gas resources, and started the Alberta Heritage Fund as a way of ensuring that the exploitation of non-renewable resources would be of long-term benefit to Alberta. He also introduced the Alberta Bill of Rights. Lougheed quarrelled with Pierre Trudeau's federal Liberal government over its 1980 introduction of the National Energy Program. But Lougheed and Trudeau eventually reached an agreement for energy revenue sharing in 1982, after hard bargaining. The successful Calgary bid to host the 1988 Winter Olympics was developed during Lougheed's terms.