When Calgary Signal Hill Conservative MP Ron Liepert announced on social media on February 17 that he is about to retire, no one seems to have thought to thank the man for his greatest service to Canada.
He was, after all, the politician who handed Rob Anders, the worst Member of Parliament in modern Canadian history, his great big hat.
For that alone, Liepert deserves the undying gratitude of Canadians of all political stripes and our best wishes for a long and happy retirement, much of which will presumably be spent in Palm Springs.
“I want to thank my constituents for the trust they have placed in me as their Member of Parliament since 2015,” Liepert said in a news release also published on his Facebook page. He said he’d serve up until the next federal election.
Beyond that, the 73-year-old former broadcaster, who was a vice-president of the Alberta Legislature Press Gallery in 1977 and worked as premier Peter Lougheed’s Press Secretary from 1980 to 1995, didn’t have much very interesting to say beyond paying ritual obeisance to Conservative Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre.
It would be easy to forget, then, that before he quietly put in enough time in the House of Commons to qualify for a nice Parliamentary pension, Liepert was a high-profile and often controversial figure during his seven and a half years as the Progressive Conservative MLA for Calgary-West.
Liepert was appointed to three important cabinet posts by premier Ed Stelmach – education, health, and energy, arguably stirring up more trouble and strife than was really helpful in the first two portfolios.
Leastways, after Liepert’s rocky terms as minister of education and minister of “health and wellness,” Stelmach had to send in cabinet’s old smoothy, the late Gene Zwozdesky, to pour oil on the troubled waters and smooth the feathers ruffled by the previous minister’s bulldog temperament.
It was on Liepert’s watch that nine health regions were dismantled and Alberta Health Services (AHS) was created. And he was on the job as health minister during the swine flu pandemic in 2009 when members of the Calgary Flames and their families managed to jump the line for vaccinations. An AHS official was thrown under the bus for that.
As for Liepert’s contributions as an MP, the most exciting moment was probably his mid-pandemic trip to Palm Springs (near Los Angeles, where he worked as Alberta’s trade envoy from 1986 to 1991) which hardly made him unique among Conservative Alberta politicians.
But a multitude of sins can be forgiven for eliminating Anders as a national embarrassment on April 12, 2014.
Anders, elected six times over 17 years for the Reform, Canadian Alliance and Conservative parties by the inattentive voters of the federal Calgary West riding, richly deserved the sobriquet “Canada’s Worst MP.”
Born appropriately enough on April Fool’s Day 1972, Anders was notorious for such antics as falling asleep on camera in the House of Commons and during Parliamentary committee meetings, suggesting NDP leader Thomas Mulcair caused the death of his predecessor Jack Layton, striking butchy poses with his latest firearms, and perhaps most offensively, being the sole MP to vote against honorary citizenship for Nelson Mandela after calling the South African hero a “terrorist.”
In his youth, Anders was a professional heckler for Republican politicians in the United States. And as recently as 2016 he was reported campaigning in Arizona for Donald Trump.
Despite his often bizarre behaviour, Anders was a formidable campaigner, as his serial electoral victories in Calgary illustrated. During those years he defeated several high-profile challengers for the Conservative Calgary West nomination – among them, Alison Redford, who would later become Alberta’s first woman premier, and future PC cabinet minister Donna Kennedy-Glans.
When Calgary West was eliminated in the 2014 federal redistribution, Anders was forced to seek the nomination in Calgary-Signal Hill, which included much of the same territory. By then, even Stephen Harper seemed to have realized he had become a potentially dangerous embarrassment.
When Liepert won the nomination, that was the beginning of the end of Anders’ political career. He tried again to get the nomination in another Calgary riding in the fall of 2014, but by then his remaining appeal (and high-level support) had evaporated.
His loss to Parliament was mourned by journalists and political commentators, who never tired of his serial idiocies, Liberal and New Democrat politicians for whom he was a useful foil, and the country’s most extreme gun nuts and social conservatives, whose causes he championed.
Thankfully, Anders not been much heard from since his departure from federal politics. A brush with the law in 2020 came to nothing. He is now the president of something called the Firearms Institute for Rational Education – FIRE! Geddit?
So, Ron Liepert, have a long and happy retirement. Canadians thank you for your service!
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