Arthur Sifton

Arthur Sifton

Arthur Lewis Watkins Sifton, PC, KC (October 26, 1858 – January 21, 1921) was a Canadian politician who served as the second Premier of Alberta from 1910 until 1917 and as a minister in the Government of Canada thereafter. Born in Ontario, he grew up there and in Winnipeg, where he became a lawyer. He subsequently practiced law with his brother Clifford Sifton in Brandon, Manitoba, where he was also active in municipal politics. He moved west to Prince Albert in 1885 and to Calgary in 1889. There he was elected to the 4th and 5th North-West Legislative Assemblies; he later served as a minister in the government of Premier Frederick W. A. G. Haultain. In 1903, the federal government, at the instigation of his brother who was now one of its ministers, made Arthur Sifton the Chief Justice of the Northwest Territories. When Alberta was created out of a portion of the Northwest Territories in 1905, Sifton became its first chief justice.

In 1910, the government of Alberta Premier Alexander Cameron Rutherford was embroiled in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal. The Liberal Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta, George Bulyea, determined that for the sake of the Liberal Party of Alberta Rutherford had to be pushed aside in favour of a new Premier; when other prominent Liberals declined it, the position was offered to Sifton. As Premier, he smoothed over the divisions in the party that had caused and been exacerbated by the railway scandal. He made attempts to break with the Rutherford railway policy; when these were rebuffed by the courts, he adopted a course similar to Rutherford's. He unsuccessfully pursued the transfer of rights over Alberta's natural resources from the federal government, which had retained them by the terms of Alberta's provincehood.

While Sifton was Premier, the United Farmers of Alberta rose as a political force. Sifton tried to accommodate many of their demands: his government constructed agricultural colleges, incorporated a farmer-run grain elevator cooperative, and implemented a municipal system of hail insurance. Outside of the agricultural sphere, the UFA was instrumental in the Sifton government's implementation of some direct democracy measures (which resulted in prohibition) and the extension of the vote to women.

During the conscription crisis of 1917, Sifton supported the Conservative Prime Minister, Robert Borden, in his attempt to impose conscription to help win the First World War. He backed the creation of a Union government composed of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals. In 1917 he left provincial politics and became a minister in this government. Over the next three and a half years he served briefly in four different ministries and was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He died in Ottawa in January 1921 after a brief illness.