Don Getty

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Donald Ross Getty, PC, OC, AOE (born in Westmount, Quebec, August 30, 1933), a Canadian politician, served as Premier of Alberta and as leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party between 1985 and 1992.

A former quarterback with the Edmonton Eskimos, Getty came into the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as one of the six Tories elected in the 1967 election, along with Peter Lougheed. When the Tories won the 1971 election, Getty became Lougheed's minister of intergovernmental affairs, and in 1975 he became minister of energy. He left politics in 1979 to enter business, but returned in 1985 when Lougheed stepped down. Getty won the leadership of the Progressive Conservative (PC) party, and became premier of the province.

Getty's government easily won re-election in the 1986 election, but with a reduced majority in the legislature. The decline of oil prices, which imperilled the province's economy, hurt the Getty government, as did a perception of out-of-control government spending. In the 1989 election, the PC government again won re-election, but Getty lost his own seat in Edmonton Whitemud and had to run in a by-election in the safe Tory seat of Stettler. His government tried to cope with the province's economic problems by imposing a wage-freeze on the civil service and cutting public services.

Facing the possibility of electoral defeat, and following his success in negotiating Senate reform as part of the Charlottetown Accord, Getty announced his resignation as party leader in September 1992, prior to the referendum that defeated the Accord. Ralph Klein took his place as Premier. In 1998 Getty became an Officer of the Order of Canada.

In 1988 Alberta hosted a successful Winter Olympics in Calgary, during Getty's term as premier.

Getty earned his Business Administration degree from the Western Business School (now the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.

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