Jim Edwards (Canadian politician)

James Stewart Edwards was born on August 31, 1936 in Edmonton, Alberta to Donald Stewart Edwards and Verna May Armstrong.[1] Edwards attended the University of Alberta attaining a Bachelor of Arts.[1] He married Sheila Mary Mooney on September 10, 1960 and had four children together.[1] Edwards served as the Commissioner of the Alberta Human Rights Commissioner from 1979 to 1980.[1]

He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the 1984 general election as a Progressive Conservative from Alberta. He served as a parliamentary secretary to several ministers in the government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

Following Mulroney's resignation as PC leader and prime minister in 1993, Edwards was a candidate at the PC leadership convention held to choose a successor. He placed third. Edwards ran on a platform of cutting federal spending by $10-billion per year until the deficit and national debt were wiped out, reducing the size of Cabinet from 35 to 20, reviewing defense spending, freezing support to the European Bank for Renewal and Development, privatizing all Crown Corporations including Canada Post, and reducing international funding.[2]

He was appointed chief government Whip and President of the Treasury Board in the short lived cabinet of Prime Minister Kim Campbell. He lost his seat in that year's 1993 election that reduced the Tories to only two Members of Parliament in the House.

Edwards was the president and CEO of Economic Development Edmonton from 1998 to 2002 and served as the chair of the board of governors at the University of Alberta from March 2002 to 2006. Edwards received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Alberta in 2006.[3]

• Jim Edwards – Parliament of Canada biography