Gary Mar

As Minister of Environment, he served as co-chair of Climate Change Central, a public/private partnership formed in response to the international agreement on climate change. He led efforts to create a new provincial park in the Spray Valley to protect this unique and vulnerable area of Alberta's Rocky Mountains.[9]

As Minister of Education, Mar introduced First Things First...Our Children, an initiative that focused on school children of all ages. It made a commitment to ensuring children can read well by grade 3, and focused on high standards for junior and senior high school students, keeping them in school and ensuring they have the skills they need when they graduate.[9]

As Minister of Health and Wellness, he was instrumental in a number of changes to the system with long-lasting results, introducing a series of reforms to Alberta's health care system that focused on patients and delivered improved care at lower costs, including a province-wide electronic health record system, an innovative pilot project to reduce wait times for hip and knee surgeries, and the creation of 500 new training spaces for doctors, nurses and technicians.[10] He ensured primary care networks, in which physicians lead a team of health care professionals. This interdisciplinary, community-accessible approach became the focus of the health system. He reduced the number of health regions; took steps with electronic health records, negotiated for different funding from the federal government of Canada, and worked with the physicians union to create a controversial model for their pay.[9]

As Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations, Mar led the Alberta at the Smithsonian project in 2006 which included Alberta as the first Canadian province ever featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Leading up to the Folklife Festival, Alberta Week in Washington included forums and meetings between Alberta leaders and U.S. decision makers and policy makers in Washington, D.C.[9]

On September 27, 2007, Mar was named Alberta Envoy in Washington, D.C.[9][11] Over four years, he led U.S. senators, congressmen and industry members to tour Alberta's oil sands, and promoted Alberta energy, agriculture and other products and opportunities in Washington and across the United States, speaking at conferences and symposiums, and representing Alberta at meetings and discussions. During his time in Washington, Mar was focused on raising awareness and knowledge among American political leaders about Alberta's economic strengths and its emergence as a world leader in the supply of reliable, clean, safe energy. He traveled and spoke to a number of state legislatures to inform them about the responsible development of the oil sands.[12]

On March 16, 2011, after resigning his post in Washington, Mar announced he was seeking the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party. As a leadership candidate, he was the front-runner and caucus favourite.[13] Although he received the most votes on the first and second ballots - achieving 40.76% of the votes on the first ballot and 42.51% of the votes on the second ballot - because he did not receive more than 50% of the vote, under the rules at the time voters' second preference votes were added and Alison Redford was declared the winner, with Mar losing the race.