A Progressive Conservative, he served in the cabinets of Ralph Klein—at various times holding the portfolios of Intergovernmental Relations, Transportation, Infrastructure, and Agriculture, Food, and Rural Development—where he developed a reputation as a low-key politician who avoided the limelight.

[2] His parents, Nancy (née Koroluk) and Michael N. Stelmach, had five children, of whom Edward was the youngest, ten years younger than his closest sibling.

[2] While his family had intended for Victor to take over the farm that his grandparents had settled 75 years before, Stelmach dropped out of university, returned home, and bought the land from his parents.

[6][7] Stelmach ran for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta as a Progressive Conservative in the 1993 provincial election, defeating incumbent New Democrat Derek Fox in the riding of Vegreville-Viking.

[10] On the Canadian Wheat Board controversy, Stelmach sided with farmers who wanted an end to the federal body's monopoly on grain sales in the western provinces.

[19] Finally, Stelmach initiated the Agriculture Statutes (Livestock Identification) Amendment Act, which allowed the government to delegate the inspection of branding to the cattle industry.

[10] In 2001, Klein separated Transportation out of the Infrastructure portfolio and appointed Stelmach to it, where the new minister advocated the use of public-private partnerships to build ring roads around Edmonton and Calgary.

[32] On February 4, 2008, immediately after Lieutenant Governor Norman Kwong read the throne speech to open the legislative session, Stelmach requested a dissolution of the legislature with an election to follow March 3.

[33] Shortly before the writ was dropped, a group calling itself Albertans for Change began to buy print and television ads that attacked Stelmach for lacking a plan and portrayed him as unfit to lead the province.

[38] Political analysts attributed the party's win to its ability to present Stelmach as "a cautious, straightforward and hard-working man with a plan for Alberta's future".

[40] Opposition politicians and media blamed Stelmach's government for these problems, arguing that riding-level returning officers, who were nominated by Progressive Conservative constituency associations and who were responsible for voter enumeration, were not appointed early enough.

[43] He also recommended following the election that his office, rather than the government's Justice department, be responsible for prosecuting election-related offenses; the latter did not lay charges in any of 19 alleged campaign finance violations Gibson brought to its attention.

After winning the Premiership, Stelmach emphasized that he had no intention of taking measures that would slow down oilsands development and suggested that the economy would find its own appropriate growth rate.

[46][47] When Liberal Party of Canada leader Stéphane Dion proposed a federal carbon tax to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, Stelmach rejected the policy on the basis that it would hurt the economy and would unfairly penalize the western provinces.

[53] Just after the 2008 election, Stelmach's government announced a five-year royalty break worth $237 million per year to encourage development that it feared would have become uneconomical under the new plan.

[55] In January 2008, Stelmach unveiled the province's "made in Alberta"—as distinct from imposed by the federal government or by international treaty—plan to cut carbon emissions in order to fight global warming.

[58] Opponents argued that the emphasis on personal responsibility by individuals did nothing to address the greater environmental damage caused by the development of the Athabasca Oil Sands.

[62] Investigations were centred around the questions of whether Syncrude had immediately reported the incident as required (the government had first heard of it from an anonymous tip, though Syncrude reported it several hours later) and whether the company had the required measures in place to prevent ducks from landing on its tailings ponds (it had noisemakers designed to deter waterfowl, but these had not been set up at the time of the incident due to winter weather conditions).

"[66] In June 2007, the government-mandated Alberta Energy and Utilities Board admitted that it had hired private investigators to spy on landowners who opposed the construction of a major power line in the Rimbey area.

[73] Ralph Klein's major focus for much of his premiership had been the elimination of the provincial deficit, and the government ran a record $8.9 billion surplus during Stelmach's first year in office.

[74] Critics, including Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, charged that the government was not saving enough money in anticipation of a fall in energy prices.

[76] Stelmach's approach to this deteriorating fiscal situation, part of a global recession, was to invest heavily in infrastructure in an effort to stimulate the economy and take advantage of low construction costs.

[79] The increases were attacked by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the opposition parties, but Stelmach defended the raises as the first received by cabinet ministers in fifteen years and as being necessary to attract qualified people to politics.

The following week, the legislature's all-party Standing Committee on Member Services extended this to all MLAs by voting unanimously to freeze MLA salaries for the fiscal year.

[88] Detractors pointed out that the optics of allowing the employees to depart for more money elsewhere soon after the government had approved a substantial pay hike for cabinet ministers were not good.

[93] In response, Liberal leader David Swann accused the government of managing limited vaccine supplies poorly by not giving priority to the most vulnerable groups.

[97] In 1998's Vriend v. Alberta, the Supreme Court of Canada had found that the legislation's failure to include sexual orientation among the grounds on which discrimination was prohibited violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and had "read in" this protection.

This omission was criticized, Levant said that it made him "deeply embarrassed as a conservative," but Stelmach said that his caucus was comfortable that another provision, requiring that the impugned section should not "be deemed to interfere with the free expression of opinion on any subject", protected Albertans against its abusive use.

[100] Stelmach called this a "very, very fundamental right" and suggested that it would allow parents to opt out of having their children learn about evolution, though his Education Minister Dave Hancock argued that the new wording didn't extend beyond current practice.

[38] After Deputy Premier Ron Stevens resigned his Calgary-Glenmore seat to accept a judgeship, a 2009 by-election elected outgoing Wildrose Alliance Party (WRA) leader Paul Hinman to replace him.