Before entering politics, Dalton attended the University of British Columbia, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and a law degree.
[4] He was education critic after that,[5] In the rumblings leading up to the Gordon Wilson-Judi Tyabji scandal, he replaced Gary Farrell-Collins as opposition whip.
[13] On June 24, 1997, Dalton was forced to resign as labour critic after it was revealed that he wrote a letter to a government bureaucrat regarding an issue he had a financial stake in: a gravel pit under development near a ranch that his wife and father-in-law were part owners of.
[14] Liberal leader Gordon Campbell asked the province's conflict of interest commissioner to investigate shortly thereafter after it surfaced that he had written as many as four letters about the same issue,[15] including two to different government cabinet ministers.
[17] The commissioner eventually concluded that although it was inappropriate, it was not a conflict of interest because he was acting as a private citizen, and that he should not have been using MLA stationery for personal matters.
The second time was when he used his MLA letterhead in a personal matter, this one involving Handsworth Secondary School, where two of his children were attending.