Michael Trent Allen (born March 4, 1962) is a Canadian politician who is a former elected member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the electoral district of Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo.
[8] His appointment was a result of a head-on collision between two vehicles that killed seven people, including two children, a pregnant woman and a Fort McMurray pastor.
[12] Allen and Don Scott, the PC MLA for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo, were able to push the Alberta government for a construction timeline later that year.
The Alberta government stationed ground ambulances at a $6.5-million, 3,600-square-metre hangar with a six-patient care area at Edmonton International Airport for patients that are not time-sensitive.
[18] Allen was representing Alberta at the Council of State Governments – Midwest meeting in Saint Paul, Minnesota when, on July 15, 2013, he was arrested in a prostitution sting operation.
Police say Allen asked an undercover officer for details about costs, time and the numbers of available women, then took a limo service to the motel where the sting was happening.
[21] Allen resigned from the PC caucus when he was released from police custody the next morning,[19] and sat in the Alberta Legislature as an Independent MLA.
[24] Ironically, Allen once told a reporter from the Calgary Herald that police in Fort McMurray were not doing enough to stop sex workers from working outside his downtown music store.
[29] Two advocacy groups for sex workers, the West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals (WCCSIP) and the Canadian Adult Entertainment Council (CAEC), said in a joint October 2013 statement that they wanted Allen to continue serving as an MLA, and people "shouldn't judge a person's reasons for wanting intimacy.”[29] On July 7, 2014 at the party's annual Calgary Stampede meeting, the PC caucus voted in a closed ballot to invite Allen back into the PC caucus.
Allen blamed the closure of the store on the rising popularity of online shopping and the impacts on small businesses from the COVID-19 pandemic, a crash in world oil prices in 2014 and the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire.
He also told Fort McMurray Today that rumours "fabricated for political reasons" in 2013 implied he influenced the outcome of a $3.36 million expropriation deal with the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo for financial gain.
Allen denied he had any influence with the expropriation process and he was cleared of any wrongdoing or conflict of interest by the Alberta government's ethics commissioner.