although he nonetheless made a public announcement agreeing to advise Governor General Ray Hnatyshyn to appoint Waters to the Canadian Senate on June 11, 1990. Waters time in the Senate was cut short when he was diagnosed with brain Cancer in the Summer of 1991, and died months later in Calgary on September 25, 1991, at the age of 71, four years before the mandatory retirement age for Canadian Senators. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien appointed four Senators from Alberta prior to the 1998 Alberta Senate nominee election, including Nicholas Taylor on March 7, 1996, Jean Forest on May 17, 1996, Thelma Chalifoux on November 26, 1997, and Douglas Roche. Roche, a former Member of Parliament for the Progressive Conservative Party was appointed to the Senate on September 17, 1998, one month before the 1998 Alberta Senate nominee election was held. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark criticized the appointment as a "cynical, provocative and wrong". Alberta Premier Ralph Klein penned an open letter to Chrétien criticizing the appointment and calling for Senate reform. Klein went on to criticize Chrétien stating "the prime minister of this country is saying that democracy is a joke". Candidates Both of Alberta's opposition parties, the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party (NDP), boycotted the election in demonstration of their opposition to the process. As a result, the only candidates to contest the election were representatives of the right-of-centre Alberta Progressive Conservatives, Alberta Alliance Party and Social Credit parties, and a number of independents. After pressure from the Liberal and NDP camps (who did not want their supporters to feel compelled to vote for a right-of-centre candidate), polling officers were instructed to advise voters on election day that they did not have to vote in the Senate election. In early October, Progressive Conservative Premier Ralph Klein promised that the Progressive Conservative Party would not run a candidate in the Senate nominee election, which he reversed after pressure from caucus. Klein's rationale for the boycott was that the Senate was a "federal thing". Five candidates were nominated from the Progressive Conservative Party, including the 1998 Senate election winner Bert Brown. The second nominee from the 1998 election, Ted Morton declined to run, and instead contested a seat in the Legislative Assembly as a Progressive Conservative. The other Progressive Conservative candidates were Betty Unger, a home-care nurse and conservative party supporter; Cliff Breitkreuz, a farmer and former Reform