Shawn Graham

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Shawn Graham MLA (born February 22, 1968 in Kent County, New Brunswick, Canada) is a New Brunswick politician and is the current Premier of New Brunswick.

Raised in a politician family, Graham's father Alan was the longest ever serving member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick; Shawn Graham was born the year after his father's first election. Graham was educated as a school teacher, but only taught as a substitute teacher before going to work for the province's civil service. When his father resigned from the legislature in 1998, Shawn Graham was elected to replace him in a by-election. He rose quickly through Liberal ranks becoming leader of the party less than four years later at the age of 34. In the 2003 election, he improved his party's standing from seven to 26 seats - just two seats short of the victorious Progressive Conservatives. After four years as opposition leader, Graham became premier upon winning the 2006 election by a narrow margin.

[edit] Early career

Graham graduated from the University of New Brunswick, as an alumnus of both Harrison House and Neill House, after which he completed an education degree at St Thomas University in Fredericton. The son of Alan R. Graham who was the longest serving member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick from 1967 to 1998, he was elected to replace his retiring father in a by-election in 1998. Following the general election of 1999, Graham's Liberal Party was reduced to 10 seats from 44. This gave the young politician the chance to rise to prominence.

He was named the caucus chair of the party and became one of the most vocal and popular critics of the government of Bernard Lord.

[edit] Leadership campaign

Liberal leader Camille Theriault resigned in March of 2001, and a leadership convention was set from May of 2002. Few candidates emerged for this campaign and it appeared that former cabinet minister Paul Duffie would win virtually unopposed. Graham was urged to run, and eventually entered the race with the support of Greg Byrne, a previous leadership contender, and many of the supporters of Bernard Richard, also a former leadership contender and the interim leader following the resignation of Theriault.

Surprising many pundits, Graham was successful in taking a solid lead during delegate selection meetings in February and March of 2002, and, as a result, Duffie dropped out of the race. This left only fringe candidate Jack MacDougall in the race who Graham defeated by a 3 to 1 margin at the May convention.^[1]

[edit] Toward the 2003 election

As leader, Graham was considered a lightweight by pundits and by the governing Progressive Conservative Party, and few gave him a chance in the coming election. Although Graham's Liberal Party of New Brunswick and the PCs were near each other in the polls, Graham was a relative unknown and trailed Premier Bernard Lord by significant margins when people were asked "who would you rather as premier?".

Graham surprised pundits again during the 2003 election, running an energetic campaign and winning 26 of 55 seats, just two short of the Conservatives, and coming within 1% of the Conservatives in the popular vote. Pundits said Graham and Lord had fought the English language debate to a draw, while they viewed Graham as the winner of the French debate; this was despite the fact that Lord was a francophone and that Graham's less than stellar command of French was viewed as one of his largest liabilities. Moreover, it was universally agreed by the punditry that the Liberals had controlled the agenda of the campaign, always keeping their three key issues: public automobile insurance, public health care and public power in the forefront of the agenda.

Graham often cited the fact that had 10 votes swung from the Conservatives to the Liberals in the riding of Kennebecasis there would have been a 27-27 tie which may have led to a Liberal minority government supported by the New Democrats whose one member would have held the balance of power. Graham was quoted on election night saying "until five minutes ago, I thought I was going to be premier".

[edit] Graham's leadership questioned

Graham's Liberals (red) held a continuous lead over their main opponents, the Progressive Conservatives (blue), for over two years in opinion polls before slipping behind following a prolonged debate over procedure in the legislature

Despite his victories, the governing Tories and the media continued to view Graham as weak. Rumours suggested that Graham was being pressured to step aside in favour of either Mike Murphy, Kelly Lamrock or Andy Savoy.

Following a by-election victory by the Liberals on October 4, 2004, Graham took a more aggressive stance to dispel this belief. He named a new chief of staff and replaced a third of his staff on October 28, 2004 while pledging to defeat the government and force an election in the next session of the legislature. Graham's upward momentum continued when, in an opinion poll released on December 9, 2004, the Liberals expanded their lead over the Conservatives to 46% to 36%, but also, for the first time since Graham became leader, he was the preferred choice of New Brunswickers for premier beating the incumbent Bernard Lord 34% to 27%. A further poll some months later showed that Graham continued to hold a lead over Lord but by a smaller margin.

In the spring session of the legislature, Graham attempted to pass a snap motion of no confidence on during his speech on the budget. There was brief excitement on Liberal benches as less than half of the government caucus was present for Graham's speech, however the speaker ruled that the vote would be held along with the main budget motion at the end of the following week. Graham was criticised because when the vote was held two of his members were absent. Graham defended their absence arguing that, because New Democratic Party leader Elizabeth Weir was also absent, it was impossible to defeat the government, and he did not see the need to whip his members.

Graham's victory in a subsequent by election on November 14, 2005 as well as his continued lead in opinion polls led most to end their criticism of his leadership for a time. In 2006, however, following the brief minority government when Michael Malley left the government caucus for 6 weeks, Graham took a very aggressive stance towards forcing an election. A prolonged dispute over the functioning of legislature was undertaken, crippling most of the business of the House. The media and, seemingly the public, largely blamed Graham and the Liberals for this and, for the first time in over 2 years, in June 2006 the PCs regained the lead in opinion polls and Lord took a double-digit lead in preference for Premier. These disappointing poll results for Liberals renewed questions in Graham's leadership.

[edit] Towards the 2006 election

Throughout the term that began following the 2003 election, Graham has worked hard to portray himself and his caucus as a "government-in-waiting". From the Lord government's introduction of controversial health reforms in the spring of 2004, Graham said he would force an election at his earliest opportunity.

Graham (right) with then Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2005

His strategy was to focus heavily on policy, and his party has introduced a record number of pieces of legislation for an opposition party. This is particularly remarkable because New Brunswick members of the legislature received no professional drafting staff to assist them in writing private members' bills at the time.

In addition to his legislative agenda, Graham and the Liberals lauched a series of regional policy meetings culminating in a policy convention in the fall of 2005. Graham also convened a meeting of all of the Liberal leaders of Atlantic Canada to discuss common policy objectives, engaged in several tours of the province on particular policy issues and took several trips to Ottawa to meet with federal ministers on various issues.

In early 2006, Graham set out on a tour of the northeast United States, Washington, D.C. and the Maritimes to promote New Brunswick as an "energy hub" and his idea of building a second reactor at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station.

On February 17, 2006, Bernard Lord's government was reduced to a minority when Michael Malley crossed the floor to sit as an independent. Graham said, if Malley would support the Liberals, he would have brought down the government on an April 7, 2006 budget vote forcing an early election. Malley was subsequently elected speaker however, creating an equality of government and opposition members; the April 7 vote came to a tie which was broken in favour of the government by Malley in accordance with tradition.

Following this, Malley rejoined the Conservative caucus from the speaker's chair. This created some controversy and Graham's Liberals held up some business in the House as a procedural stalement ensued for some weeks. Finally the Conservative and Liberal House Leaders signed an agreement on May 31, 2006 which laid out a detailed plan for the conduct of the business of the House and which seemingly guaranteed that the next election would be held on Lord's preferred date of October 15, 2007. This protracted procedural battle did not seem to go well for the Liberals when, in an opinion poll released on June 12, 2006 but conducted largely during the height of the procedural infighting, the Tories took the lead over the Liberals for the first time in any poll since August 2003 with a margin of 45% to 39% for Lord's Conservatives.

Graham named caucus member Rick Brewer to head up a task for on Petroleum Price Regulation, a policy which was brought forward by the Lord government on July 1, 2006 against strong opposition from the Liberals who argued Lord's regulation program would provide neither stability of price nor lower prices.

[edit] The election campaign

Bernard Lord announced on August 10, 2006 that an election would be held on September 18, 2006 due to the pending resignation of Peter Mesheau from the legislature that would have created another minority government.

Graham was somewhat caught off guard by the announcement and received notice while golfing.^[2] Notwithstanding this, Graham had already started a campaign in earnest, having announced his energy platform on August 8^[3] and having nominated several candidates already. With the election call, the party gave him the authority to appoint the 25 MLAs seeking re-election as candidates bringing the total number of nominated Liberal candidates to 30 of 55.^[4] Graham said he would pursue education, economic development and energy as three key issues during the campaign.^[5]

Graham stated that if he did not win the election, he would resign as Liberal leader.^[6]

Graham won the 2006 election by taking 29 out of the 55 seats in the legislature despite narrowly trailing Lord in the popular vote.

[edit] Premier of New Brunswick

Graham with his first cabinet

On September 20, 2006, Graham appointed a transition team to begin to transfer power headed by Doug Tyler. Graham, as New Brunswick's 31st Premier, and the rest of the cabinet were sworn-in by Lieutenant-Governor Herménégilde Chiasson on October 3, 2006.

On his first day in office, Graham, as promised, acted on five campaign promises. His government cut the excise tax on gasoline by 3.8 cents per litre, moved nursing home payments from an assets-based test to an income-based test, provided students with a reduced tuition of $2000 for their first year in university, provided the City of Saint John with a memorandum of understanding to provide a third of required monies for the clean up of Saint John harbour and established separate ministers for Agriculture & Aquaculture, Fisheries, Housing and Seniors.^[7] Additionally, on its first day in office, it pledged $2 million to assist in maintaining ferry service from Saint John to Digby, Nova Scotia.^[8]

In addition to being Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs (a post often held by premiers in Canada), Graham took on the role of Minister of Wellness, Culture and Sport. Graham, who has a background in athletics competing in the 1985 Canada Games for New Brunswick in track and field, wanted to take the portfolio to ensure it was a priority in large part to fight childhood obesity in the province, which is the highest in the country.^[9]

On October 12, 2006, Graham announced several senior appointments. He appointed a president of NB Liquor and deputy ministers for the Department of Energy and the Department of Justice and Consumer Affairs to replace Conservative political appointees who had resigned when Graham took office. He also appointed former cabinet minister Bernard Thériault as his chief of staff and his former Opposition chief of staff Chris Baker to be secretary of the Policy and Priorities Committee of Cabinet.^[10]

New Brunswickers were apparently impressed with Graham's first months in office. An opinion poll conducted from November 10 to December 7 showed that Graham's Liberals had surged to an "unprecedented" 65% while the Progressive Conservatives had slipped to 27%. The New Democratic Party was at 6% while the Green Party, not yet formed in New Brunswick, stood at 2%. Personal popularity was also on the rise for Graham who stood as the choice of 48% of New Brunswickers to be premier, while former premier Bernard Lord was the choice of only 23%. ^[11]

After their first few months in office, the Liberals were criticized for cancelling a tax rebate on energy costs that they had previously said they would maintain.^[12] On March 13, 2007, Finance Minister Victor Boudreau introduced the Graham government's first budget, it contained numerous tax increases, including the first increase to personal income taxes in the province since 1994. The opposition criticized the change in tax lowering policy under which the previous Conservative government had lowered income taxes every year for their seven years in office. Boudreau defended the increases saying "we all enjoy lower taxes, but when the level of taxation is insufficient to ensure the continued provision of essential public services, it needs to be addressed."^[13] Despite the controversy over their first budget the Liberals continued to ride high in the polls. They added a seat when Chris Collins won a byelection in Moncton East, the seat vacated when Bernard Lord stepped down from provincial politics. A short time later, Tory MLAs Wally Stiles and his wife Joan MacAlpine Stiles crossed the floor to give the Liberals 32 seats to 23 for the opposition. Graham continued to push forward with his "Self Sufficiency" agenda to make New Brunswick one of Canada's have provinces. Some the government initiatives brought forward have and continue to be controversial. A report on post secondary education that called for polytechnical schools in the province sparekd anger in university towns. This spring there was more controversy when the government abandoned eight partially elected health authorities in favour of two health authorities with no elected members. Another groundbreaking decision came at the onset of the spring legislature when the government announced it was abandoning the option of an early french immersion program in Anglophone schools in favour of a universal system that would see all anglophone students take intensive french at the grade 5 level. Some protestors viewed it as a watering down of bilingual education in Canada's only bilingual province while education minister Kelly Lamrock argued that the changes would eliminate streaming in the early grades and give all students equal access to a bilinugal education while boosting the province's flagging test scores in student testing that consistently saw the province score at or near the bottom in math, science and literacy in comparison with the rest of the country.

[edit] References

1. ^ Graham to guide Grits
2. ^ CTV.ca | Bernard Lord sets N.B. election date for Sept. 18
3. ^ [1]
4. ^ Nathan White, 'It's do or die' time for leaders, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, page A2, August 11, 2006 [2]
5. ^ The issues, Daily Gleaner, page A1, August 11, 2006 [3]
6. ^ Carl Davies, LAST-CHANCE ELECTION, New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, page A1, August 11, 2006
7. ^ First cabinet meeting / Lower gas prices, student grants, new government departments (06/10/03)
8. ^ [4]
9. ^ Daniel McHardie, Premier earmarks wellness as priority, Times & Transcript, page A1, October 25, 2006
10. ^ Five senior government appointments announced (06/10/12)
11. ^ Carl Davies, Grit popularity soars, New Brusnwick Telegraph-Journal, page A1, December 12, 2006
12. ^ N.B. Liberals cancel Tory tax rebate
13. ^ [5]

• CBC News: Graham expects to win leadership, May 7, 2002
• Graham's bio as Premier
• Graham's bio as Leader of the Opposition

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