Brad Wall

Working in the private sector at the time, Wall has been credited with playing a backroom role in the creation of the Saskatchewan Party in 1997.[7][9] The party formed as a coalition of sitting Progressive Conservative and Liberal Party MLAs and members, and was intended to unify opposition to the NDP.[10] The Progressive Conservatives have in fact not won a seat in any election since the formation of the Saskatchewan Party, and neither have the Liberals since winning 4 seats in 2003; as such, the emergence of the Saskatchewan Party has effectively created a two-party system in Saskatchewan politics.[11]

After nearly a decade outside of electoral politics, Wall won the Saskatchewan Party nomination for Swift Current ahead of the 1999 election, the first since the Saskatchewan Party was formed, and he was elected MLA. He defeated NDP incumbent John Wall (no relation) with more than 50% of the vote as part of a wave of rural victories that saw the Saskatchewan Party win 25 seats and the NDP reduced to a minority government. Wall was appointed to the Saskatchewan Party's front bench as Justice Critic, and later as Critic for Crown Corporations as well.[2][12] After the election Wall also chaired a committee examining how to increase urban support for the party.[2]

Inaugural Saskatchewan Party leader Elwin Hermanson resigned after the NDP regained a narrow majority in the 2003 provincial election. Wall announced his candidacy for the leadership and was ultimately acclaimed the party's new leader on March 15, 2004.[2] Wall committed to a review of Saskatchewan Party policies, aiming to present a more moderate platform that could expand the party's support beyond rural areas.[2] This process resulted in several socially-conservative policies being jettisoned, such as work-for-welfare policies, so-called "boot camps" for young offenders, and a referendum on publicly funded abortions.[3] New policy resolutions included calling for treatment for crystal methamphetamine addicts, a patient-first review of the health care system, the development of a comprehensive plan to recruit and retain health care professionals, the development of an integrated addictions strategy for young offenders, a comprehensive review of the justice system, the establishment of a provincial youth justice board to address youth crime, rehabilitation and restitution measures, support for victims of crime, the establishment of a university research chair in occupational health and safety, and a review of the Workers' Compensation Board. Wall made economic issues the party's focal point and while in Opposition he released policy papers including "The Promise of Saskatchewan: A New Vision for Saskatchewan's Economy," in 2004, and "Getting Saskatchewan Back on Track: Addressing Saskatchewan's Labour Shortage," in 2006.[13][14]

Wall's efforts to appeal to a broader base paid off in the 2007 election as the Saskatchewan Party won 38 seats, including 8 seats between the province's two largest urban areas in Regina and Saskatoon, securing a majority government. This made Wall the province's 14th premier, and its first conservative premier since Devine. The win ushered in a period of prolonged electoral success for Wall and his party. In 2011 the party secured a historic landslide victory, winning 49 seats and the highest vote share in the province's history at 64%.[15] This included making further inroads in urban centers as the party won 16 of 23 seats in Regina and Saskatoon. That year Wall also became the most popular premier in Canada, a distinction he would maintain through the 2016 election, which saw the Saskatchewan Party elected to a third consecutive majority with 62% of the vote and 51 seats in an expanded legislature.[16][17] This marked the first time since 1925 that a non-CCF/NDP government had won three consecutive majorities in Saskatchewan. Wall's personal popularity has been attributed to his skills as an orator and his sense of humor, and he has been credited with changing perceptions of the province, particularly through raising its profile on the national stage.[7][18] Wall's profile grew to the extent that he was considered synonymous with the party he led.[19] However, Wall's popularity began to wane during this third term, particularly after introducing an austerity budget in 2017.[20] With his party losing ground in polling and in two 2017 by-elections, Wall announced in August of that year that he would be retiring from politics.[1][6] This triggered what would become only the second contested leadership race in the history of the Saskatchewan Party. Rosthern-Shellbrook MLA Scott Moe won that contest on January 27, 2018, and succeeded Wall on February 2 when he was sworn in as premier.[21]

Wall and his Saskatchewan Party took office at a time when global commodity prices began to soar, particularly for oil, potash, and uranium, but also for coal and agricultural products, and the economy started to boom accordingly.[22] With resource revenues high, Wall focused on overseeing a period of growth and the province saw numbers of jobs increase by an average of 6,500 per year, while the province's population grew every year under Wall's premiership and by over 150,000 people overall.[22] Wall instituted widespread tax cuts and guided investments in health care, education, and infrastructure. In 2010 he signed Saskatchewan onto the New West Trade Partnership Agreement with Alberta and British Columbia, a free-trade pact that expanded to include Manitoba in 2017.[23] In 2014 the province was awarded a AAA credit rating.[16] However, after commodity prices crashed beginning in 2014 the province ran into significant economic turmoil. While Wall had been successful early on in paying down Saskatchewan's debt, which had nearly bankrupted the province in 1992 and reached a low of $7.9 billion in 2009, the debt rose rapidly after 2014 and would balloon to $14.8 billion in 2017.[24] That year the province's credit rating was downgraded to AA.[16] Wall's 2017 budget, the sixth deficit out of ten budgets under Wall, was deeply unpopular and criticized by many for its austerity and for disproportionately burdening poor and marginalized citizens in its efforts to address fiscal mismanagement.[20][25] While the budget maintained a commitment to lowering corporate tax rates, the provincial sales tax was increased and deep cuts were made to social services and education.[25] The budget also included cuts to grants to municipalities, which created budget crises for a number of municipalities.[26] While the Saskatchewan Party was criticized for its costly investment in applying the Lean program to its health care system, Wall has been credited with reducing Saskatchewan's surgical wait times from among the longest in Canada to among the shortest through the use of private surgical clinics within the public system. The policy was initially controversial but soon became popular due to the favorable results.[27][28]

Throughout his tenure as premier Wall was known as a staunch defender of Saskatchewan resource-based industries, especially potash and oil and gas. In 2010, Wall rose to national prominence through his opposition to an attempted hostile-takeover of Saskatoon-based PotashCorp, which was the world's largest potash producer, by Australian mining giant BHP. The $38.6 billion deal would have been the largest takeover in Canadian history, but the premier argued that Saskatchewan stood to lose billions in resource revenues and that such a takeover would damage Canada's strategic interests; the federal government ultimately blocked the deal, and Wall was subsequently named the Business News Network "newsmaker of the year," and the CTV "politician of the year."[16][29] Wall persistently championed the province's fossil fuel industries as well. In 2011 the Saskatchewan Party led investment of $1.2 billion to build the world's first industrial-scale carbon capture and storage unit at SaskPower's Boundary Dam power station in order to extend the use of coal in the province.[30] In 2014 Wall was vocal in lobbying the federal government to strengthen its regulation of the oil industry, arguing that stronger measures would aid pipeline development.[31] Wall would later be a vocal critic of efforts to lower greenhouse gas emissions, considering federal efforts like the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change and even global efforts like the Paris Climate Accord to be threats to the province's energy industry. Wall was particularly vehement in his opposition to a federal carbon tax, an issue Wall helped to put at the center of conservative political agendas across the country and at the national level.[32][33] Wall also took aim at civil society calls for climate action, for example lambasting the Leap Manifesto and calling it an "existential threat" to the oil industry.[34] Such stances drew the ire of environmentalists, and the province was persistently criticized for its environmental measures and its lack of regulation of industries in particular.[35] The 2016 spill of more than 200,000 liters of oil into the North Saskatchewan River from a Husky pipeline was blamed in part on a lack of proper regulation and monitoring.[36] The province's 2017 climate change plan, meanwhile, was largely panned by environmental experts and organizations, including the Saskatchewan Environmental Society.[37][38]

Wall discusses Canadian football with US ambassador David Jacobson.

Despite consistent growth in jobs Wall persistently found his government at odds with organized labour, beginning with 2007 efforts at revising provincial labour legislation. The government introduced two bills that were maligned as anti-labor as they removed the right to strike for more than 65,000 workers and made it harder for workers to unionize; one of the bills was ultimately struck down after being deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015.[39] After that decision, Wall threatened to use the notwithstanding clause to maintain the legislation, but never did so.[40][41] Organized labour was also central to protests against the 2017 austerity budget.[25] Wall and his government were also critiqued for their privatization agenda, which included an estimated sale of $1.1 billion in public assets and the loss of more than 1,200 public sector jobs.[42] One of the most controversial decisions of the 2017 budget was the shuttering of the Saskatchewan Transportation Company, a provincially-owned bus company that serviced all areas of the province.[43] A major investment in the building of the Global Transportation Hub outside Regina also became controversial for questionable and allegedly fraudulent land deals.[44]

In 2013, Wall attended the Bilderberg Conference, an annual private conference of approximately 120 to 140 invited political guests from North America and Europe.[45]

After 2015 Wall continued to keep a high profile on the national stage as a frequent critic of both Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta NDP Leader and Premier Rachel Notley.[46] In 2015 Wall wrote a letter to Trudeau urging him to suspend the federal government's plan to resettle 25,000 Syrian refugees before the end of that year.[47] He would go on to consistently target Trudeau over the federal carbon tax, laying the groundwork for the province to launch a constitutional challenge against the measure in April 2018.[32][48] Wall was also critical of Notley's efforts to strengthen national efforts to address climate change, and by 2017 Saskatchewan and Alberta were engaging in a series of trade disputes that began when Wall publicly attempted to lure energy companies to move their headquarters from Calgary to Saskatchewan.[49] Relations between the provinces were so dire at times that their respective trade ministers were not speaking.[49]

On May 1, 2018, Wall announced he would begin working as an advisor for the Calgary law firm Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt LLP.[50]

Wall remained active in political circles even after retiring from electoral politics. He was considered a strong candidate for leadership of the federal Conservative Party, but he declined to run in the party's 2020 leadership contest.[51] Wall did play a central role in the creation of the Buffalo Project, an American-style political action committee (PAC) aiming to influence federal politics, in Alberta. The Project claims to stand up for the interests of western industries, particularly the energy sector.[52] Wall was influential in laying the groundwork for the project, including raising funds, and although he did not take on a formal role with the group he has been a key advisor.[53] Although the group claims to be federalist, it has been associated with western separatism, particularly after the Saskatchewan branch of the separatist Wexit party rebranded itself as the Buffalo Party.[54]