Ex-premier Grant Devine reflects on legacy
Alex MacPherson talks with former premier Grant Devine about his years in office and his new role on the U of S board.
Just over 35 years after his Progressive Conservative government was defeated by Roy Romanow’s Saskatchewan NDP, former premier Grant Devine — whose nine-year tenure was plagued by a rising deficit and a caucus fraud scandal that sent some of his cabinet ministers to jail — has re-emerged after being appointed to the University of Saskatchewan’s board of governors. On Monday, the U of S agriculture graduate spoke with Postmedia News about his new role, his political legacy and how the university’s financial situation should be managed.
Q Did you expect the reaction that followed Postmedia’s reporting that you had been appointed to the university’s board of governors?
A: I look forward to being, and trying to be, an ambassador for the university. I will be a promoter of the University of Saskatchewan. I will tell them where I stand and I’ll try to raise funds. I won’t be wasting my time or the university’s time. And yes, I expected the reaction. But I have the opportunity to build some things, and certainly build at the university, and I’m very proud of it.
Q Do you consider yourself, at this point 35 years later, a controversial or polarizing figure in Saskatchewan?
A I guess I do if you’re from the real sincere political left because we changed so much. The Blakeney (NDP) administration nationalized potash mines and others, which kicked out investment. We invited the pension funds and capital markets of the world to come in and invest. And the second thing was while the NDP were against the free trade model in North America, with the U.S. and Mexico, we were obviously the other way. We built and built and built — and that probably, politically, took the wind out of their sails. I’ve often said that if I would have been a CCF premier, I probably would have been very popular.
Q One of the criticisms that was levelled in the wake of your appointment was the massive deficit your government ran up. When you look back, is there anything you would have done differently?
A We had commodity prices
(that were) low, interest rates high and we spent a lot of money building. And that doesn’t pay off, the building part, for a decade or two. People were losing their farms, losing their homes at 21 and 22 per cent interest rates. It was a crisis. And so we (agreed) to help farmers and homeowners, and that cost us money. But people wanted us to do that. Did we have a deficit because of it? Yes. Were they happy that we did it? Yes. Do they like to complain that we had a deficit? I guess so. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Q Another criticism involves the caucus fraud scandal that plagued your government and resulted in several cabinet ministers going to jail. Have you been unfairly tarnished by what happened?
A It’s low-hanging fruit, politically. It was a couple of hundred thousand dollars, so it wasn’t a lot of money. We had advertising money in accounts for MLAs and we had 50 or 60 MLAs. We’ve got all this money and we pooled the money so that they can (buy) advertising. And if you weren’t careful about which account
(you used) you took from the wrong pool. Well, a whole bunch of it was nonsense. They were charged and then they were found guilty of taking it out of the wrong funds. It caused divorces. It caused suicides. It caused heartbreak. It caused a lot, a lot of pain for people who didn’t deserve to be treated like that. It is what it is — they made some mistakes. Most of them learned (a lot from) making the mistakes, and that’s the truth.
Q The university’s provost has described the institution’s financial situation as “dire.” From your point of view, what is the way forward for the
U of S?
A I think they’ve done a really great job. It’s not easy when you’re taking a budget like this and everyone in the province is complaining about the cuts. I think that there is more room to get pension funds and capital markets and private donors to participate in the university. That money hardly comes into the university. I think there’s some things we can do to encourage more and more investment in the university.
Q Do you have to balance that against the need to maintain independence, or do private donors like that not create a risk of ‘privatizing ’ the university?
A I don’t think the university’s afraid about that funding. You can have partnerships that you put together that both sides feel good about. And the university cannot turn down hundreds of millions of dollars. I just think that because there’s a lot of money out there, we’re silly it seems to me not to look at how we can exploit some of it. It’s possible.