Brad Wall was the heart of Saskatchewan

It isn’t exactly how he wanted to go out.

In a perfect world, Brad Wall would be leaving on better terms, when we weren’t enduring massive increases to the public debt, public sector wage cuts and a looming scandal at the Global Transportation Hub over questionable land purchase practices.

This was the legacy of his onetime boss, Progressive Conservative premier Grant Devine.

It has been Brad Wall’s mission statement to rewrite Devine’s legacy, especially when it came to the matter of public debt — a tremendous source of personal pride to Wall who had substantially reduced the province’s debt-servicing costs (the credit card bill for running departmental budgets) until the past few budgets. By the time Wall moves on — which looks like it might be as early as this January, but certainly before the NDP leadership convention in May — public debt will be $22.6 billion with expectations that it will rise to $24.6 billion by 2021.

“We also made mistakes.

I’ve made mistakes,” Wall said Thursday, citing hurried labour legislation and cancelling library funding in the 2017-18 budget as examples.

To his critics, the above are grounds enough to forever deem Wall as nothing more than Grant Devine: Version 2.0. But this is clearly not the case, nor will it be politically or historically just.

As unpopular as the 2017-18 budget has been, Wall will be remembered as the heart of Saskatchewan at the time in this province’s history when its heart beat the strongest.

It is Brad Wall who should be credited with applying cardiopulmonary resuscitation to Saskatchewan’s heart. Grant Devine may have sp ewed the “there is so much more we can be” mantra, but it was Wall who put it into practice by building a strong infrastructure in a province with 67,000 more working people.

“It’s easy to forget how things were in the province just 10 years ago,” Wall said in a Facebook post announcing his plans. “Remember the questions we used to ask?, ‘Could our population get over and stay over a million people? Could we put an end to the near certainty that young people would look first to some place outside of Saskatchewan for their future? And why, in a province as blessed with resources and amazing and innovative people as ours, would we have the worst job creation record in all of Canada, as we did just 10 years ago?’ ”

Critics will argue that Wall was strictly the beneficiary of circumstances, which included record oil and potash prices and revenue in 2008. They will also note that the province’s turnaround that has seen 160,000 more Saskatchewan people since his first election win in 2007 started under former NDP premier Lorne Calvert’s government just prior to Wall’s arrival.

Less likely to be acknowledged is that Wall seldom took personal credit for any success in a job that Wall called “the honour of my working life.”

At no point Thursday — and at no point in his 10-year term as Saskatchewan premier, the fourth-longest in the province’s history — did you hear the face of Sask. Party and province even hint at self-satisfaction with his own personal political success.

Yet this is a politician who defined modern political charisma well before it meant shirtless selfies. Wall held on to his humility while developing gravitas on the national scene.

With so much focus today on a current budget that surely made far too many petty choices like cutting welfare payments, firing government building custodians and scrimping on funeral expenses for the indigent, it may be easy to forget this is the premier who slashed taxes for the working poor, tied minimum wage increases to inflation and found homes for the disabled.

For as petulant, stubborn and impulsive as Wall was, he was a premier who followed his own good heart.

And through that good heart this past decade has throbbed the lifeblood of a province that’s much better off for having him.