Allan Blakeney Biography, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth and Family

Blakeney died on April 16, 2011 at his home in Saskatoon of complications from cancer.

On April 30, 1992, he was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada for his work as Premier of Saskatchewan, his enormous contribution to the field of public administration, and a key player in introducing the first comprehensive public medical health care plan in Canada. In 2000, he was awarded the Saskatchewan Order of Merit. In 2001, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Blakeney was also a past president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

As a private citizen, Blakeney served as a consultant to the Romanow government in the 1990s, when it sold the SaskOil to Occidental Petroleum. Blakeney then served on the board of directors of the successor corporation.

Once in opposition, Blakeney continued to lead the party up to the 1986 provincial election. The NDP not only regained much of what it had lost in its severe beating of four years earlier, but also gained more votes overall than Devine’s Progressive Conservatives. However, much of that margin was wasted on landslide margins in Regina and Saskatoon, which left the NDP eight seats short of regaining power. Blakeney resigned in 1987 and was succeeded by Roy Romanow.

Blakeney played an important role in the federal-provincial negotiations that led to the 1982 patriation of the Canadian constitution.

Blakeney’s government was defeated in the 1982 provincial election, its attempt to win a fourth successive term, being defeated by the Progressive Conservative Party, led by Grant Devine. The NDP lost 35 of its 44 seats, then the third-worst defeat of a sitting government in the province’s history. The party was cut down to only nine seats, its smallest presence in the legislature since its first election in 1934 (as the Saskatchewan CCF).

In the 1971 provincial election, Blakeney led the party to power and defeated Ross Thatcher’s Liberal government.

In 1970, Blakeney succeeded Lloyd as leader of the Saskatchewan NDP, which was then in opposition. Historically, his election as leader has been interpreted as a victory of the provincial NDP’s “establishment” over the left-wing Waffle faction, because Lloyd was trying to move the party more to the left and supported the Waffle Manifesto at the October 1969 federal NDP convention in Winnipeg. As well, Lloyd backed the Waffle’s right to debate issues after the convention, which disturbed many of his MLAs, who eventually forced him to resign in March 1970.

Blakeney also created a state-owned oil and gas corporation, SaskOil, to handle oil exploration and production. The private oil industry had essentially abandoned Saskatchewan after the NDP’s policy of imposing extremely-high royalty rates in the early 1970s. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s policies to centralize control in Ottawa outraged Blakeney, and he moved closer to Alberta’s position of open hostility.

In 1969, Blakeney was elected national president of the New Democratic Party of Canada, and succeeded James Renwick.

Blakeney served as a cabinet minister in the governments of Tommy Douglas and Woodrow S. Lloyd until the government was defeated in 1964. As minister of health, he played a crucial role in the introduction of Medicare.

On returning to Canada, he passed the Nova Scotia bar exam in 1950. He then took a job with the Saskatchewan civil service, eventually becoming a senior civil servant in Saskatchewan, before he entered politics in 1960 and represented part of Regina. He would represent a Regina-based riding without interruption until his retirement in 1988.

Allan Emrys Blakeney PC OC SOM QC FRSC (September 7, 1925 – April 16, 2011) was the tenth premier of Saskatchewan from 1971 to 1982, and leader of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party (NDP).