Allan Blakeney
Allan Emrys Blakeney (born 1925) was Saskatchewan's NDP Premier from 1971 to 1982.
Blakeney was a senior civil servant in Saskatchewan before entering politics and serving as a cabinet minister in the governments of Tommy Douglas and Woodrow S. Lloyd. As Minister of Health he played a crucial role in the introduction of Medicare. In 1970, Blakeney succeeded Lloyd as leader of the Saskatchewan NDP which was then in opposition and in 1971 he led the party to power defeating Ross Thatcher's conservative Liberal Party government.
Blakeney's government practiced state-led economic intervention in the economy in the form of Crown corporations in the potash industry in particular in an attempt to diversify the province's agrarian economy. On the federal scene 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 1982, in its attempt to win a fourth successive term, by Grant Devine's Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan. He subsequently retired from politics and was succeeded as NDP leader by Roy Romanow.
