Grant Devine

Donald Grant Devine SOM (born July 5, 1944) is a Canadian politician who served as the 11th premier of Saskatchewan from 1982 to 1991. He led the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan from 1979 to 1992 and is one of only two leaders of that party to serve as premier, following James Anderson.

Prior to entering politics, Devine taught agricultural marketing and consumer economics at the University of Saskatchewan. After being elected leader of the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) in 1979, he led the party to victory in the 1982 election. Devine's tenure was marked by tax reductions, a series of privatizations of state-owned companies, increased financial support for farmers, and the quadrupling of the provincial debt. Devine's PCs were re-elected in 1986 but lost power in the 1991 election. Devine later sought a federal nomination with the Conservative Party, but his candidacy was declined by the party; he subsequently ran unsuccessfully as an Independent in the 2004 federal election.

Devine's tenure as Premier left a contentious legacy in the province. When Devine lost office in 1991, he was the fourth-longest serving premier in Saskatchewan history. He is noted for implementing neoliberal economic policy in Saskatchewan, shifting the province towards a market-based economic outlook and away from the economic planning that marked decades of Co-operative Commonwealth and New Democratic Party governance. However, when the PCs lost the 1991 election, the province was on the brink of bankruptcy. The unpopularity of Devine and the PCs in the 1990s, which was further exacerbated in the middle of that decade by revelations of a major expense fraud scandal, contributed directly to the founding of the Saskatchewan Party as a new conservative political party in the province. Observers have noted that Devine's party largely staked its success on a growing divide between urban and rural interests in the province, contributing to a deepening of that divide.