Binns puts leadership on the line

With his call for an election on May 28, 2007, Pat Binns is aiming to become a leader of historic proportions on P.E.I. If he wins, on Jan. 9, 2009, he will become the longest-serving premier in Island history.

It has not been an easy ride, particularly in the last three years, and one couldn't help but wonder if Binns didn't, at some time, regret his September 2003 victory. You don't expect much of a honeymoon period for a premier starting his third term, but Binns's honeymoon following that last victory came to a harder end than usual.

The Progressive Conservatives had run on their record of six and a half years in government. The party lost some ground, but could hardly have expected to retain its hold on 26 of 27 districts. They gave up three, including one to new Liberal Leader Robert Ghiz, who won his first election and took charge of the Opposition in the legislature.

But it wasn't long before Ghiz had a major issue to pummel the government with.

In February, Polar Foods went bankrupt. It was a private company, an amalgamation of the province's lobster processing plants, but the Binns government's involvement in the company was deep. The amalgamation itself was orchestrated by the government, in an effort to deal with an overabundance of lobster processing capacity on P.E.I., and the province had loaned the company tens of millions of dollars to keep it going.

Bad news about the company first came early in February, with the government announcing $7 million in preferred shares it held in the company had been written down to a value of $1. It culminated at the end of the month, with a grim-faced Binns holding a news conference to announce the province was purchasing the company, just hours ahead of a bank foreclosure deadline.

Buying the company allowed the government to take charge of the company's assets. It was able to swing a deal for Newfoundland company Ocean Choice to take over lobster processing in the province, but the final bill was steep. The provincial auditor general eventually pegged the province's loss at $31 million. It was not only a significant financial loss, but an embarrassment for the government to find itself in the middle of the largest corporate failure in P.E.I. history.

The Polar failure coloured the first years of Binns's third mandate, with reminders of the government's role coming in the form of hefty deficit predictions. Provincial Treasurer Mitch Murphy's first budget predicted a deficit of $33.1 million, a shortfall he blamed on a sharp reduction in transfer payments from the federal government, but which came just weeks after the realization of the loss at Polar Foods.

Rural health headaches

The final tally on Polar Foods wasn't even in yet when the government found itself in another quandary. Binns has always prided himself on his dedication to rural communities, for example, in keeping a 10-year-old promise not to close small schools.

But that commitment has not extended itself to emergency departments in rural hospitals. In October 2004, Health Minister Chester Gillan announced that the emergency department at the Stewart Memorial Hospital in Tyne Valley, north of Summerside, had failed an accreditation report from the Canadian Council of Health Services Accreditation. Given the difficulty of fixing the problem, in particular, Gillan cited a shortage of doctors in the area, the government was closing the emergency department down effective Oct. 7.

There was an angry response from the community. When Gillan was not able to quell the complaints, Binns attended a public meeting called at the end of October to convince the government to change its mind. Meeting participants left the room no happier, and still without an emergency department.

That was only the beginning of the government's troubles. Throughout 2005 came announcements of sporadic closures of the emergency department in Souris. Again, doctor shortages were blamed. There were only two working in the hospital when there was supposed to be four. In December, it was announced that the emergency room there would close permanently there as well on Jan. 1.

At a meeting discussing the closure, local MLA Andy Mooney said the area had lost four or five doctors in the last four or five years, and telling prospects they had to provide cover in a 24-hour emergency was not helping recruitment.

In 2006, the government made an effort to get ahead of what seemed to be a looming crisis in rural health care. It announced a plan in October to amalgamate medical services in West Prince, closing hospitals in O'Leary and Alberton in favour of a new, unified hospital in Bloomfield Corner.

The government, with the support of every doctor in the two hospitals, argued that having a single new facility would make it easier to attract new health professionals to West Prince. But local politicians were not convinced. The leaders of Alberton and O'Leary argued if it was going to come down to one hospital, it would be better to redevelop one of the existing hospitals. The ground is now being staked out for the construction of that hospital, but the argument still continues.

In January of this year, it wasn't a facilities closure causing a problem, but the departure of a single doctor.

Dr. Wade Kean told CBC News in mid-January he was leaving his practice in O'Leary and setting up instead in New Brunswick. O'Leary's Community Hospital was short on doctors, which meant spending a lot of time on call. Aside from being on call more than he cared to be, Kean noted that he was paid 70 per cent less than doctors working in emergency departments in Charlottetown and Summerside. He was also frustrated by the number of people he saw who didn't have their own family doctors, some of whom were receiving inadequate care for chronic health problems.

Dr. Charles Dewar, who has practised in O'Leary for 52 years, poured gas on the flames, commenting that the health-care situation in O'Leary was the worst he had ever seen.

In mid-February, the government moved to show it cared about rural health care, doubling the fees for physicians on call outside of Charlottetown and Summerside. Doctors responded positively to the announcement, but it wasn't enough to bring Kean back.

Shifting the economy

It hasn't been an unending string of disasters since the last election. The government has been working to diversify the economy: grow a vibrant aerospace sector, and add financial services and bioscience to the mix.

There has been some success. The aerospace sector has begun to grow outside of Slemon Park near Summerside and into a new industrial park in Bloomfield Corner in West Prince. Software developer CGI has set up shop with 300 jobs in Stratford, and the new Nutrisciences and Health Institute of the National Research Council on the UPEI campus completes a solid bioscience research sector which the government hopes to turn into jobs.

The government has also had some success in changing how the economy is powered. The generation of electricity from wind has grown dramatically in the last three years, and the government met its target of getting 15 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

On the flip side, with lobster fishermen struggling in the Northumberland Strait, and the beef plant in Borden losing millions, the government will have to convince the electorate it still has a measure of concern for traditional industries.

An unproven quantity

On the other side of the house, Robert Ghiz was struggling to prove that he had the stuff required to be premier when the question was put to the electorate in this election.

Ghiz came to be leader of the Opposition at the age of 29, having spent his career working in politically appointed jobs, in the office of Sheila Copps and then the Prime Minister's Office. There were questions about whether he could make the two veterans and two neophytes (including himself) that made up his caucus into an effective opposition.

The results were mixed, but it was hardly the implosion that his critics seemed to expect. The Liberals were still making hay with the collapse of Polar Foods 18 months after the fact, stayed after the government on the closing of the emergency room in Souris, and has been pressing for solutions to doctor shortages in West Prince.

But there has also been some embarrassing incidents, both inside and outside the caucus.

In May of 2006 a rift between MLAs Ron MacKinley and Richard Brown became embarrassingly public. MacKinley was suspected of having recorded a conversation between Brown and Progressive Conservative Jamie Ballem. A story went around that Brown made comments against Ghiz and MacKinley threatened to play the tape for his leader. MacKinley denied making any recording. Richard Brown responded to the story by accusing MacKinley of being bought off by the government because he accepted a trip to Hong Kong.

More damaging was the short-lived nomination of Larry McGuire as the Liberal candidate in Morell-Mermaid. On Oct. 28 of last year McGuire won the nomination following a speech condoning political patronage. Though he was at the meeting, Ghiz said nothing. On Tuesday, with scandal growing and Ghiz remaining silent, NDP Leader Dean Constable took the opportunity to suggest that Ghiz reject McGuire as a candidate. Finally, on Wednesday, Ghiz announced he would not sign McGuire's nomination papers.

The delay cost him. McGuire wasn't going easily, and as the problem dragged on, Binns reminded the public in the legislature in late November of Ghiz's delay, accusing Ghiz of flip-flopping on whether to accept McGuire as a candidate. A new candidate was not nominated until March.

Tragedy added to third party struggles

The New Democratic Party has only ever elected one MLA to the legislature; former leader Dr. Herb Dickieson sat in the house from 1996 to 2000. After his defeat in the 2000 election, Dickieson resigned and Summerside school teacher Gary Robichaud took charge of the party.

Like Dickieson, Robichaud maintained a high profile media presence for the party, but unlike Dickieson it didn't translate into votes at the polls in 2003. The NDP lost share of the popular vote, dropping from 8.4 per cent to 3.0 per cent.

Robichaud never got an opportunity to demonstrate what he had learned from that first campaign. Shortly after the election he announced he had been diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer. He stayed on as party leader for a time, but poor health forced his resignation in June 2005. He died in September, just a few days before his 43rd birthday.

Now led by a youthful Dean Constable, the party will talk a lot in this campaign about having a third party in the legislature. Struggling to elect its second MLA in history will not be the only challenge facing the party in 2007. The Green Party is a serious threat to the party across the country, and will certainly be aiming for third party honors on Prince Edward Island in this election.

The king versus the kid

There isn't much to separate Liberals and Progressive Conservatives on Prince Edward Island in terms of policy and philosophy, and this election will almost certainly come down to leadership.

Is Binns leading a tired regime, overconfident and out of touch with the electorate?

Or is he a leader with the knowledge and experience to develop the economy in new directions and face the challenge of providing health care to the rural areas of the province?

Is Robert Ghiz a young leader lacking experience in the real world, at the head of a team that is not ready to form a government?

Or is he a vibrant new force, eager to renew Island politics and bring the Binns era to an end?

Ultimately this election will come down to who Islanders trust to lead them, and it will perhaps provide the answer to a key question in the Island's political history.

Can Binns be beaten, or will the Liberals just have to wait for him to retire?