Scott Moe
Scott Moe is a Canadian politician serving as the 15th premier of Saskatchewan since February 2, 2018. He is a member of the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan for the riding of Rosthern-Shellbrook, first elected in 2011.
Moe served in the Saskatchewan Party cabinet from 2014 to 2017 under the premiership of Brad Wall, twice as minister of environment and also as minister of advanced education. In January 2018, he was chosen to succeed Wall as leader of the Saskatchewan Party. He led the party to its fourth and fifth consecutive majority governments in 2020 and 2024, respectively. Since becoming premier, Moe has consistently been ranked among the most popular first ministers in the country.
Moe's tenure has been defined by an adversarial relationship with the federal government, including a failed court challenge against federal carbon pricing, calls for a re-set to provincial-federal relations, and expanded powers for the province, such as in the realms of policing and taxation. His time in office has also been defined by the COVID-19 pandemic. While Saskatchewan was one of the hardest hit provinces in Canada, Moe prioritized limiting public health measures throughout the pandemic, and twice made Saskatchewan the first province to lift its pandemic-related public health orders. With the rise of new populist conservative parties in the province since he became premier, commentators have noted that Moe has increasingly adopted right-wing populist rhetoric. This has resulted in controversial legislation such as the Saskatchewan First Act and the Parents' Bill of Rights.
Early life
Scott Moe was born in Prince Albert, the eldest of five children, and raised on a farm near Shellbrook. After high school he briefly moved to Yellowknife before returning to Saskatchewan and attending the University of Saskatchewan. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in agriculture.In the mid-1990s, while still attending university, Moe and his wife established a farming business, buying equipment and renting land. By early 2000, Moe had filed for bankruptcy with $208,500 in assets and $320,900 in liabilities. He has also owned gas stations and a pharmacy. After the bankruptcy, Moe moved to Vermilion, Alberta, where he worked selling farm equipment. He returned to Saskatchewan in 2003 and has worked in various community initiatives in and near Shellbrook including the Economic Development Corporation and the Shellbrook and District Physician Recruitment committee, which seeks to attract general practitioners to rural areas of the province without convenient access to local medical facilities.
During the 1990s, Moe was charged on two occasions for impaired driving. In 1992, Moe received a conviction for impaired driving while under the legal drinking age. In 1994, Moe was again charged with impaired driving as well as leaving the scene of an accident. The charges were ultimately stayed.
On May 29, 1997, Moe killed 39-year-old Joanne Balog while he was driving impaired. Balog was travelling in another vehicle. Balog's 18-year-old son, Steve Balog, was the only other passenger and survived the collision with dislocated ribs and lacerations. Moe later stated that he could not specifically recall the collision. An RCMP investigation determined that Moe had attempted to cross the highway when it was unsafe and gave Moe a ticket for driving without due care and attention. Moe has stated that alcohol was not a factor in the collision, and that the collision had shaped his life since.
Early political career
MLA and cabinet minister
Moe was first elected to the Legislative Assembly as a Saskatchewan Party MLA for Rosthern-Shellbrook in the 2011 election. Moe won the party nomination for the riding against an incumbent MLA, Denis Allchurch, who was seeking re-election.Moe was appointed to the legislature's Standing Committee on Crown and Central Agencies and was deputy chair of the legislature's Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Moe entered Cabinet on June 5, 2014, as Minister of Environment and Minister responsible for SaskWater and the Water Security Agency. On May 21, 2015, he was appointed as Minister of Advanced Education.
Moe was re-elected in Rosthern-Shellbrook in the 2016 election and on August 23, 2016, Moe returned to his former role as Minister of Environment. It was in this second stint on the Environment file that Moe first drew national attention. On October 3, 2016, provincial Environment Ministers were meeting with Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to work on a national agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the same day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the federal government's plan to introduce a federal carbon tax for provinces that refused to implement their own. Moe, along with his counterparts from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, walked out of their meeting with McKenna in protest, with Moe describing the federal government's actions as reminiscent of a 'national energy program 2.0.' This signaled the beginning of a long battle between Saskatchewan, and eventually a number of other provinces, and the federal government over the tax. When an agreement was reached on a Pan-Canadian Framework for addressing climate change, Saskatchewan refused to sign because of the inclusion of carbon pricing, which meant the province left more than $60 million in federal funding on the table.
Saskatchewan Party leadership campaign
With the Saskatchewan Party falling in polls after forwarding a severe austerity budget in March 2017, Brad Wall announced in August of that year that he would be retiring, triggering a leadership race. On September 1, 2017, after resigning from Cabinet, Moe formally launched an unexpected campaign for the leadership of the party with the backing of 21 cabinet and caucus members, primarily from rural Saskatchewan. Moe's campaign promises included a balanced budget by 2019, restoring $30 million of the $50 million in education funding that had recently been cut from Saskatchewan schools, reinstating the PST exemption on health, life, and accident insurance products, and a renewed focus on trade and exports including through a new Ministry of Export and Trade. In addition, he vowed to continue to fight against a federal carbon tax.During his campaign, Moe stated that he did not personally support abortion, and that he would support a discussion of parental notification and parental consent for women to have an abortion. In an interview with the anti-abortion group "Right Now", Moe suggested he would be open to legislation to limit the time frame in which a woman could have an abortion.
On January 27, 2018, at the Saskatchewan Party convention in Saskatoon, Moe was elected the party's new leader in a six-person contest with 54% of the vote on the fifth ballot. He defeated Alanna Koch, who had served as deputy minister to the Premier under Wall, and who held a narrow lead on each of the first four ballots.
Premier of Saskatchewan (2018–present)
Moe was sworn in as Saskatchewan's 15th Premier and appointed his first Cabinet on February 2, 2018. Notably, Alanna Koch was not returned as deputy minister to the Premier after narrowly losing her party leadership bid. Until 2020, Moe consistently ranked at the top of the table as Canada's most popular premier. His ranking dropped substantially in the summer of 2020 after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this pandemic-related hit was short-lived, and in the summer of 2023 Moe was tied as the most popular premier in the country, with Nova Scotia's Tim Houston. A year later, while his overall approval rating dropped from above 60% to below 50%, Moe continued to rank among the most popular premiers.Moe led the Saskatchewan Party into the 2020 provincial election in October 2020. Moe had mused publicly about calling a snap election in the spring of 2020, but abandoned the idea with the onset of the COVID pandemic. He based his first campaign as leader on an economic recovery from the pandemic, including an avoidance of reinstating any business closures, and a promise to balance the provincial budget by 2024. As part of his pitch, Moe touted the province's success in handling the pandemic. He also appealed to homeowners with promises of rebates on energy bills and a home renovation tax credit. On October 26, the Saskatchewan Party was re-elected to its fourth consecutive majority government. Moe was re-elected in Rosthern-Shellbrook with nearly 80% of the vote. Moe again led the Saskatchewan Party to victory in the 2024 Saskatchewan general election—the party's fifth consecutive victory matched the run of Tommy Douglas' CCF when it held power from 1944 until 1964. However, Moe's majority was significantly reduced as the party was nearly swept from the major urban centres of Regina and Saskatoon, retaining just one Saskatoon seat by a margin of 136 votes as the Opposition NDP made large urban gains.
Economic policy
Moe's earliest policies included restoring $30 million in education funding and a PST exemption on life, health, and accident insurance products. His 2018 budget, the first after the deeply unpopular 2017 austerity budget, ran a $365 million deficit and added $2.3 billion of provincial debt. Moe also replaced the Ministry of the Economy with the Ministry of Trade and Export Development, and has undertaken international trade missions in the United States, China, India, Japan, and South Korea.The Premier had to quickly retreat again from his promise to balance the budget. In March 2021, ahead of the release of the new provincial budget, Moe's finance minister, Donna Harpauer, signaled that the government would not balance the budget by 2024. Moe admitted that the economic recovery period from the pandemic was uncertain and therefore would no longer commit to a date for when the budget would be balanced. In 2025, he signed agreements with other provinces, to reduce interprovincial trade barriers in the midst of the United States trade war with Canada.