The Current - P.E.I. Premier Dennis King’s shock resignation

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Dennis King resigned as premier of P.E.I. in a bombshell announcement Thursday, saying he felt he “had more runway behind me than I had in front of me.” Kerry Campbell, the CBC’s provincial affairs reporter for P.E.I., digs into what might have driven the decision — and what comes next.

What does a mummified Egyptian child, the Parthenon marbles of Greece and an Irish giant all have in common? They are all stuff the British stole. Maybe. Join me, Mark Fennell, as I travel around the globe uncovering the shocking stories of how some, let's call them ill-gotten, artifacts made it to faraway institutions. Spoiler, it was probably the British. Don't miss a brand new season of Stuff the British Style. Watch it free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, it's Matt here.

Thanks for listening to The Current, wherever you're getting this podcast. Before we get to today's show, I wonder if I might ask a favour of you, if you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using. There is a lot of news that's out there these days. We're trying to help you make sense of it all and give you a bit of a break from some of that news too. So if you already follow the program, thank you. And if you have done that, maybe you could leave us a rating or review as well. The whole point of this is to let more listeners find our show and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times.

So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. Politics in Prince Edward Island is vastly different today than it was in 2019. And I stand here proudly to say that politics in PEI is the hallmark of goodness and decency in the Canadian landscape and a beacon of hope and kindness in a world that needs it now more than ever before. In just a few hours time, Dennis King's time as Premier of Prince Edward Island will be over. After six years in the role, he announced yesterday afternoon that he was resigning as both Premier and leader of the PC party of PEI.

I have felt for a while that I had more runway behind me than I did perhaps in front of me. Further complicated with the threats of tariffs and the threats to our country's sovereignty and economic uncertainty and realizing that those aren't going to be simple issues that are gonna disappear in a few days or weeks. They will require the attention every minute of every day

for the next four years. And that really helped me determine that it was best for me to hand the baton of leadership to someone who can be focused for the long term. Kerry Campbell is the CBC's Provincial Affairs Reporter for PEI. He's in our Charlottetown studio this morning. Kerry, good morning.

Good morning, Peter. This game is a huge surprise to me. How much of a surprise was it to you that he was resigning? I mean, the timing of it was a big surprise, a shock yesterday, but the fact that he wasn't going to run for a third term, he'd been dropping all kinds of hints. So we never expected that his name would be on the ballot in the next election. But yeah, just the fact that it came kind of out of the blue and there we are and then that it's all wrapping up within 24 hours. If I could ask one more question, I think I would ask why is this happening so quickly

because there's a couple of different ways you can do this, right? There's kind of the Trudeau route where you stick around while the party finds a new successor and he's not doing that. He's gone as of, you know, one o'clock today. So that part is a bit of a shock that it is happening all so quickly. So we might not know the reason for the speed with which this is happening, but what reasons did he give us for stepping down? Well, you know, he's been quite candid for the last year, somewhat candid about

just the stress and strain that being in this position has put on him, on his family, on his mental health. He became premier in 2019 and then, I mean, the last election campaign for him in 2023, his stump speech was basically just listing off the litany of catastrophes that befell PEI during his first term as premier. With the pandemic, we had two hurricanes including Fiona, which was really quite devastating. He threw the rail blockades in there. We don't have railroads.

We haven't for a long time, but it all still affected how things operated here in PEI. So it was definitely a difficult time for any premier in Canada and particularly for a premier from PEI. So he did mention that yesterday. He also mentioned with this new crisis, you know, kind of Trump 2.0. He said he had decided over Christmas, confirmed with his family he wasn't going to run again. And so knowing that and knowing that he had kind of one eye on the exit, he thought he can't be the person to

lead PEI through this. He's never going to be a hundred percent in that fight when he knows that he's going. I want to play a clip for you here because I really want your read into what he's actually saying. Let's listen to Premier King one more time. I do think my style of politics were perfect for the time, but I think politics is changing a little bit, so we might need to change our approach. And I think some of that change of approach might be easier for the party without me at the front of it. I think, you know, it would just be, I've been entrenched in a few things like collaboration, all those things that will be very hard to move off of for me. Knowing what this Trump presidency is going to impact on a daily basis around the world

kind of led me to believe that this is not going to be easy times and this is not a time to be three quarters of the way in. You've got to be all in and so I just made the choice that I did. What do you read into that, Kerry? Dennis King takes credit, and he did yesterday, for bringing a more collaborative style of politics to Prince Edward Island.

I think that was definitely true in the early days. But I mean, at that point, he was really the first premier of a functional minority government in PEI. And so the situation kind of warranted that. And that's what he brought to the role. I think it's kind of fallen apart since then and I think a lot of that is on Dennis King himself and how his government behaved once they had a significant majority.

I do think you've seen it on the federal stage. Like Dennis King has always been very proud of the relationship that he's had with the Trudeau government in Ottawa. It's been very congenial and it has benefited PEI with funding announcements and programs and things like that. What he's saying here is that he thinks the time for that has maybe come to an end. He was talking yesterday just about the polarization in politics right now and saying that he's not sure that there's space and it's difficult to be heard as a

Moderate as a red Tory as someone Trying to push for a more sort of collaborative approach to this What can you tell us about the I guess incoming premier Rob Lantz? Well, this is not his first kick at this He led the party into the 2015 election the liberals were were the incumbents then. The liberals were between leaders. Everyone thought the PCs did a pretty good job of coming out with eight seats out of that. They were still the opposition, but one of those eight seats did not belong to Rob Lantz that time around. So it was considered a pretty big failure. He tried to lead the party from outside the rail and that wasn't working. Since he came back under Dennis King, he has served as a housing minister and now he's

education minister. Before this, he was a city councillor. He also something that changed in this time. He's been fairly public about being a cancer survivor and as you watch him as a politician today, he's definitely not the same person that he was when he led the party, well, a decade ago now. Only have about a minute left. So just quickly, aside from the obvious tariff

pressure that everybody's dealing with from the US, what are the big priorities that the new premier is going to have to tackle on the island? I mean, we have the same issues that everyone has, but I think they're often more acute in PEI. So, I mean, healthcare and housing are the big things. We have about one in every five islanders on the list waiting to try to be assigned a primary care provider.

In the last election, Dennis King promised he would get that number down to zero, that list by this April within two years of his government being reelected. So that is a bit of an albatross that's going to hang over the neck of the new leader. Our population growth for a long time was the fastest in Canada. Our housing didn't keep up with that. We have one of the highest vacancy rates in the country.

So those are some pretty big challenges that are waiting for Rob Lance on day one. All right. We're going to have to leave it there, but Kerry, it's always great to get your insight on this stuff. Thanks so much. Thanks, Peter. Kerry Campbell is CBC's Provincial Affairs

reporter in Prince Edward Island.