55 Facts About Wade MacLauchlan

Wade MacLauchlan served as the fifth president of the University of Prince Edward Island from 1999 to 2011, becoming president emeritus in 2012.

Wade MacLauchlan served as the 32nd premier of Prince Edward Island from 2015 to 2019.

Wade MacLauchlan's government was defeated in the April 23,2019 general election.

Wade MacLauchlan was born on 10 December 1954, the third of five children of Harry and Marjorie Wade MacLauchlan, living in Stanhope, Prince Edward Island.

The Wade MacLauchlan's were early residents of Stanhope, with a large extended family in Stanhope and numerous other rural PEI communities.

Harry and Marjorie Wade MacLauchlan were businesspeople involved in tourism, fisheries, heavy construction, and several other ventures through the 1960s.

Wade MacLauchlan's parents went on to other ventures including Wade MacLauchlan's Motel in Charlottetown, expanding the heavy construction business and getting in to cable television, golf courses, oil and gas distribution, and real estate.

Wade MacLauchlan worked in many of those ventures with jobs such as weighing and salting fish, collecting garbage, building golf course greens, and carrying suitcases.

Wade MacLauchlan went on to earn an undergraduate Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Prince Edward Island, followed by a Bachelor of Laws from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Laws from Yale University.

At UNB Law School, Wade MacLauchlan held the Beaverbrook Scholarship in Law, was elected to serve for two terms on Law Faculty Council and was awarded the Lieutenant Governor's Medal on graduation.

Wade MacLauchlan attended Yale Law School with the O'Brien Scholarship and Yale Law Scholarship.

Wade MacLauchlan worked as road construction labourer in Northern Quebec, as a hotel clerk at Jasper Park Lodge, as a roughneck on an oil rig in west-central Alberta, and as a volunteer recycler in southern France.

Wade MacLauchlan began his teaching and academic career as an assistant professor, later promoted to associate professor, at Dalhousie Law School from 1983 to 1991.

Wade MacLauchlan was active in the Canadian Association of Law Teachers, including as chair of a Special Advisory Committee on Equality in Legal Education, which produced the report Equality in Legal Education: Sharing a Vision, Creating the Pathways.

Wade MacLauchlan's main teaching and scholarly focus was in administrative and public law.

Wade MacLauchlan was Dean of Law at the University of New Brunswick from 1991 to 1996.

From 1997 to 1999, Wade MacLauchlan served as founding director of UNB's multi-disciplinary Centre for Property Studies.

In 1999, Wade MacLauchlan was appointed as the fifth president of the University of Prince Edward Island, the first PEI native to serve in the role.

Wade MacLauchlan committed to be in the classroom to teach as many UPEI students as possible.

Wade MacLauchlan did so by teaching students in English 101 classes about the importance of writing and by offering guest lectures in other first year and upper year courses.

When Wade MacLauchlan completed his eleven-year term as president in 2011, his service was recognized through the creation of two new series of student awards.

Wade MacLauchlan encountered criticism from the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship for a 2006 decision to halt distribution on campus of an edition of the student newspaper, The Cadre, which reprinted controversial cartoons of Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper in September 2005.

Wade MacLauchlan's presidency was a period of major infrastructure development at UPEI.

Wade MacLauchlan took pride in saying that these infrastructure improvements were achieved while leaving UPEI with no unfunded debt, reflecting the considerable public and private funding contributions secured under his leadership.

Wade MacLauchlan served a number of years as an executive member of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada and as a member and chair of AUCC's Standing Advisory Committee on International Relations.

Wade MacLauchlan served on the board of Atlantic University Sport, including five years as chair.

When Wade MacLauchlan was in his eleventh year as UPEI president, he was interviewed by Gordon Pitts of the Globe and Mail on the subject of leadership.

In researching the book, MacLauchlan conducted more than 70 interviews with political and bureaucratic actors from the period, as well as family and friends of Alex B Campbell.

Wade MacLauchlan spent many hours interviewing Campbell himself and sifted through thousands of archival documents, photographs and public media records.

In November 2012, Wade MacLauchlan was elected as a councillor of the rural Municipality of North Shore.

From 2013 to 2015, Wade MacLauchlan served as a board member of the Federation of Municipalities of Prince Edward Island.

From 2008 to 2015, Wade MacLauchlan served as a director of Medavie Inc and Medavie Health Services.

In 2012, Wade MacLauchlan was named a director of the Windsor Foundation, one of the largest and longest-established private foundations in Atlantic Canada.

Two weeks later, Wade MacLauchlan was joined at the North Shore Community Centre in his home community by 19 of 23 Liberal caucus members for the announcement that he would be a candidate for the party leadership.

Wade MacLauchlan was the sole candidate at the close of nominations on 20 January 2015, and was acclaimed leader on 21 February 2015.

Wade MacLauchlan was sworn in as the 32nd Premier of Prince Edward Island, on 23 February 2015.

Wade MacLauchlan asked PEI's auditor-general to review the matters and introduced conflict-of-interest reforms aimed at improving government transparency and accountability, saying the province needed to restore public confidence and trust.

Wade MacLauchlan led the Liberals to a majority in a 4 May, 2015 general election, winning 18 of 27 seats in the PEI Legislative Assembly.

Wade MacLauchlan was elected as MLA for York-Oyster Bed, a seat previously held by his chief of staff Robert Vessey.

The new cabinet saw a mix of seasoned and first-time ministers, with Wade MacLauchlan taking on the role of minister of justice and attorney general in the place of the finance portfolio.

An early challenge for the Wade MacLauchlan government was the need to install new power transmission cables under the Northumberland Strait between New Brunswick and PEI, to expand the capacity of existing 40 year-old cables and address concerns about their age and condition.

Wade MacLauchlan said the decision was guided by a "learner-centred" approach.

In March 2018, the Wade MacLauchlan government released a five-year Housing Action Plan, developed in conjunction with a provincial Housing Supply Task Force appointed in late 2017.

Some major initiatives of the Wade MacLauchlan government included passage of PEI's first-ever Water Act, which some commentators said could be a model for the rest of the country, and a new Municipal Government Act replacing legislation first adopted in 1947.

The Wade MacLauchlan government introduced extensive programs and incentives aimed at achieving greater energy efficiency.

Wade MacLauchlan's Liberals trailed in the polls going in to the 2019 provincial election.

Wade MacLauchlan lost by 104 votes in his district of Stanhope-Marshfield and announced two days later that he would step down as Liberal party leader upon selection of an interim leader.

Wade MacLauchlan was the first openly gay Premier of Prince Edward Island, and the first openly gay man to be premier of a province.

Wade MacLauchlan was the first person in Canada to be a member of the Order of Canada prior to leading a government, having been inducted as a member of Order in 2008.

In 2013, Wade MacLauchlan was an inaugural recipient of the Frank McKenna Award for outstanding contributions to public policy by Atlantic Canadians conferred by the Public Policy Forum of Canada.

Wade MacLauchlan is the first person to have become a Member of the Order of Canada prior to becoming a provincial premier.

Wade MacLauchlan chaired the founding committee of the Palmer Conference on Public Sector Leadership and was actively involved, including as chair, with the first three Palmer Conferences: Public Servants and their Relationships with Politicians and the Media, Developing a Canadian Energy Strategy, and Canadian Immigration Law and Policy.

Wade MacLauchlan has been involved in various business endeavours, including family businesses and as an investor in several start-up technology firms based on PEI.

Wade MacLauchlan is a director of Anne in China Inc.

Wade MacLauchlan is director and president of a local land development company, Covehead Development Inc.