New Brunswick NDP leader quits

Elizabeth Weir is calling it quits after 16 colourful years as leader of the New Democratic Party of New Brunswick, but she plans to stay on as MLA for Saint John Harbour, and will run again in the next provincial election.

Weir held a news conference in Fredericton Friday to announce her decision.

She says the party needs a new leader and new opportunities, but has agreed to remain on the job until after a leadership convention.

• INDEPTH: Elizabeth Weir

Premier Bernard Lord's Progressive Conservatives currently hold a one-seat lead in party standings, after the Liberals held onto the riding of Shediac-Cap Pl in a byelection earlier this week. If Weir resigned her seat, and the Liberals managed to win it, the legislature would be locked in a tie.

The 56-year-old Belfast-born lawyer has advanced an agenda of social, environmental and economic reform since she was first elected in Saint John in 1991.

She has been the only sitting NDP member in the legislature, and, despite her personal and political popularity, the party has failed to elect another MLA for the last 13 years.

Weir's political influence on New Brunswick's political agenda is impossible to ignore.

She took over leadership of the NDP in 1988, and emerged as the only consistent opposition voice through back-to-back Liberal majority governments from 1987 until 1999.

Weir outlasted and outshone the series of leaders that paraded through the Progressive Conservative and Confederation of Regions opposition parties. She stuck to the values of the left, resisting offers by the government to join its ranks.

In one memorable example, Weir told the former deputy premier, Ray Frenette, that she'd rather "gnaw off my own right arm" than abandon her principles and join Frank McKenna's Liberal government.

Most recently, Weir served as the architect of a new public auto-insurance system for New Brunswick.

The insurance issue nearly toppled the Lord government in June, 2003. Consumers fed up with high auto-insurance rates showed their frustration at the polls. The Lord Tories lost their huge majority, and came within two seats of losing the government.

Lord responded by appointing Weir to run a select committee charged with searching out the best kind of public insurance for the province.

Weir and her committee submitted a comprehensive plan to reduce rates under a government-run system that was ultimately rejected by the govenment.

Weir has received recognition for her advocacy work on public health care and international democracy.

She is married to labour lawyer James Stanley. They have one daughter, Sarah, who attends university.