Kathleen Mary Margaret "Kathy" Dunderdale (née Warren; born February 1952) is a politician and former MHA who served as the tenth premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from December 3, 2010, to January 24, 2014.

[2] In the early 1980s, Dunderdale was on an action committee that successfully lobbied Fishery Products International to reverse a decision to shut down its Burin fish plant.

[16] Dunderdale ran against Liberal cabinet minister Oliver Langdon, and while she knew she would not win the election she felt she had to send premier Clyde Wells a message about the way he was treating municipalities.

[20][21] From February 1, 2010 to March 15, 2010, Dunderdale assumed the duties as acting Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, while Williams took a leave of absence to undergo heart surgery in Florida.

[28] Nalcor Energy, a Newfoundland and Labrador Crown corporation, signed a partnership agreement with Emera Inc. of Nova Scotia to develop the 824 megawatts Muskrat Falls.

The platform included continuing the freeze on post-secondary tuition and eventually eliminating loans in favour of needs-based grants, phasing out the payroll tax over six years, investing a third of any surplus into unfunded public pension funds, reviewing the province's income tax rates to ensure they are progressive and competitive, continuing to make payments on the province's direct debt, creating a population growth strategy, moving forward with the Muskrat Falls hydro development, and improving health care wait times.

[48] With this win Dunderdale became only the third female in Canadian history to lead a party to victory in a general election, after Catherine Callbeck in Prince Edward Island and Pat Duncan in the Yukon.

[60] The offer included 100 percent Atlantic Canadian parity within the first two years of the agreement, pay equity for salaried specialists, and retention bonuses for fee-for-service rural physicians.

The deal between the two was reached after 18 months of negotiations, during at which point NAPE released radio and television advertisements criticizing the government for saying the province's economy was booming while they laid off employees and told unions to expect a modest increase in pay.

[28] During her first official meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper on February 1, 2011, Dunderdale asked for his government's support with a loan guarantee for Muskrat Falls.

[67] Dunderdale's first throne speech as premier was read out by Lieutenant Governor Crosbie on March 21, 2011, and there was significant focus placed on the Lower Churchill development.

[70][71] In a simultaneous news conference held in St. John's and Halifax on December 17, 2012, Dunderdale and Emera Inc. announced they had both officially sanctioned the Muskrat Falls hydro development.

[72] During her time as Natural Resources Minister, Dunderdale promoted the need for a national energy plan, which would include an east-west power grid spanning the country.

[83] In her party's 2011 election platform Dunderdale announced that a re-elected PC government would continue with the tuition freeze and would gradually phase out student loans and replace them with up-front needs-based grants.

The government also announced that over the next 10 years they would embark on a "core mandate analysis" to restrain growth in program spending to the rate of inflation, and reduce Newfoundland and Labrador's debt level to the all-province average.

[110] Just three months after the budget was delivered Dunderdale announced that the government would cut back on travel and leave some vacant positions unfilled due to a drop in oil prices.

On the day of her news conference brent crude, a close reference point for oil produced offshore Newfoundland, stood at $103 a barrel, which was up from $90 the previous month.

[125] Minister Jackman, who represents a district that relies heavily on the fishing industry, continued to face much criticism for his performance in the fisheries portfolio and was re-elected by just 40 votes.

In a five-year period the provincial government had provided roughly $1.3 million in grant money for things like research, seafood marketing and fisheries technology programs.

Minister King cited the union's criticism of the provincial government as the reason for the move, stating 'No matter what we do in this province, the FFAW are more concerned with their own self-interest than they are with the interests of the industry.

[132] In November 2011, provincial government-appointed auditors backed up claims by Ocean Choice International (OCI) that they were losing millions of dollars each year operating the Marystown fish plant.

[134] The following week, OCI asked the provincial government for an exemption to export unprocessed fish in return for nearly doubling the workforce at the company's plant in Fortune.

[144] Following the conclusion of the CETA negotiations Dunderdale said that other provinces and the federal government had been pressuring her to accept a deal that would eliminate minimum processing requirements on fish right away, in exchange for concessions on tariffs later.

[150] An expert on international access-to-information laws, Toby Mendel, called key changes to the act "breathtaking," and said the province will rank lower than some third world countries with the new legislation.

[154] On September 13, 2012, long time Tory MHA and former cabinet minister Tom Osborne announced he was leaving the PC Party to sit as an independent.

[160] The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) had spent $457 obtaining inspection reports earlier the year, which had been criticized by former Service NL Minister Paul Davis during the debate on Bill 29.

[161] On November 22, 2012, Hutchings and Service NL Minister Nick McGrath announced that the public could now go on the government's website and see recent health and sanitation inspection reports for restaurants.

While both opposition parties agreed with the government's decision to make the reports available online, Liberal MHA Andrew Parsons said that "I have no doubt that this is a response to the Bill 29 criticism".

[162][163] A CBC investigation, intended to test access to information following Bill 29, discovered that some departments and agencies were refusing to release previously available details about how much public employees take home above their base salaries.

A Corporate Research Associates (CRA) poll released days after Dunderdale became premier, and conducted before she took office, showed that 90 per cent of the population were satisfied with the PC government.