Andrew Thomson (born July 16, 1967) is a Canadian politician, who was a member of the NDP caucus in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan from 1995 to 2007. While in government, he held several cabinet posts, including Minister of Finance, Learning, Corrections and Public Safety, Energy and Mines, and Minister Responsible for Information Technology, SaskEnergy, and SaskPower. Background Thomson was born in Kindersley, Saskatchewan, and raised in Kindersley and Prince Albert. He has a bachelor's degree in political studies from the University of Saskatchewan, and worked in the government of Roy Romanow as a ministerial assistant after graduating. Political career He was first elected to the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan in 1995, and was re-elected with increased pluralities in 1999 and 2003 representing the riding of Regina South. Thomson was brought into cabinet by Lorne Calvert as Minister of Energy and Mines in 2001. In this portfolio, he proposed the reduction of oil and gas royalties to stimulate drilling in the Souris Basin that was being effected by low oil prices, introduced the greenprint for ethanol production for the province, and handled Saskatchewan's approach to the Kyoto Accord implementation. The department was abolished in the government restructuring of March 2002, at which time Thomson was assigned the newly created Corrections and Public Safety portfolio as well as the newly created Ministry of Information Technology. Despite controversy related to proposed outsourcing of the government's information technology operations, as Minister of Information Technology, Thomson pursued the consolidation of government IT services and advocated large scale broadband connectivity across the province for program delivery. His work to advance the CommunityNet program provided the foundation for commercial high-speed broadband services across rural and urban communities that reach 86% of the population. In 2007 he introduced a program to bring free Wi-Fi to university and college campuses and select urban areas. As a result of the work, the province has now pushed for full connectivity, further bolstering its recognition in the sector as being a leader for broadband connectivity in North America. As Minister of Learning, he introduced changes to reduce by two-thirds the number of elected school boards in the province while creating new school councils to better involve parents in the education process. The NDP's finance and governance reforms also included changes to the Foundation Operating Grant formulae to put greater emphasis on equity of per-pupil funding. To assist in implementing these large