CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. – Back home in Wild Rose Country, Premier Danielle Smith has named her cabinet, so the Internet and airwaves will naturally soon be rife with speculation about What It All Means.
This is normally a fool’s errand, since less than 24 hours, generally speaking, is just too soon to make predictions about how new ministers will perform or what their appointments might mean.
So, for the moment, I will offer up my hottest of hot takes on a few of the names on the cabinet list now and more reasoned commentary later I’m safely back in Alberta. A full list, cribbed from the Alberta Government web page, is found at the bottom of this story.
Danielle Smith is, of course, the premier, but she has also named herself minister of intergovernmental relations. This suggests that as far as Ms. Smith is concerned, her fight with Ottawa remains the government’s most important file, no matter what she promised during the election, and one that requires her daily attention. This indicates separatist fantasies still burn bright in the bosom of the United Conservative Party. This does not bode well for Canada or Alberta.
Adriana LaGrange, minister of health. Unlike Ms. Smith’s separatist hobbyhorse, right now health is probably the most important portfolio in any Canadian government. The appointment of one of the UCP’s weakest and worst performing ministers, seemingly without an idea of her own other than her opposition to abortion rights, is dire sign of what may be coming. It seems quite possible the department will now be run by privatization lobbyists while Ms. Lagrange reads from her script, as she did in education, except on the topic of reproductive rights. The Alberta Teachers Association, at least, will be delighted to see the last of Ms. LaGrange, and probably pleased to find Demetrios Nicolaides in her old job as education minister on the theory anything is better than the baleful combination of former premier Jason Kenney, a pedagogical crank, and Ms. LaGrange in the role of his stooge.
Rajan Sawhney, minister of advanced education. Well, if nothing else, Ms. Sawhney’s appointment shows it pays to have run for the leadership of the UCP. She’ll probably do less harm in the portfolio than Mr. Nicolaides did. Watch to see what she does with Athabasca University for a hint of how independent she really is.
Nate Horner, finance minister. Well, it’s always nice to have a Horner back in cabinet – unless he’s in a Trudeau Cabinet, of course. The Horner political clan is sort of a down home Alberta version of the Kennedys, only less successful. Sooner or later, someone is going to tout Mr. Horner as a potential Alberta premier, so I might as well do it right now.
Brian Jean, minister of energy and minerals. Ms. Smith has followed the folk wisdom to keep her friends close and her enemies in cabinet. Energy is important enough to keep Mr. Jean out of mischief for the time being. It will be fine with Ms. Smith, I’m sure, if he has to take the heat for implementing the scandalous R-Star scam to reward oil companies for not cleaning up their abandoned wells. If it gets too heated, Mr. Jean may decide to quit again and go back to Fort McMurray or one of his foreign abodes.
Dan Williams, minister of mental health and addiction. Another dire sign, if you ask me, and a payoff to the UCP’s Pro-Life Alberta auxiliary party and the premier’s friends at Take Back Alberta. Well, at least the youthful anti-abortion activist wasn’t made the health minister … yet. But the former Kenney aide’s resume is hardly reassuring to anyone concerned about protecting the lives of Albertans from drug poisonings.
Devin Dreeshen, minister of transportation and economic corridors. The name of the ministry implies more separatist pish-posh, of course. The name of the minister means Mr. Dreeshen has been completely forgiven for the disgraceful goings on in his office, as if he were ever really condemned for them, in 2020 and 2021. One wonders whatever happened to the lawsuit by Ariella Kimmel alleging she was fired for trying to stop sexual harassment of employees and heavy drinking in Legislature offices. Settled with a non-disclosure agreement, one imagines. Shields up!
Jason Nixon, minister of seniors, community and social services. Wasn’t his brother Jeremy, at the moment between jobs, just doing that job? Jason Nixon, of course, is a former finance minister, and was not so long ago was a harsh critic of Ms. Smith. But he can’t be defeated in his Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre Riding, apparently, even if Ms. Smith’s Take Back Alberta allies don’t like him. So this portfolio isn’t exactly a reward, but it puts him where Ms. Smith can keep an eye on him.
Important omission – there is no minister of labour. Whatever could that mean?
OK, those are some of the highlights. More soonest. In the meantime, though, here’s the complete list to chew over.
- Premier and Minister of Intergovernmental Relations – Danielle Smith
- Deputy Premier and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Services – Mike Ellis
- Minister of Advanced Education – Rajan Sawhney
- Minister of Affordability and Utilities and Vice-chair of Treasury Board – Nathan Neudorf
- Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation – RJ Sigurdson
- Minister of Arts, Culture and Status of Women – Tanya Fir
- Minister of Children and Family Services – Searle Turton
- Minister of Education – Demetrios Nicolaides
- Minister of Energy and Minerals – Brian Jean
- Minister of Environment and Protected Areas – Rebecca Schulz
- Ministry of Forestry and Parks – Todd Loewen
- Minister of Health – Adriana LaGrange
- Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism – Muhammad Yaseen
- Minister of Indigenous Relations – Rick Wilson
- Minister of Infrastructure – Pete Guthrie
- Minister of Jobs, Economy and Trade – Matt Jones
- Minister of Justice – Mickey Amery
- Minister of Mental Health and Addiction – Dan Williams
- Minister of Municipal Affairs – Ric McIver
- Minister of Seniors, Community and Social Services – Jason Nixon
- Minister of Service Alberta and Red Tape Reduction – Dale Nally
- Minister of Technology and Innovation – Nate Glubish
- Minister of Tourism and Sport – Joseph Schow
- Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors – Devin Dreeshen
- President of Treasury Board and Minister of Finance – Nate Horner
Amusingly, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation complained that at 25, Ms. Smith’s cabinet is too big – it’s the cost, of course. “Albertans don’t need a big cabinet to run things out of Edmonton,” whinged a CTF spokesthingy. “Smith should have followed in the footsteps of former premier Ralph Klein and cut the size of cabinet when first elected as premier.”
Oddly, though, for some reason the supposedly non-partisan CTF didn’t mention Opposition Leader Rachel Notley’s minuscule 12-member cabinet when she was sworn in as premier in 2015. Wouldn’t that be a better, fresher example?
“Devin Dreeshen, minister of tansportation and economic corridors.”
While it’s amusing to think that this might be a neologism describing the movement of booze into the Legislature, I think that it’s a typo.
Fixed. Thank you, Lars. DJC
Asking about the labour ministry will get you hounded by the new Matt’s.
*Autocorrect is fond of adding apostrophes.
One hopes Lagrange will allow the more intelligent members of the AH bureaucracy to deliver her some meaningless “improvements” to trot out for press conferences, in exchange for letting them do the necessary duct-taping required to keep the ship afloat. Besides, Smith promised us that she wouldn’t let her touch reproductive rights, as Smith herself is pro-choice. I actually appreciate this consistency in her libertarianism, as opposed to the hypocritical US libertarian movement—inextricable from their dreams of theocracy and thus bound to restrict many “unchristian” freedoms like sexual orientation, gender and reproductive rights. Surely, we can trust Danielle Smith not to go back on her word? I saw her interview with Global after her win, and when the reporter pressed her on her association with TBA (“Has David Parker called you to offer his congratulations?”) she actually gasped like a landed fish, before sidestepping the question entirely. Clearly they have no more hold on her!
I wouldn’t be so sanguine about Daniellezebub’s so-called libertarianism when it comes to women’s reproductive rights. As a libertarian, she doesn’t believe in public funding of people’s personal choices, so I can easily imagine her deciding to defund the provision of abortion services by the health system. It’s not 100% of what the forced-birth crowd would want to see, but it would restrict access to reproductive care to those able to afford it.
25 ministers in the cabinet. Wait until the scandals and Smith’s usual nonsense starts to ramp up. She’s a largely absentee premier. Apart from R-Star, there’s little to interest her in the goings on of the government. I expect there’s going to be a lot of lobbyists roaming around the ministeries before long.
Grifters gotta grift.
A twenty five member cabinet.
France, a nation possessing nuclear weapons and a population of over sixty eight million has a cabinet, including its president, of twenty. The similarly populated and armed United Kingdom has, including its’ Prime Minister, one of twenty. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the world’s fifth largest, and a population of over eighty four million has, including its’ Chancellor a cabinet of seventeen.
As you said keep your friends close and enemies in cabinet.
The new portfolio of Transportation and Economic Corridors began within weeks of Smith becoming premier. Well we did have an eighteen day economic corridor blockade at an international border crossing. Its probably best not to go down that route.
For as long as I can remember, I have never seen a provincial cabinet in Alberta this large. The NDP had a cabinet that was half this size, at just 12 cabinetministers. The previous Alberta PC government never had a cabinet as large as the UCP does. This cabinet that the UCP has is full of the most unqualified people for their roles. The UCP are going to ruin Alberta, with more of the worst oil royalty rates, that will lose us billions of dollars, the worst corporate tax rates, that will lose us billions of dollars more, more very pricey shenanigans, that will also cost us billions of dollars, more layoffs, more cuts to the public healthcare and public education systems, so they can be privatized, more costlier utilities and insurance, poverty levels going up, greater instances of crime, and no regard for the environment. Once again, Albertans who didn’t listen to us who were saying the UCP weren’t good, have contributed to this horrific mess.
Google says economic corridors “connect economic agents along a defined geography. They provide important connections between economic nodes or hubs that are usually centered in urban landscapes.”
Can anyone explain what this means in understandable English?
Tom: As you’ll recall, the Polish Corridor meant war. DJC
Easy peasy Tom. Imagine two nodes, say Toronto and London. Over a period of time, an economic corridor can be built (via govt policy or just simple migration) to service those two nodes. The term “service” can mean everything from small factories making parts to housing for the workers to educational facilities to develop new workers and ideas. The corridor can flourish in its support role for the two nodes and/or become self-sustaining. Look at Mississauga, Brampton, Kitchener, Waterloo and so on.
A political corridor as DJC mentioned is slightly different in that it offers transport and trade links from an enclave to the sea in the case of Danzig.
For what its worth, imho, in simplest terms a road, or bridge….as in the blocking of the economic corridor between Detroit and Windsor….
One relevant local example is the CANAMEX Trade Corridor, connecting Mexico and the US to Pacific ports and Alaska through Canada. The city I live in sits astride a portion of this corridor, Highway 43, which connects Edmonton to Grande Prairie and then to the BC border, where it becomes BC Hwy 2, also known as the Dawson Creek-Tupper Highway. A further 39 kilometres along Hwy 2 takes you to Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANAMEX_Corridor
I am a bit relieved that the cabinet appears to be, by UCP standards anyway, relatively moderate. I had been quite concerned that we would see a bunch of Take Back Alberta MLAs appointed to cabinet, as David Parker flexes his muscles.
The election results in Jason Nixon’s riding of Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre has perhaps cooled the people at TBA. Readers may recall that TBA inspired Tim Hoven tried to contest the UCP nomination for the riding, as a way of eliminating Jason Kenney’s right hand man, Jason Nixon, because of Covid restrictions. The UCP, while still led by Jason Kenney, disqualified Mr. Hoven on a questionable issue, and Danielle Smith refused to reopen the nomination when she became premier. Hoven then ran as an independent, which turned the election into a de facto battle between UCP establishment and TBA, deep in Conservative Alberta’s heartland. Nixon won with 70% of the vote; Hoven got 15%.
I do wonder, however, how many of the people who voted for Nixon would have voted for Hoven if they were aware of the two candidates’ position on Covid issues.
Scary to have to think [done on occasion until the pain is too great] what all these people will come up with as the fires continue to rage and the drought continues to suppress crops. Hopefully the latter does not happen again as it did for many years earlier this century – swamps dried up and ‘states of emergency’ were issued by many counties throughout the province. Of course there will be no mention of ‘climate weirdness’ behind any of this: Not Allowed here!!
Elect a clown, expect a circus. The next four years will be very difficult and unpleasant for all but her besties.
I suppose with its most competent former members gone, the UCP did the best it could with what remains. So the Nixon who got reelected and Jean together, that ought to be fun. McIver is back despite Smith’s previous lack of enthusiasm for him. I suppose being one of the remaining Calgary ministers gives him better job security going forward.
Of course there is the ongoing dilemma of what to do with a problem like LaGrange. Perhaps she will cause less trouble in Health than Education, but I’m not so sure, that remains to be seen. Dreeshen is back UCPland is again safe for closeted day drinking.
With a diminished Calgary caucus, it is now a very rural cabinet, which I think with struggle to connect with an increasingly urban province. However, Smith seems to take a lot of the energy and attention so it probably won’t matter how good the cabinet is or not, unless someone really messes up big, which will probably also happen in due course with this gang.
All of the comments on this column are more than valid. What we have to keep in mind is this painfully slow train wreck was brought on by the majority of voters in Alberta. This is the train wreck that they hoped for as Danielle Smith is not doing anything unexpected. The million Albertans that did not bother to get off the sofa to vote gave this train wreck their tacit approval. We are badly outnumbered. This is not cynicism, this is being skeptical and realistic.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Danielle Smith has appointed the second-largest Cabinet in Alberta’s history; only her own, interim cabinet of 27 (including “associate ministers,” a euphemism for “patronage appointments”) was larger. After all, Smith is a warm, generous, kind-hearted soul. She’s just spreading the joy along with the work load.
It seems, from Jimmy’s comment, that there’s an optimum size for a democratic government of around 20 ministers. Less than that, the workload is simply too large in a complex modern society. That’s why Rachel Notley had to expand her first Cabinet from 12 to 18.
Much more than 20, though, becomes both unwieldy and expensive. Chopping up the workload into splinters means more time spent coordinating effort. At some point, coordination overtakes making policy and becomes the dominant task. (Come to think, that might save us from some of the dumber impulses of Smith and her government. Thrashing out who’s responsible for what might rob them of time to actually make laws.)
I wonder how Jason Nixon feels about his new job. Fired for not being on Danielle’s side, then rehired in a low-status job; it must feel like a demotion. Does Nixon still disagree with his new boss’s free-spending ways? Or will she revert to type, slashing “social spending” like cost-of-living supports, emergency services, free medical care and public schooling? I dunno, but I guess Jason Nixon will be OK with Danielle’s priorities as long as oil companies (and maybe farmers) benefit more than mean ol’ city folk who don’t like like the UCP/ TBA Party anyway.
Oh, and speaking of TBA; it’s a surprise there aren’t more of them in Cabinet so far. Maybe there’ll be more of them in the first Cabinet shuffle. Expect that to happen when Smith announces her first austerity budget.
Here’s an idea: let’s set out a fixed number of government departments or ministries, and appoint one and only one Minister of the Crown to head each of them up and take responsibility for the work. Departments are usually responsible for a slice of the provincial budget, and for drafting legislation and regulations necessary to govern the provision of the services provided by that department. A simple list might start with:
– Health
– Education
– Finance
– Justice & Attorney-General
– Municipal Affairs
– Infrastructure & Transportation
etc. etc. etc.
The real work of a department is actually done by the permanent professional public service anyway (alliteration unintended), so if a department’s remit expands, all the Minister need to is appoint a couple of additional Assistant Deputy Ministers, reporting to the Deputy Minister or senior departmental public servant, to manage the workload.
Of course, this would make too much sense.
the clown car of cabinets. A slight majority of alberta voters gives these clowns and idiots a mandate and they’re going to the best job they can to destroy this country and make it a vassal of the United States. I literally hate it here.
Danielle Smith is premier and minister of intergovernmental affairs. There are nine such premiers who appoint themselves intergovernmental-affairs ministers among the eleven sovereign and three Territorial (non-sovereign) governments in Canada, so the remarkable feature about Smith is rather her public ruminations about partisan politics (she’s alluded to governing only for supporters of her party, not for all Albertans—even to the point of proposing some kind of executive commission composed of defeated UCP candidates to “represent” the City of Edmonton to cabinet instead of the actual representatives Edmonton ridings elected which happen to be all NDP), about government (despite having been an MLA for three different parties of the partisan right, she continually demonstrates her incompetence), about the Canadian Constitution and rule-of-law (she claims authority to ignore federal law that no premier has), and about secession from the federation (which the Alberta right long condemned with regard Quebec’s secession-ish aspirations three and four decades ago).
Even if she knew what intergovernmental relations entails, nobody can be sure what she’d do with it—maybe not even Danielle Smith herself. Borrowing a phrase from Saskatchewan, next door (which also has a premier who doubles as intergovernmental affairs minister), Smith very likely has an “Alberta First” policy: she’ll destroy the rest of the planets later.
Every province but Nova Scotia has some sort of Indigenous or Aboriginal affairs ministry which could be counted as some sort of intergovernmental relations offices—but then so could municipal affairs ministries which are included in all chartering-governments’ cabinets, reminding that a sovereign government also relations with its own sub-jurisdictions, but that, say, Aboriginal or municipal governments also have relations with governments and other organizations outside of their respective provinces, territories, and even the country (for examples, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Pan-Arctic Indigenous liaisons, La Francophone, special UN embassies, &c). One gets the feeling that these interesting areas of intergovernmental relations are not what Danielle has in mind as her province’s minister of.
The reasons why so many premiers are also their own intergovernmental affairs ministers is the quasi-official but extra-constitutional “First Ministers” summit they periodically convene and their completely unofficial, follow-up joint-demands which they ritually present the Prime Minister of Canada—often including some aspirational rumination about formally recognizing a regular premiers’ forum as if Canadians are not already represented in their federal parliament. (It’s curious how many of the whiniest premiers have been known to spout conservative cant about making government smaller while proposing to double-up representation with a superfluous first ministers’ body—kinda like Danielle Smith’s UCP-loser “cabinet” to “represent” Edmonton which already elected its own representatives to the Alberta Assembly not a fortnight ago.)
The inordinate size of Smith’s cabinet —getting up close to Ontario’s 29 ministers but with barely a quarter the population—must be compared with Alberta’s alter-ego, Quebec, which, at about thrice the population has 39 ministers. It couldn’t be the complexity of Alberta’s economy that warrants so many cabinet portfolios—more likely, as has been noted, it has to do with one of the UCP’s most pressing problems: the uncomfortable dichotomy of its two factions, ProgCon vs TBA. It’s good to keep enemies closer, yes, and the balm of a cabinet appointment—in this case, many of them— does soothe that burning and itching of barely-subliminal schism, just about as well as Preparation-H gets the wrinkles out. One interesting wrinkle is Alberta’s minister of Immigration even thought that’s federal, not provincial jurisdiction. (But what about Quebec which has its own “Foreign Affairs” minister? Freudian slip, maybe? Pequiste envy?)
Smith welshed on her Alberta Sovereignty bet, but not on its unwieldy name. The “within-a-united-Canada” appendage probably means something more like Danielle soliciting neighbouring provinces to go along with her Alberta-First notions—at minimum with Saskatchewan and Manitoba tagging along, a la Wexit, so their citizens can watch dilbit trains chug back and forth to the Port of Churchill. “Take that!—Justin Trudeau!!” Smith actually proposed this. It was laughed off. But maybe she’ll work on reintroducing the gag.
But I suspect Smith’s first go-to will be firearms—again, federal, not provincial jurisdiction, a fact she has warned she’ll challenge vis a vis her Alberta-Sovereignty-by-the-church-near-the-yew-in-the-valley-of-the-blind-where-the-one-eyed-man-is-king-kinda-place. Or some such cymric thingy.
For the moment the NDP is forgotten (at least by the CTF). Today is the UCP’s day because, come Monday, the real work will begin and Albertans will start to wonder if the NDP would have been a better choice after all. They say the electorate’s memory is short but I bet it’s gonna get a good memetic workout, starting soon.
So. Bible Bill resurrected himself and empowered a bunch of goofs to re-fight the battle he lost, behind some numbty that can’t even run a twitter account? Lookee here pilgrims! We’re going to carve your cow flop simulacrums of legitimate representatives like ten day old sushi in the hot hot sun!
Lovely description of the new cabinet ministers. Looking forward to all the scandals and problems as entertainment. However, a lot of what happens when cabinet ministers have personal agendas does not bode well for children and they didn’t have any say in who forms government.
No labour minister. that’s interesting. perhaps they will abandon workers rights, WCB, min. wage, etc. Sort of turn Alberta into one of those “right to work” states we have seen over the decades in the american south.
25 Cabinet Ministers. B.C. has 27 Cabinet Ministers. The Cabinet also have 17 women and 7 people of colour.
Albertans voted for Smith. now they can learn to live with it or die because of it.
Good luck to all those in Alberta. If you are looking to relocate, B.C. still needs health care workers and teachers, oh and trades.
4/24? Apparently Alberta women aren’t competent enough for cabinet. How many women did Ms. Smith have to chose from?
Mickey: Excluding Ms. Smith, there there are eight. Four are in cabinet, a couple are real duds, one disgraced herself during the campaign. There would have been nine, except for the poop-cookie-hate lady from Lacombe-Ponoka who Ms. Smith had to promise not to allow to sit as a government MLA if she were elected, which she was. DJC
Naming LaGrange as health minister is likely the best way to drive out doctors, after the way she treated teachers. I still can’t believe the people in Red Deer elected her after the way she treated teachers, but then look at what the people in Lacombe did. Can you be any dumber than that?
People frequently don’t care that much about teachers. People think teachers are over paid and underworked. How many of us have heard people complain about the “vacations” teachers have? Short work days? A lot of it is just sour grapes. Those teachers spent at least 4 to 5 years in University and some more to obtain andvanced degrees. In Alberta many go to work in the oil industry and make great money, what do you need an education for.
What people frequently don’t understand that there are important jobs in our society which need to be filled by people who have advanced educations. i.e. we don’t have enoough doctors because governments did create enough spaces in Universities, same for other health care professions. Vets are in short supply–takes about as long to become one as a G.P.
As to doctors, taking a wack at them maybe more difficult because if you don’t get to see a doctor when you need one, there maybe no waiting.
about all we can say is: they voted for them and now they have to learn to live with their choices.
Now that it appears that Alberta’s wildfire season has returned with a vengeance, it’s amusing to see at the conspiratorial dregs are rearing their ugly heads again. It’s seems the fires cannot be blamed on FreeDUMB-luvin ATV drivers or the fire pit crowd, so it must be Trudeau and his flamethrower gang. It’s no question that the moron/master-mind-who-controls-everything is causing this, like the evil Bond villain he is so often made out to be. While the social media meatheads troll their nonsense, Alberta is burning, so it would seem, in the name of FreeDUMB. Great. Burn the whole province down just to own the Libs. Great plan, there.
Meanwhile, the rural base of the UCP/TBA is, apparently, not heeding the recommendations of the local authorities to get out while you’re still alive. I mean, surely they want to die for FreeDUMB, so why not let them? The worst that can happen is that there will be fewer UCP voters the next time around. But I’m sure that the few that remain will benefit from Danielle Smith buying them all replacement houses … bigger and grander ones as well.
So, intergovernmental affairs,?
will that also include OHS/Alberta health and safety?
Just curious because the conundrum is : tweeting a picture of yourself violating restaurant safety rules for a photo-op , saying you were using imprecise language as to actually “working “, admitting to ‘helping out’ in the restaurant but still having inappropriate footwear, or changing the rules, so that Premiers don’t have to follow rules and regulations ?
So which comes first, the editing, the apology, or the fine/ slap on the wrist ( or the bare toes in this case) by OHS ??
And any takers on if and or when she replaces her social media wizard ? This makes post # 3 in a week that needed editing …….
or is she adding dishwasher/restaurant owner to her job description ??
Conflict? what conflict?
How many days has it been ?
Our dauntless host needed a holiday! Fair enough. Now Back to work you (as the UCP would claim) worthless commie! There’s reporting to do! Dani stepped right in it today. Her front bench is already looking like bobble heads in search of a leader. This is now. What the heck will later look like?
I am honestly not surprised by any of ms. Smith’s cabinet choices. I said multiple times in this election that the results will shape AB politics for at least a decade. Unfortunately, it is clear what we will now get from this government, everything will be blamed on Mr. Trudeau, an ultra conservative social agenda that the majority of albertans do NOT want, a push for privatization across a range of public services, corporate welfare of unprecedented and unethical proportions and further efforts to hide the skeletons in the closet. I also wonder just how adept that Ms. Smith will be at controlling the extreme wild rose elements of the party that she is now clearly beholding to?!