With roughly 40 per cent of its members new to a cabinet role -- and 15 per cent of them brand new to Alberta's 87-seat Legislature -- Premier Alison Redford's new cabinet announced yesterday should have given the impression of more change than it did.

Despite the story the crunched numbers tell, though, this cabinet sure feels like the same old, same old.

Former Supreme Court Justice Jack Major's long-awaited report on Alberta MLA compensation doesn't stand much chance of doing anything more than serving as a 327-page doorstop in some dusty Legislature office, which is a pity because it actually makes quite a lot of sense.

Not so long ago, when her Progressive Conservative Party was embroiled in a difficult election campaign, Premier Alison Redford indicated she would accept Justice Major's recommendations holus-bolus, whatever they were. Now she is not so sure.

JASPER, Alberta

Just when you thought it was safe to go out of the house again, there's another election!

But you don’t get to vote in this one, even though it’s pretty important to Alberta just the same.

Next on the agenda for the Alberta Legislature: the 87 newly elected MLAs need to elect a Speaker to preside over their … er … deliberations.

Sounds routine, but in a funny inside-baseball way, the Speaker's job is almost as important as the premier's. The Speaker, after all, is the person who gets to set the tone of debate in the Legislature and can go a long way to make it civilized, or hyper-partisan.

As Albertans head to the polls today with large numbers of voters obviously in a mood for change and the media telling us a Wildrose majority is unstoppable, Progressive Conservative Premier Alison Redford may have only one good card left.

If her hole card turns out to be an ace, it'll be because of the caution of the significant number of Albertans and their families who work for and with this government, its agencies and the many groups and businesses that depend on it to survive.

A political party can score points by gratuitously attacking such people -- as the Wildrose attack on "big government" without question has through this campaign, notwithstanding the party's too-cute claim to recognize the value of "front-line" government employees.

The leaders of all Alberta parties but one seem committed to ending smoking by young Albertans. The sole holdout? It's the Wildrose Party, led by former Fraser Institute apparatchik Danielle Smith, of course.

This much was reported by the Calgary Herald last Tuesday, although readers are forgiven if they missed it since the story ended up on page 18.

If you have any doubts left there are only four more sleeps before the end of the Progressive Conservative Era in Alberta, look no further than the video and website called "I never thought I'd vote PC."

Whether or not the PCs under Alison Redford had anything to do with this vain effort to encourage hip, edgy young people to vote for the clapped out Conservative party in a last-ditch effort to prevent a Wildrose Apocalypse, there could be no surer sign of the imminent demise of the once mighty Tory dynasty.