As of Tuesday, fully half of Premier Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party caucus is in cabinet.
A cabinet with 24 members (25 if you count the premier) for a Canadian provincial government is arguably excessive, wasteful and inefficient – at exactly 50 per cent of the government caucus in the legislature, less Smith, you could say it’s all that by any measure!
It’s certainly a strange flex for a party that, since 2019, never stopped complaining about how there are too many managers at Alberta Health Services – which, according to the respected Canadian Institute for Health Information in 2019, spent only 3.3 per cent of its budget on administration, the lowest in Canada.
By the time the dust settles and Smith names her parliamentary secretaries, associate ministers, and the like, damn near all of her MLAs will either be part of the cabinet – with a 50 per cent pay increase from the base MLA salary of $120,936 per annum to $181,404 – or qualify for other posts with their own perks and allowances.
Don’t forget the chief government whip Shane Getson (Lac Ste.Anne-Parkland) and House leader Joseph Schow (Cardston-Siksika), named at the same time as cabinet and each with a generous “special allowance” to pad their pay.
When the last press release has been published, the only UCP MLA still drawing a base salary may be Jennifer Johnson of Lacombe-Ponoka – who will sit as an independent owing to the inopportune timing of the publication of her disgusting poop-cookie hate recipe, but whom everyone will understand is a UCP MLA in everything but name.
If you’re planning to write a formal letter to these guys, you’ll have to address most of them as “the honourable” – so there’s your daily chuckle at the expense of Alberta!
Readers will recall that when Rachel Notley became premier in 2015, she named 11 additional MLAs to her first cabinet, which was equally balanced between men and women.
We might as well be cynical about Smith’s new cabinet because, in this case, cynicism is justified.
There is lots of speculation about what the premier was up to and the conventional wisdom – which is almost certainly right – is that she’s desperately trying to find a way to stitch her fractious and disunited caucus so it doesn’t rip apart at the seams.
An added bonus, as former NDP leader Brian Mason pointed out in a tweet, is that “Cabinet members are subject to the cabinet solidarity rule and must support government decisions (and the premier).”
So the more the merrier!
Smith presumably needed some anti-abortion activists holding health care adjacent portfolios to keep her erstwhile social conservative friends at Take Back Alberta (TBA) at bay. After all, TBA has threatened to roll the tumbrels for her if she doesn’t do their bidding, and she does owe them her job in the UCP leadership election after they sent Jason Kenney packing.
Hence cabinet roles for Mental Health and Addiction Minister Dan Williams and Health Minister Adriana LaGrange, who has already proved to be a disaster in education. Both are strong on the anti-abortion file.
Cleverly, while both are presumably acceptable to TBA, they also hail from Kenney’s cabinet, and hence are not seen as actual TBA cadres.
Postmedia pundits have argued this means Smith wants to toe a more moderate line, if she dares. This may be true when it comes to reproductive rights, but probably not much else.
Meanwhile, the UCP lost enough votes to the NDP on May 29 for even Smith to understand she now needs to do something to keep those old Tories sweet – so she found a place in cabinet for Rick Wilson and Ric McIver too. (It’s hard not to imagine TBA supremo David Parker on the phone shouting, “that’s enough Rics, dammit!“)
And since the UCP lost the only seat it had in Edmonton and had a bad election night in Calgary too, it turns out that getting elected for the UCP in Cowtown or in a riding adjacent to the outskirts of Edmonton is not a bad thing for MLAs with limited talent and ministerial ambitions.
Women are a problem for Smith, of course, because UCP supporters elect so few of them. With four in cabinet, she had picked 50 per cent of the women MLAs available. More will be named to other posts soon, no doubt.
Ditto lawyers, a shortage of which left the premier with the problem of whom to name as justice minister. She solved that conundrum by appointing Mickey Amery to the post.
Amery, the MLA for Calgary-Cross, is an interesting choice. In 2021, he was excoriated by the usual suspects on the far and not-so-far right for accusing Israel of “violence against innocent and unarmed Palestinian worshippers and civilians” in the Occupied Territories.
For his courageous social media comment, he earned a sharp rebuke from then-premier Kenney.
Presumably, Brian Jean didn’t want the post, and given his rebellious history and secure base in Fort McMurray, the premier needed to keep him happy too, so she named him Energy Minister. The only other lawyer, pandemic vacationer Jason Stephan, was apparently judged too much of a wingnut even for Smith’s taste.
Apparently there must also always be a Nixon in a UCP cabinet, so without Jeremy (Calgary-Klein), who is now searching for new post-election opportunities, the return of brother Jason (Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre), the former finance minister and vociferous Smith critic, was required.
Such is the delicate balancing required to ensure the United Conservative Party lives up to its name long enough for Smith to implement her agenda.
Kenney’s former chief of staff returns as deputy minister
On Monday, the government published a list of its most senior civil servants, the people who, arguably, really run the government.
It’s interesting to note that Kenney’s former chief of staff Larry Kaumeyer has returned as Deputy Minister of Energy and Minerals.
After finding himself on the guest list of Kenney’s notorious mid-pandemic Sky Palace patio party two years ago, Kaumeyer served as spell as CEO of Ducks Unlimited.
There’s probably more gold to be mined in the list, but not right now.
Tyler Shandro Law Society hearing resumes
Finally, Monday also saw the resumption of former UCP minister Tyler Shandro’s hearing before the Law Society of Alberta in response to complaints he violated the profession’s code of conduct while in office. Shandro, who served variously as minister of health, labour and justice in UCP cabinets, was defeated in his Calgary-Varsity riding on May 29.
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