Friday’s announcement of the job swap between Alberta’s justice and labour ministers illustrates just how shallow the talent pool of potential cabinet ministers still trusted by Premier Jason Kenney has become.
It also shows how low the ethical bar now is for ministers in the United Conservative Party cabinet.
Faced with the need to fire Justice Minister and Attorney General Kaycee Madu for attempting to interfere with the administration of justice, Kenney immediately shuffled his only Edmonton MLA into the labour portfolio.
Confronting the resulting need to find another lawyer to serve as minister of justice, the premier announced he was swapping Labour Minister Tyler Shandro into Justice. As is well known, Shandro, recently shuffled out of the health ministry in a similar swap, is a disaster in his own right.
Madu got in hot water in January after the CBC revealed he’d phoned Edmonton’s police chief in March 2021 to “discuss” a $300 distracted-driving traffic ticket he’d received from an Edmonton Police Service officer who observed him using his cell phone as he drove through a school zone.
Embarrassed, Kenney asked Madu to “step back” from his position as justice minister until an independent investigator could review the facts.
That investigator, retired Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Adèle Kent, turned in her report on Feb. 15 and an embarrassed Kenney made it public Friday.
Despite sound Conservative connections, Kent found that Madu may not have interfered with the administration of justice—but he’d tried to.
Needless to say, this does not qualify as an exoneration.
At this point, any other Canadian premier regardless of party would have fired Madu and washed his or her hands of the matter.
Instead, Kenney shuffled him into a ministry where his ethical standards and renowned lack of diplomatic skills, which got him shuffled out of the municipal affairs ministry back in August 2020, will now be visited upon the province’s workers.
As opposition leader Rachel Notley tweeted: “The Minister who thought it was OK to use his executive authority to get out of a traffic ticket is now in charge of protecting workers’ rights. What could go wrong…”
In a statement Friday, Kenney fudged Kent’s findings. “The report concludes that Minister Madu did not interfere in the administration of justice but that the phone call could create a reasonable perception of interference,” the statement says.
Kent’s conclusion was more blunt:
“Did Minister Madu interfere with the administration of justice? He did not.
“Did Minister Madu attempt to interfere with the administration of justice? He did.
“Is there a reasonable perception that Minister Madi interfered with the administration of justice? Yes.”
Kenney’s statement said: “Given her findings, and the unique role of the office of the Minister of Justice and Solicitor General, I have concluded that it would be appropriate for Minister Madu to step aside from that position.”
Does this not suggest that, in premier Kenney’s mind, ethical lapses are only a problem for one ministry in his government? A low bar indeed!
“This is a firing offense for any cabinet minister and most especially for the Attorney General,” said Notley in a news release.
“It is totally unacceptable for Kaycee Madu to remain in the UCP cabinet,” she continued. “For Jason Kenney to allow him to stroll down the hall into another ministry and continue to sit as part of the province’s executive council is unforgivable.”
But then, as the former NDP premier observed, “it’s clear that Jason Kenney’s desperation to survive his leadership review is the only thing that drives decision-making in this government.”
As for Shandro, he’s had a few troubles of his own.
Alert readers will recall that after a disastrous two-and-a-half-year tenure as health minister that included an incident now being investigated by the Alberta Law Society, Shandro was sent to the labour ministry in a similar swap back in September.
He was replaced by Jason Copping, a more capable minister. Legislature scuttlebutt has it that Copping took the job only on the understanding he wasn’t going to run again in the next general election.
The Law Society plans a hearing into complaints Shandro violated its code of conduct in three incidents in the spring of 2020 when he was minister of health.
To wit: Yelling at a doctor who criticized him in the man’s driveway as his family watched; getting personal information from Alberta Health Services to call other docs who’d criticized him; and sending an email to another critic who contacted his wife’s business threatening to sic the authorities on her.
No date has been set for the hearing.
So this is sort of a good-news/bad-news joke for Alberta.
The good news is that there’s a cabinet shuffle. The bad news is that Madu is being shuffled with Shandro.
As someone observed on social media, the jokes just keep writing themselves.
There are 60 UCP MLAs in the Alberta Legislature, counting the Speaker.
There are 20 cabinet ministers and another five “associate ministers” who get to sit in cabinet meetings.
There are eight lawyers in the UCP Caucus, five of whom are already in cabinet—Madu, Shandro and Copping, plus Energy Minister Sonya Savage, who has been serving as acting justice minister, and Doug Schweitzer, who was demoted from the justice portfolio in August 2020.
The backbench MLAs with law degrees left are Mickey Amery, Nicholas Milliken, and Jason Stephan, the latter being a notorious anti-vaccine-mandate nut.
Yet Kenney can’t think of any way to find a more suitable candidate for justice minister. Or, for that matter, for labour minister.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
