United Conservative Party Leader Danielle Smith, centre, speaks at an election campaign rally in Calgary, on May 25.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
The new cabinet that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is set to present Friday is expected to be rural-heavy, reflecting the makeup of the United Conservative Party caucus itself. But Ms. Smith will also try to present an image of moderate conservatism rather than a collective lurch to the political right.
The UCP won 49 of the province’s 87 ridings in the May 29 election. However, many Albertans are concerned about the influence of groups such as Take Back Alberta, or whether Ms. Smith will pursue more in the way of private health care despite a promise to not delist any publicly covered medical services. In order to assuage some of those worries, she’s likely to avoid appointing many MLAs from the right flank of her party.
Demonstrating that her government is one that can represent the entire province will be a difficult needle to thread for the Premier. Three-quarters of UCP seats are in rural areas or smaller cities and towns. The dozen UCP MLAs that were elected in Calgary will be overrepresented in cabinet. So, too, will UCP MLAs elected from the communities that surround Edmonton, an area referred to during the election campaign as the “doughnut.”
Edmonton will be absent in cabinet, as the capital didn’t elect any of the UCP candidates proffered. The Premier spoke last week about creating a council of advisers from amongst the losing UCP candidates, but that much-criticized idea now appears less likely.
How exactly the Premier will consult on Edmonton issues isn’t decided. But one possibility is a “kitchen cabinet” of informal Edmonton advisers that will include municipal and federal politicians. No matter what, Edmontonians will worry that the history of being left out of governance and some funding decisions during the Ralph Klein years will be repeated.
Danielle Smith has to build her cabinet minus several senior MLAs
Experience in government is also an issue in this cabinet. With the departure of so many cabinet ministers – including the resignations of Travis Toews and Sonya Savage, and the electoral losses of Jason Copping, Tyler Shandro and Kaycee Madu – Ms. Smith will need everyone with a grounding in running government operations that she can find.
In that vein, it would be a huge surprise if past cabinet ministers such as Rajan Sawhney, Rebecca Schulz, Brian Jean, Mike Ellis, Peter Guthrie and Nate Horner don’t get appointed again. Ms. Sawhney, Ms. Schulz and Mr. Jean were highly critical rivals of Ms. Smith in the leadership contest. But through a tough campaign with the NDP and in the afterglow of electoral victory on May 29, everyone seems to be getting along.
It also wouldn’t be surprising if Jason Nixon – a Kenney loyalist ejected from cabinet by Ms. Smith last fall – ends up with a portfolio again. The two have not seen eye-to-eye in the past, but as has been shown, the Premier believes in the power of forgiveness and redemption not only for herself, but for others.
That means about a half a dozen new faces to cabinet, too. And when it comes to gender parity, the cabinet is unlikely to be even close, as Ms. Smith has only 10 women MLAs – including herself – from which to choose.
Although some in government might say a smaller caucus is easier to manage, that’s a sunny take on a having a small majority. The UCP’s 49 MLAs compared to the NDP’s 38 is a tight margin of victory.
The UCP says it won’t allow the new MLA for Lacombe-Ponoka, Jennifer Johnson, to sit in caucus because of her past “vile” remarks on transgender youth. The party will also need to put forward a speaker from their ranks, eroding their advantage over the NDP even further. That, if anything else, will demand a cabinet expected to be slightly smaller than the giant 27-member cabinet (with 11 parliamentary secretaries) created by Ms. Smith last fall.
For whoever ends up in those cabinet posts, there’s much that lies ahead. First will come “the Ottawa problem.” The next Alberta energy and environment ministers will have to deal with the federal government over new details on electricity as well as oil and natural gas production emission caps – on top of carbon pricing and other rules – that will affect this province far more than any other.
And as more than 400 wildfires rage across the country, the UCP will also have to show a seriousness about reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The shape of a deeply controversial program, long touted by Ms. Smith, to give taxpayer-funded royalty breaks to energy companies to fulfill their legal duty and clean up old wells is still undefined.
The next health minister needs to recruit workers and somehow restore Alberta’s damaged reputation in that area. The next justice minister will need to shepherd in UCP public-safety measures. And the next finance minister will have to budget through a volatile period for oil prices and push through what appears to be an unworkable scheme to expand the Taxpayer Protection Act – which now prohibits the introduction of a provincial sales tax without a referendum – to personal or business tax increases.
While the UCP says it would like to settle into a period of stable, boring government, there’s a lot on the agenda that might not let that happen.