The Redford Cabinet
Hot off the presses, followed by my comments...
Alison Redford, QC, Calgary-Elbow
Premier, President of Executive Council, Chair of Agenda and Priorities
Doug Horner, Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert
Deputy Premier, President of Treasury Board and Enterprise
--Obvious choice. He's a smart guy. Especially when a lot of his support on the third ballot went to Redford.
David Hancock, Edmonton-Whitemud
Minister of Human Services, Government House Leader
--Ooh, "Human Services". She did combine a bunch of ministries together. Good for her! No change at House Leader.
Ted Morton, Foothills-Rocky View
Minister of Energy
--Liepert out. Morton in. A good fit although he did a lousy job at Finance.
Verlyn Olson, Wetaskiwin-Camrose
Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Deputy Government House Leader
--No idea who this person is.
Fred Horne, Edmonton-Rutherford
Minister of Health and Wellness
--I've heard of him. I thought Gene Zwodesky was doing a good job though. Much better than...
Ron Liepert, Calgary-West
Minister of Finance
--Terrible Health Minister. Will he tow the line like Morton did, or will he shake it up? Let's hope for a shake up and cuts to the bloated bureaucracy first.
Thomas Lukaszuk, Edmonton-Castle Downs
Minister of Education
--Well that's interesting. Why? I have no clue.
Diana McQueen, Drayton Valley-Calmar
Minister of Environment and Water
--Water is now part of the environment and not natural resources? Who knew?
Jonathan Denis, Calgary-Egmont
Solicitor General and Minister of Public Security; Deputy Government House Leader
--Jonathan brought much needed common sense to Housing and implemented a lot of great ideas. He's one of the best cabinet ministers in my opinion. He's a lawyer, and although he supported Morton and Mar, his good work has paid off.
Cal Dallas, Red Deer-South
Minister of International, Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Relations--That's one super ministry with one super name for an MLA.
Evan Berger, Livingstone-Macleod
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development
--Awesome! Again, I don't know why.
Frank Oberle, Peace River
Minister of Sustainable Resource Development
--Oh, it's "Sustainable" now is it?
George VanderBurg, Whitecourt-Ste. Anne
Minister of Seniors
--What does this mean? It's becoming a bigger job with more folks retiring now.
Ray Danyluk, Lac La Biche-St. Paul
Minister of Transportation
--Fitting that he's from that riding--where the highway of death is. Look for much faster development of HWY 63 to Ft. Mac.
Jeff Johnson, Athabasca-Redwater
Minister of Infrastructure
--Wait a minute? Did the Dept. of Infrastructure and Transportation just get split into two separate ones? It looks like it. Why?
Doug Griffiths, Battle River-Wainwright
Minister of Municipal Affairs
--Doug has good vision for building communities. This is a good fit for him to prove himself.
Greg Weadick, Lethbridge-West
Minister of Advanced Education and Technology
--That's nice.
Jack Hayden, Drumheller-Stettler
Minister of Tourism, Parks and Recreation
--Good stuff.
Heather Klimchuk, Edmonton-Glenora
Minister of Culture and Community Services
--Go get 'em!
Manmeet Bhullar, Calgary-Montrose
Minister of Service Alberta
--Ah, the umbrella ministry. Don't make it bloated!
So there you have it folks. My comments on a "new era". Leipert's budget in Spring will be telling of the direction of this machine.
at
11:31 AM
Posts
7 comments:
Transportation and Infrastructure were already separate, and Sustainable Resource Development has had that handle for years. As part of the "bloated bureacracy," or at least as a very hard-working civil servant, I obviously disagree with some of your sentiments.
Come on Randy. This is the biggest spending provincial government per capita in the nation. Why?
I can't answer that question, but I can tell you that my department is drowning in work because of hiring freezes that have been in place for several years now. At my level (and my wife's), where we're working hard to provide services for Albertans, people are stretched extremely thin. And we're both nervous about our jobs, in spite of having more work than we know what to do with. It's easy to talk about slicing more positions, but I don't know that it's always an answer that makes "big picture sense." Of course, I do selfishly want to continue being able to buy food, too, so I'm biased. ;)
Randy, I actually don't mean about good folks like you.
What I see is happening, not just with gov't, but with school boards, unions, Air Canada, universities, is not that front-line workers should be turfed but that a hard audit needs to be done on the middle and upper management levels to see where delivery can be streamlined. It's always the lowly employee--teachers, nurses, customer service staff, and students who get shafted first.
The exec of the gov't or other org holds back funding to try and force the bureaucracy to look for savings. But of course, they want to keep their jobs, so they hit those in lower ranks. And it's not right.
Managers and execs don't want to look for new ways of being efficient so they can maintain their empire and budget funding.
School boards suck. Air Canada management sucks. Hospital management sucks. Why isn't anyone asking management to look to itself?
Am I making sense?
Oh, and the military. We have waaaaay too many active generals for the size of our force.
But perhaps that's what happened with the baby boomers reaching that age--there was so many of them in those ranks, at every organization. Now with them retiring, maybe don't replace them.
You make TONS of sense. You actually hit on a lot of what drove me out of teaching (well, that and my health stuff).
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