Why Smith’s Giant Cabinet Is a Sign of Desperation

Thanks to Friday’s cabinet shuffle, more than half of the entire United Conservative Party caucus in the Alberta legislature is now a member of Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet.

To be precise, 57.4 per cent of the 47 UCP MLAs now have a cabinet portfolio. When you subtract Speaker Ric McIver, just appointed to replace Washington-bound Nathan Cooper, that rises to 58.7 per cent.

This is not normal and it’s not an indicator of healthy government. There are now 27 cabinet ministers, two of them meaninglessly labelled as associates but in cabinet nevertheless, up from an already disproportionately large group of 25.

Fully four of them make up the junta, for lack of a better word, responsible for managing health care — or, as was argued in my hot take Friday, for dismantling public health care.

In addition, there are eight parliamentary secretaries, technically not cabinet members but charged with assisting cabinet members with their duties. Call them cabinet adjacent. If you counted them too, the percentage would rise to 76 per cent of the UCP caucus, and 41 per cent of the entire legislative assembly (less the two vacant seats for which the premier has not yet called byelections).

It’s tempting to make a joke about how when the going gets tough, the cabinet gets fatter, but the fact is this is not a sign of a well or happy government. There is only one reason for having this many cabinet ministers, and it’s Smith’s need to keep the disunited government caucus from fragmenting.

“Putting a majority of caucus in cabinet is a caucus control strategy,” former Alberta NDP leader Brian Mason explained on X Friday. “Far from representing a shift towards health care etc., this is an indication that Smith is struggling to retain control and prevent more defections.”

Former Progressive Conservative premier Alison Redford tried a similar strategy in her last months in power, Mason recalled. She is probably not a good premier to emulate, but, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.

Compare this with former NDP premier Rachel Notley’s first cabinet in 2015, for which she plucked only a dozen members from her 54-member caucus, amounting to 22 per cent. That was a little too small, as it turned out, and the next year she added half a dozen more portfolios. Can you imagine, though, the outcry from the Wildrose Party had she made 33 of her MLAs cabinet ministers?

No wonder Premier Smith would prefer that we all keep our eyes on the threat of Alberta separating from Canada, rather than the possibility of five or six of the most MAGA-fied members of her caucus decamping to form their own extremist party on the opposition side of the house.

The most notable change in cabinet is the creation of four ministries of health to parallel the four new bureaucracies the UCP has created to replace Canada’s first fully integrated public health-care agency, Alberta Health Services.

That is one minister for each silo in the UCP’s fragmented and excessively bureaucratic new health-care structure — which shows that dismantling public health care and smashing Alberta Health Services to smithereens remains Smith’s No. 1 priority.

“The new cabinet comprises both seasoned and newly appointed ministers, reflecting Alberta’s diverse population,” the government’s press release on Friday boasted. The changes, it said, would “address key priorities of Albertans.”

But NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, still without a seat in the house thanks to the premier’s failure to call a byelection in Edmonton-Strathcona, scoffed at that claim. “Danielle Smith’s ship is sinking and shuffling the deck chairs will not help,” he said in a statement to media.

“This isn’t a cabinet built to tackle affordability, health care, public safety, and education,” he added. “Instead, they spent the entire spring sitting preying on vulnerable Albertans, passing anti-democratic legislation, peddling separatism, and covering up the biggest scandal in Alberta’s history” — a reference to the still-metastasizing dodgy health-care contracts affair.

Friday’s shuffle saw former health minister Adriana LaGrange demoted, with her portfolio reduced to something called primary and preventative health services. Former jobs minister Matt Jones became minister of hospital and surgical health services, also known as acute care; Jason Nixon had assisted living added to his social services responsibilities; and Rick Wilson switched from Indigenous relations to mental health and addiction. So there you have the four horsepersons of the health-care apocalypse.

Grant Hunter was named associate minister of water, with no explanation of the role of that new portfolio in the government’s news release. “He’s openly called drinking water standards a form of red tape,” Nenshi said. The MLA for Taber-Warner in Alberta’s far south is also known for comparing the NDP to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and for visiting Coutts in 2022 to lend his support to the convoy blockaders.

Myles McDougall is new to cabinet as minister of advanced education. According to Nenshi, “it’s alarming that Danielle Smith appointed one of her most extreme caucus members to cabinet. Myles McDougall has attacked post-secondary institutions and made extreme comments online about Black and First Nations people.” In 2020, the MLA for Calgary-Fish Creek apologized for Facebook posts that he admitted were “racially insensitive and offensive, particularly to the Black and First Nation communities.”

Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides will have child care added to his portfolio. Former addiction minister Dan Williams becomes minister of municipal affairs, replacing Ric McIver, whose shuffle to the Speaker’s chair was announced last week.

Former tourism minister Joseph Schow becomes the minister of jobs, economy, trade and immigration, replacing Jones. Former leadership candidate and advanced education minister Rajan Sawhney becomes minister of Indigenous relations.

Andrew Boitchenko, MLA for Drayton Valley-Devon, was named minister of tourism and sport; Calgary-North MLA Muhammad Yaseen becomes associate minister of multiculturalism.

But perhaps the most significant change was the one that didn’t happen. Justice Minister Mickey Amery remains exactly where he was in cabinet, which the NDP leader called “a glaring lapse of judgment” by the premier.

“He’s admitted the business person at the heart of the worst corruption scandal in our history is a longtime friend and family member,” Nenshi said of Amery. “But the premier never asked him to recuse himself from these files.”