Backbenchers get promotions

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This article was published 04/11/2014 (3994 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Four backbench NDP MLAs were called upon by Premier Greg Selinger to fill a gaping hole in his cabinet caused by the mass resignation of five top-performing ministers Monday.

The cabinet shrinks the number of ministers to 18 from 19 with Family Services Minister Kerri Irvin-Ross taking over the housing and community development portfolio from Peter Bjornson, who becomes education minister.

It also becomes the cabinet that — if Selinger survives as premier — will likely lead the NDP into the next election, an election some already believe will see the NDP obliterated with Selinger at the controls.

“These are challenging times,” new Jobs and the Economy Minister Kevin Chief said. “These are difficult decisions.”

Chief takes over for Theresa Oswald, one of the five ministers who resigned earlier in the day, in a portfolio Selinger had created for her to sell the NDP’s economic and infrastructure agenda.

Selinger said he was confident the new cabinet will adjust to the recent controversy that also saw ministers Jennifer Howard, Andrew Swan, Erin Selby and Stan Struthers resign over Selinger’s leadership.

“All the people that I asked have stepped up and offered themselves for service,” Selinger said. “We have a deep and talented pool of caucus members.”

The biggest surprise was Greg Dewar, a backbench MLA for almost 25 years, was catapulted into the finance minister portfolio, one of the more demanding portfolios, as the government cuts spending to meet a 2016 deadline to be out of deficit. He replaces Howard.

Dewar, who served as the party’s whip, said he’s up to the task as he’s familiar with the machinations of government, including a five-year term on Treasury Board, which oversees government spending.

“I’m thrilled to be here today,” Dewar said. “There’s nothing that anyone is going to say that’s going to put me into a bad mood. It’s an absolute thrill of my life.”

James Allum makes a fairly dramatic switch from education to justice, where he replaces Swan. Allum is not a lawyer, and while a law degree might help in his new post, it is not a prerequisite. Non-lawyer Jim McCrae served as justice minister in the early 1990s in the Conservative government of Gary Filmon.

“I’m pretty confident that there are a sufficient number of lawyers to be able to provide me, a minister of justice and attorney general, with the advice that I need,” Allum said. “And I think Manitobans are ready for citizen oversight of the justice system. I think it’s a idea whose time has come.”

Eric Robinson, in addition to his duties as aboriginal and northern affairs minister, takes on the responsibility for Manitoba Hydro. Selinger said Robinson is the first indigenous minister responsible for Hydro. The Hydro file had been handled by Struthers.

‘We have a deep and talented pool of caucus members’

Robinson said he wants to further develop a strategy that sees more northern First Nations benefit from hydro-electric development. He also inherits a protest at Hydro’s Jenpeg generating station by Pimicikamak Cree Nation at Cross Lake seeking compensation for decades of flooding.

“The power that people enjoy, not only in Manitoba but elsewhere, for the most part has been done on the backs of suffering Indians,” Robinson said. “As a little boy and young man growing up, I witnessed first-hand hydro development and the impact that it’s had on First Nations and aboriginal people, and it hasn’t been a pretty sight.”

To replace Selby, Selinger moved Sharon Blady from healthy living and seniors to the health ministry, which takes up more than 38 per cent of the provincial government budget.

Referring to herself as a member of the “sandwich generation,” she said she would look upon her new job “through the mom and the daughter filter.”

“I know the kind of health care that I want my family to receive, and I want that for every Manitoban,” Blady said.

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca