New cabinet rolls up its sleeves

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This article was published 03/05/2016 (3422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hearkening back to a time when people paddled to The Forks to trade their goods, Brian Pallister promised to lead Manitobans to “a better shore” as he was sworn in Tuesday as the province’s 22nd premier.

The sun streamed into the Garden of Contemplation at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights as Pallister and his 12-member cabinet took their oaths of office in a ceremony presided over by Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon.

Pallister’s inner circle is a mixture of legislature veterans and newcomers, with most originating in rural areas. It has four women. There are no visible minorities and no representatives from the north.

As promised, the new Progressive Conservative cabinet is one-third smaller than the group led by former NDP premier Greg Selinger. It’s a signal the province’s new boss intends to lead a leaner government as he attempts to tackle a massive deficit.

“The responsibility that we assume today is to leave Manitoba in an even better place than we found it. Our goal is to replace doubt with optimism, disharmony with unity and fear with hope,” Pallister said.

“My colleagues and I could not be more excited by the opportunity.”

The 61-year-old premier later chaired his first cabinet meeting, at which his new ministers received their marching orders. Each new minister received a letter in a brown envelope outlining their mandate. Pallister said the directives to ministers may be made public in the days to come.

In a scrum with reporters before the cabinet meeting, Pallister, a former athlete who is fond of sports metaphors, said he had a tough time filling out his cabinet lineup card from his 40-member caucus.

“I would say this is perhaps one of the greatest challenges that I’ve faced in my life,” he said.

As expected, most of the big jobs went to experienced MLAs. Heather Stefanson (Tuxedo) will serve as justice minister, attorney general and deputy premier. Cameron Friesen (Morden-Winkler), who had served as finance critic, now gets to set the budget as minister of finance.

Kelvin Goertzen, a Steinbach lawyer whom many had touted as the attorney general, was given the health portfolio.

Four rookies were saddled with cabinet responsibilities, including former Winnipeg city councillor Scott Fielding (Kirkfield Park), who will serve as minister of Families (responsible for Child and Family Services), and former Tory political aide Rochelle Squires (Riel), who becomes minister of Sport, Culture and Heritage. She will also be responsible for francophone affairs, even though she doesn’t speak French.

“I look forward to being a strong advocate for them. I have a steep learning curve,” she said.

Myrna Driedger (Charleswood), the Tories’ longest-serving MLA, was not named to cabinet. She will stand for election as Speaker.

The vote on the Speaker’s position will be the first item of business when the legislature begins sitting May 16, followed by the throne speech.

In a tightly controlled setting following the swearing-in, the PCs made five new ministers available to reporters for a few minutes.

Goertzen said health-care problems — including long ER waits in Winnipeg — were not created in one day and “they won’t get solved in one day.”

The longtime justice critic said there’s an advantage to the fact he hasn’t spent a lot of time on the health file in Opposition.

“You don’t necessarily think you have all the answers,” he said.

Stefanson gave few specifics about her approach to the justice portfolio. “We’re all about creating efficiencies in the system. I’m a practical person — you need to bring a common sense approach,” she said.

Friesen, the new finance minister, said he suspects the deficit may be larger than what the former NDP government claimed.

He said the timeline for tabling a budget is truncated because of the timing of the election, and the government may not have the flexibility it would have had with more months to compile a new financial blueprint.

“There’s a lot of discovery that needs to be done,” Friesen said. “We’ve done an awful lot of analysis with very good people.”

Indigenous and Municipal Relations Minister Eileen Clarke, a former mayor of Gladstone and Association of Municipal Municipalities executive, said she sees no problem with combining indigenous affairs in a larger department.

Clarke noted when she was involved in municipal government, she dealt regularly with Sandy Bay First Nation’s band council. First Nations have councils, just as the 137 municipalities in the province have councils, she said.

Steven Fletcher, a former member of Parliament for the federal Conservatives, was among the 27 Tories left out of cabinet.

Opposition parties expressed disappointment the cabinet doesn’t reflect the makeup of the province.

“It is the hope that a cabinet will reflect the face of Manitoba, and I think we were successful at doing that in the last session,” New Democrat MLA Andrew Swan said.

He noted there are no indigenous MLAs or visible minorities in Pallister’s cabinet.

“It is not a group anyone would say is diverse, not ethnically or geographically. My Manitoba includes people of all different races. It also includes the entire province, and my Manitoba goes a lot further north than Teulon,” he said.

Liberal Leader Rana Bokhari, who failed to win her seat in the April 19 election, said the decision to group indigenous and municipal relations into one department could detract from the issues facing indigenous people.

“I personally would have liked to have seen their own department, their own minister, just because the issues are so important,” Bokhari said.

The NDP has 14 seats in the legislature, and the Liberals have just three members.

 

kristin.annable@freepress.mb.ca

 

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larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca