Caldwell becomes Brandon’s lone voice in cabinet room

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

BRANDON — For the first time in more than a decade, Brandon East MLA Drew Caldwell has been named a provincial cabinet minister.

“Drew brings a deep experience as a councillor, long experience as MLA and he’s travelled all over Manitoba working with municipalities on everything from floods to infrastructure,” Premier Greg Selinger said during a swearing-in ceremony at the Manitoba legislature Monday.

“Drew, welcome back.”

Caldwell takes over the municipal government portfolio from Stan Struthers. Caldwell said he is excited and re-energized by the new responsibility.

“My background is in municipal government — it is, in my view, the most important level of government,” he said. “People serve close to their communities and broadly speaking have a very strong understanding of what is important for their communities in a way that members of Parliament or MLAs often don’t have.”

Caldwell said he is going to “hit the ground running” with the new portfolio and said the main issues are going to remain development of infrastructure — roads, bridges and flood protection.

Caldwell said he is disappointed in the five ministers who resigned and said nihilism was a central factor.

“There are processes in place that are constitutionally validated for airing grievances and having discussions around leaders and other things, to be quite honest,” he said.

“The fact that those processes were utterly disrespected… Gary Doer used to have a phrase for it — ‘lighting your head on fire.’ Really, that… describes what went on this last week very, very well.”

Caldwell served as education and training minister from 1999-2002, then was named family services and housing minister later in 2002. He was dropped from cabinet in November 2003 due to health concerns and was later appointed legislative assistant to the premier, a position he held until Monday’s shuffle.

Brandon University political scientist Kelly Saunders said she is pleased to see Caldwell back in cabinet.

“It has certainly been a long time coming,” she said, adding this is good news for Brandon. “We should have had someone in cabinet right from the get-go.”

Saunders said not having cabinet representation for the second-largest city in the province has been a “real injustice” to the citizens of Brandon and the surrounding area.

“That can only serve us well,” she said. “Whether or not it will be a game-changer for the long-term prospects of government, I think is another question.”

Saunders said she was, at first, surprised by the portfolio chosen for Caldwell, as she thought he would get something with a bit of a “higher ranking,” given his former cabinet experience.

But with municipal amalgamations being a controversial area for the government, Saunders said it makes sense for Caldwell to take it over.

“It certainly does require someone with a firm and steady hand and perhaps that previous experience to help the government navigate through that,” she said.

As for the NDP as a whole, Saunders said the premier has a deep, systemic problem to deal with.

“They’re in a very bad place right now and quite frankly I don’t really know how they can recover,” she said.

— Brandon Sun