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Jason Kenney is a complex character, so it should be no surprise that his government is so quickly shaping up to be filled with contradictions.

The first United Conservative Party cabinet, unveiled on Tuesday, is surprisingly large, despite Kenney's promise to trim government.  One of the new portfolios is an associate minister for red tape reduction.  Clocking in with 20 ministers and three associate ministers, the cabinet far outweighs the heft of Rachel Notley's lean 12-member NDP cabinet in 2015.

There are the expected heavyweight economic and jobs-oriented portfolios such as energy, economic development, infrastructure, agriculture and forestry and an associate minister of natural gas.

But there is also a surprising number of social and community oriented positions including separate ministers for community and social services; seniors and housing; and children's services.

There is a minister of culture, multiculturalism and status of women as well as a minister of indigenous relations.

Remember that Jason Kenney campaigned on promising to focus on jobs, the economy and pipelines.  He often bobbed and weaved on questions around social issues, but if the weighting of the cabinet is any indication this government is planning to wade into those files.

Kenney is also making it clear that he will keep his troops in order in the legislature with a house leader and an unusual three deputy house leaders, all of them also carrying top jobs in the cabinet.  The premier may be planning to be out of the province taking Alberta's fight to the doorstep of foes across Canada and wants to make sure the governing apparatus continues without a hitch in his absence.

Kenney's choice of at least two of the members of this cabinet signal he is not afraid to challenge his critics and is prepared for a battle on some issues.

Jason Nixon, MLA for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre, has been named environment and parks minister.  Nixon, first elected in 2015 under the Wildrose Party banner, waged an aggressive campaign against the NDP government's plan to create Bighorn Country, a huge network of parks and conservation areas in central west Alberta.

Nixon contended the consultation process the NDP instituted was too quick and secretive and didn't take into account stakeholders including resource industries in the area.

The province's new education minister is also bound to be a controversial choice.  The hottest education topic in the past five years has been gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in the province's schools.  The Alberta Catholic School Trustees' Association raised objections to NDP legislation prohibiting teachers from "outing" kids who join the LGBQT support groups to their parents, saying it could erode the autonomy of school boards and officials.

Alberta's new education minister, Adriana LaGrange, was president of the Alberta School Trustees Association at the time.  She now will helm the promised UCP rollback of that prohibition.  There will, no doubt, be plenty of strife in the province over the entire issue.

That said, Kenney has made many appointments which reflect the real-world business smarts of his caucus and fit in with conventional political imperatives.

The new energy minister is Sonya Savage, MLA for Calgary-North West, a lawyer with experience in the pipeline industry, including as senior director of policy and regulatory affairs for the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association.

Calgary-Elbow MLA Doug Schweitzer will serve in the key solicitor general and justice role.  Schweitzer ran against Kenney and former Wildrose Leader Brian Jean for the leadership of the UCP and is considered a moderate in the party.

Kenney was faced with a geographic problem in composing the cabinet.  He chose to pick 13 of his ministers from his Calgary stronghold.  But he also gave a major portfolio, the municipal affairs ministry, to the party's sole Edmonton MLA, Kaycee Madu.

The cabinet in general is quite young, with an average age of 43, and relatively politically inexperienced thanks to the upheaval of reconfiguring the conservative parties in Alberta and the four years in opposition wilderness while the NDP held government.

But the UCP agenda will not allow much time for lolly-gagging around having team-building retreats.  Kenney has already presided over his first cabinet meeting and the whole UCP team heads into its first legislature session as government on May 21.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


What would possess the 'selfie PM' to smile for the cameras at a flood zone with people's lives hanging in the balance?

There are pros and cons to a national leader appearing at a natural disaster.  For every act of goodwill, someone will question the motive behind this visit.  For every bead of sweat on the brow, someone will wonder if he or she wouldn't rather be somewhere else.

By and large, the positives far outweigh the negatives.

That's why Canadian leaders often appear at natural disaster sites to raise a community's spirit and give them hope.

Former prime minister Jean Chretien's visit to Kelowna after the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park fire, for instance, was just as meaningful as former prime minister Stephen Harper's 2013 visit to Calgary and southern Alberta after the horrible floods.  (Harper's wife Laureen, who grew up in the region, rolled up her sleeves and participated in the cleanup.)

But in most cases, the Liberal or Conservative prime minister of the day had no interest in being the main focus of the story.  It was the event, community and tragedy that mattered most.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just changed the channel on that long-held perception.  He did what most would have believed unthinkable: he caused a public relations nightmare by participating in a relief effort at a natural disaster.

Last weekend, Trudeau and his young sons were in Constance Bay, Ont., to visit one of several flood zones in the Ottawa-Gatineau region.  Volunteers were filling sandbags because massive rainfall had dangerously increased the local water levels.  The PM and his offspring pitched in and filled sandbags, too.

Great.  He was doing exactly what a leader should do in this situation.  If it had continued, he would have been praised for his participation.

That's expecting way too much from this prime minister, however.

After 15 or so minutes of filling up sandbags, Trudeau started taking photos with military personnel and volunteers.  This led to a tense conversation (caught on video) with a self-identified volunteer apparently trying to help someone save their home.

"You know how long you've held up people picking up bags?" he asked the PM.  "I've been waiting in line down the road for 30 minutes while you've been here soaking up the rays."

He blasted Trudeau for participating in a "photo-op" and said, "While you're here, no one can pick up sand.  You held people up, all the RCMP and security held people up."

Trudeau turned around and spoke to him.  The volunteer was visibly irritated, but he listened and pointed out "he was with a guy who was a staunch conservative" who said if the PM "would actually do work, he'd change his vote and vote for you."

The PM apologized for the delay and acknowledged the "frustrations with security" he experiences "every day of my life."  The conversation broke down, but not before the PM told the volunteer that his point of view was "unfriendly and unneighbourly."

Yikes.

This was obviously a difficult situation.  Tensions and emotions were understandably high.  Nevertheless, Trudeau didn't handle this exchange with the volunteer very well and shouldn't have made that comment at the end.

The PM has had to walk back several comments over the years and he should do the same here.

Above all, Trudeau shouldn't have been involved in a photo-op during a natural disaster (or brought his young sons, for that matter).  Even though he's been nicknamed the "selfie PM" with good reason, what would possess him to smile and laugh for the cameras at a flood zone with people's lives, homes and businesses hanging in the balance?

Some have regarded this incident as silly, small and meaningless.

I disagree.  Trudeau's intentions may have been good to start but he made it all about himself at the end.

It shows a great deal about his character and leadership and what it sorely lacks.

Photo Credit: TVO

Troy Media columnist and political commentator Michael Taube was a speechwriter for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


The thing about campaign horserace polls is I hate them.

And here we are at the crack of May — May â€” with voting day more than five months away, and it's already the most important question on the edge of every political story: who's up, who's down?

Look at this headline from Sunday: "6 months before election, support for Trudeau Liberals sinks to new low: poll."  How the first clause of that sentence doesn't make the rest of it meaningless, I don't understand.

Six months — less now — from the election, support is ephemeral.  It's not there.

Who a person says they're going to support in the election right now has little bearing on who they'll vote for — or if! — in the fall.  What it gives us is a way of scoring who is winning a day-to-day battle that can't actually be won.

Winning a news cycle, or a stack of news cycles, doesn't get you anything other than a stack of newspaper clippings.

Right now, there is nothing at stake.  People can say what they like to a pollster and there will be some statistical relevance to that reply.  But it will mean nothing, because a poll response is not a ballot. It's fleeting, a whisper in the wind.

There's an irritating mantra in politics — once something becomes a mantra it can be nothing but irritating — that states "campaigns matter."  There's an unfortunate truth in this.  Campaigns do matter.  People pay attention, or don't, and then they vote.

What is probably the most troubling thing about poll coverage: it sets the agenda.  Who is leading in the polls starts to bleed into who is going to win.  And that causes news organizations to cover, or not cover, this or that party because of their perceived frontrunner/sure-loser status.

Since the SNC-Lavalin scandal first started bubbling up, the question hanging over everything has seemed to be, 'Yes, but how will this affect the Liberals at the polls?'  And this is too often the guiding hand behind any story, any issue.  If something doesn't move support up or down by the next polling interval, does it matter?  And if it doesn't matter, why should resources be spent on it?  And so on.

News organizations who commission polls make it much worse, because whatever poll is published under their name will automatically be given more weight because it's an exclusive.  Nothing gets a news editor like some exclusive bit of information.  And commissioning a poll is the easiest way to get that done.  Which only amplifies the coverage of polls, which sends us a further turn into the spiral of garbage.  (And let's never mind the meaninglessness of individual polls, when compared to their aggregate.)

I get it, part of how we've come to look at these things as a contest to be won, and to understand a contest you need to understand who's winning.  But following the whims of polling has grave risks, too.

Jack Layton's NDP wasn't considered a proper contender official opposition until the very end — and even then, it wasn't taken entirely seriously.

Justin Trudeau, who you may have heard has been prime minister for the last few years, was written off before the last election, and through much of its running.  Tom Mulcair has ceased to exist — poof, vanished into thin air — despite his one-time status as frontrunner

And sure, the polls were more or less correct on the U.S. popular vote, but Donald Trump is president.  By relying on the polls to point us toward who was, ahem, going to win, did we perhaps take our eye off the ball on who might also win?  Might things have turned out differently if almost everyone hadn't assumed Hillary Clinton was a lock?  Who the hell knows, but the coverage of the race would have looked different.

As comforting as it may seem to have a glimpse into what the future hold, reading polling doesn't give us nearly the insight we'd like to think.  It may do more to cloud our judgement than anything else.

So, rather than reading, or writing, a story about the latest numbers, do anything else.  Stare at a wall for five minutes, aimlessly scroll through your photos on your phone, ponder your fragile existence, learn about tax policy.  Do something, anything rather than spend time on this, I beg you.  For your sanity, but mostly for mine.

Photo Credit: Vox

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.