Friday, December 15, 2006
Stelmach names cabinet, this blogger eats crow
Unlike Ted Morton, Ed Stelmach can't yet take my vote away from the Separation Party - but he's getting closer. Stelmach named his cabinet today, and I caught a bit of the coverage on Global this evening. First of all, I just have to say, it was the most biased reporting I've seen since the last time I picked up the New York Times. Not a single interview with anyone who wasn't from Calgary, not a single quote that wasn't from a member of the opposition. Amazing.
What's got everyone in such a state is the fact that Stelmach's eighteen cabinet ministers include only four urbanites - three from Calgary and one from Edmonton. People are saying that 61% of the province's population should merit more than 22% of its cabinet positions. What they of course fail to mention is that that same 22% of the cabinet comes from only 2% of the province's area.
All this is beside the point, though. People, this is the cabinet. They're not representatives; so much as we have representation under the Canadian system of government, it is provided by our MLAs. Cabinet ministers are supposed to be chosen because they have knowledge, attitudes, or skills that will be helpful to actually running the government (note that I said "supposed to"...it's an imperfect world, of course).
I, personally, am happy about the new cabinet - particularly about Morton's appointment as Minister for Sustainable Resources. This is one of the three major areas important to the firewall alternative (the other two being policing and taxation), and Morton will be the perfect minister to level the occasional "stuff you" at the federal government when it becomes necessary.
And so, I admit that I was perhaps wrong about Stelmach. He's not what we need, but maybe he's a step in the right direction.
What's got everyone in such a state is the fact that Stelmach's eighteen cabinet ministers include only four urbanites - three from Calgary and one from Edmonton. People are saying that 61% of the province's population should merit more than 22% of its cabinet positions. What they of course fail to mention is that that same 22% of the cabinet comes from only 2% of the province's area.
All this is beside the point, though. People, this is the cabinet. They're not representatives; so much as we have representation under the Canadian system of government, it is provided by our MLAs. Cabinet ministers are supposed to be chosen because they have knowledge, attitudes, or skills that will be helpful to actually running the government (note that I said "supposed to"...it's an imperfect world, of course).
I, personally, am happy about the new cabinet - particularly about Morton's appointment as Minister for Sustainable Resources. This is one of the three major areas important to the firewall alternative (the other two being policing and taxation), and Morton will be the perfect minister to level the occasional "stuff you" at the federal government when it becomes necessary.
And so, I admit that I was perhaps wrong about Stelmach. He's not what we need, but maybe he's a step in the right direction.
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I agree that Cabinet membership is not intended to be representative in a geographical or statistical sense. And in any case, the whiners are being less than honest. If we consider the Edmonton and Calgary metropolitan regions instead of just the two central cities, then Cabinet includes 6 other members to add to the 4 from the cities themselves: the MLAs for Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert, Sherwood Park, and Stony Plain in the Edmonton region; and the MLAs for Banff-Cochrane, Highwood, and Foothills-Rocky View from the Calgary region. 10 out of 18 ain't so bad!
As I included the metro areas when I calculated my other figures, that makes 55% of the cabinet from 61% of the population and 2% of the land area. Doesn't seem like much of an imbalance, does it?
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