This afternoon, Rachel Notley announces her cabinet picks, after weeks of speculation and wild guesses.
We don’t know who, and we don’t know what the posts will be. All we know for certain is that she’ll condense Jim Prentice’s 20-person cabinet into 12. So we’ll see some new hybrid jobs, though the departments themselves will stay the same.
One hopes she won’t have appoint some of these cabinet gigs that actually existed in yesteryear Alberta:
Minister of Telephones
This may sound strange to you kidlets, but there was a time when there was no Internet, no Androids, no Instagram selfies — just a can on a wall you spoke into. Starting in 1917 — about 40 years after Alexander Graham Bell’s invention — Alberta had a cabinet minister responsible for this high-tech innovation. The big phone company in Calgary was publicly owned: Alberta Government Telephones, or AGT — it had bought Bell Telephone’s operations before the ministry job was created.
The portfolio lasted until 1985, in Don Getty’s days, as the minister of utilities and telephones, a.k.a. wires ‘n’ stuff. A few years later, the government stake in AGT was sold to Telus Communications, which is now a B.C.-based company.
A $3.5-million Alberta Government Telephones structure is opened, 1958; Telephones Minister Gordon Taylor (Social Credit) cuts the ribbon.
Minister of Gaming
Sounds like so much fun! From 1999 to 2006, Ralph Klein had an entry-level ministry for the expanding network of VLTs and casinos, as well as lottery funding and liquor. Ed Stelmach merged responsibility for the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission in with the solicitor-general’s job, and it’s floated around ever since.
Minister of Environment and Water
Alison Redford created this position in 2011. What’s the difference between being Environment Minister and being Environment and Water Minister? One of life’s great mysteries. It’s sort of like naming a Minister of Health and Doctors, or Minister of Government Services and Baby Names. Also: Redford might have been copying Bulgaria.
Minister of Restructuring and Government Efficiency
This one might be the most Monty Pythonesque of them all. After the 2004 election, Ralph Klein created this gig for Luke Ouellette, the Innisfail-Sylvan Lake MLA who defeated Randy Thorsteinson, leader of the Alberta Alliance (predecessor to Wildrose). Opposition parties loved calling Ouellette the minister of RAGE. I covered the legislature back then, and can’t really recall much that was restructured or made efficient in the two years this ministry existed, though Ouellette was in charge of the Supernet broadband system.
Minister of Manpower
Oh, those less sensitive earlier days, when streets were patrolled by policemen, the aluminum cans on the sidewalk each Tuesday were emptied by garbagemen, and “women’s lib” was trying to shift paradigms. This term, better known these days as human resources or labour or “jobs,” was a 1971 invention of Peter Lougheed. The job endured until around 1996.
Minister of Culture and Community Spirit
Unfortunately, Calgary MLA Lindsay Blackett was seldom seen with pompoms when he filled this Stelmach-era role from 2008 to 2011. Stelmach meant to refer to volunteerism and the Alberta Lottery Fund with the latter part of this title, but that doesn’t mean we cannot say it sounds ridiculous.
