Redford joins leadership race, cabinet shuffle Thursday

EDMONTON — Premier Ed Stelmach is expected to announce a cabinet shuffle Thursday morning after a third government minister stepped down to launch her campaign for the leadership of the Alberta Conservatives.

Stelmach will be replacing Calgary MLA Alison Redford, who resigned as justice minister Wednesday, as well as former advanced education minister Doug Horner.

Lloyd Snelgrove has already been appointed to take the place of former finance minister Ted Morton, who was the first of four to enter the race to replace Stelmach. Snelgrove will be delivering the spring budget Feb. 24.

Backbencher Doug Griffiths, parliamentary secretary to the finance minister, has also resigned his post to run for the leadership.

Those resignations are bad for Alberta and a bad practice that should be dropped, said John Soroski, a political scientist at Grant MacEwan University.

“You’re essentially decapitating the party during this period of time,” Soroski said. “Stelmach, in his entry into the leadership race in a previous go ’round, set a bad precedent by resigning from cabinet. … That’s a bad precedent, a bad trend, a bad way of going about things.”

He said Albertans will notice the resignations and the Tories will likely take a hit in the coming spring legislature session.

“It makes it really difficult to run a government because the type of ministers you’re going to have resigning are your front bench, most senior, more significant ministers who will be leaving to seek the leadership,” said Soroski, noting that federal politicians aren’t required to step down during a leadership race. “You’ll be replacing your senior leadership cadre with the second tier.”

Redford was appointed Alberta’s first female justice minister days after being voted in as MLA in 2008. Launching her leadership campaign on Twitter Wednesday, she immediately began giving one-on-one interviews with the media about her plan for the party and Alberta, including making the province the “World Energy Capital,” melding environmental and energy policies without pitting them against each other, and diversifying energy markets beyond the U.S. into Asia. Redford would set aside predictable funding for education and make post-secondary education a priority.

“I feel that our potential is not fully defined right now,” said Redford, who claims to have two to three MLAs as firm supporters. “We have resources. Fine. We have excellent people … but we as Albertans have not, in the last little while — maybe in the last 10 to 15 years — had a real conversation about what we want our quality of life to be for the next 50 years, and how we’re going to get there.

“We’ve wasted a lot of potential and … it’s an opportunity in this leadership race, in this party, to change that conversation.”

Redford was touted early on as one of the forerunners in the race, and brings with her years of experience as a human rights lawyer in South Africa and Vietnam. Her impressive legal record includes a stint with full body armour in Afghanistan to help run that country’s elections.

The 45-year-old representative of Calgary-Elbow is the first serious female contender for leadership since Nancy Betkowski, who lost to Ralph Klein in 1992. Alana DeLong initially announced she would run for leader in 2006, but never formally registered her name.

“She is the first female to enter the race, which is good for our party, the province,” Stelmach said of Redford. “She has tremendous international experience in law and has worked in other jurisdictions, and it is good. It is going to attract more attention to the race.”

Redford downplayed the gender issue.

“Everyone seems to think it’s really important. I never think of myself in that way,” she said. “Have we ever asked the men the question whether it was important that they were a man? But I’ll put that aside.”

She said once the leadership race is over, Albertans may have to choose between two women for premier, alluding to herself and Wildrose Alliance Leader Danielle Smith.

“I think there will be other choices for them to make,” Redford said. “I think they’re going to have to think about what I’ve said, about what I stand for … how I approach things, my experience in government, my perspective on life.”

Soroski said despite early skepticism, he’s impressed with Smith and believes Redford could have similar communication skills.

“(Smith has) shown a woman can make a significant contribution in contemporary Alberta politics,” he said.

So could Redford or the NDP’s rising star Rachel Notley, he said.

Laurie Blakeman of the Alberta Liberals said she’ll issue a statement Thursday clarifying her plans regarding the leadership of her party. Dr. David Swann has announced he intends to step down.

“I don’t know that it’s a sea change in terms of Alberta politics,” Soroski said. “Even today at the federal level and most provincial levels, it’s rare to see a woman candidate really come to the floor, despite all the advance and social progress. Politics seems to be consistently an activity dominated by men with occasional exception.”

Redford has the chance, by positioning herself in the middle of the ideological spectrum, to build bridges between the polarized forces of the progressive conservatives, represented by Horner, and the fiscal hawks, represented by Morton, said Chaldeans Mensah, another political scientist at Grant MacEwan University.

“Plus, she’s from Calgary, which is not going to hurt her,” Mensah said.

With files from Dave Cooper

jsinnema@edmontonjournal.com

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