We were a little perplexed following premier Jason Kenney’s cabinet announcement April 30.
We skimmed the release, doubled checked the names of the 20 ministers and three associate ministers and then re-read it again looking for Glenn van Dijken’s name — even for one of the major non-cabinet assignments.
It wasn’t there.
In our humble opinion, it should have been.
We’re not here to nitpick, or disparage the men and women who have been selected to Kenney’s cabinet — from reading their bios, most appear to be competent.
But what’s striking is that 13 of the 20 in Kenney’s cabinet come from Calgary, while the only UCP candidate to win a seat in Edmonton in last month’s provincial election, Kaycee Madu, got a spot as minister of Municipal Affairs.
In fact northern Alberta, which is UCP blue, has only one cabinet minister, Grande Prairie-Wapiti MLA-elect Travis Toews who will head the finance department. Rural folks in southern Alberta were mainly skipped as only Grant Hunter, the MLA-elect for Taber-Warner, was named associate minister in charge of reducing government red tape — a new post created under Kenney.
And while the people of our area may feel a little shortchanged on behalf of their MLA, we can only imagine what folks in Fort McMurrary are saying.
They elected two UCP MLAs and are only behind Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge as far as population and didn’t even get a sniff.
For his part Glenn took the omission in what’s become his trademark since he was first elected back in May 2015 — classy, well spoken and down to earth. He says not having a post will free him up to focus on our vast constituency, which includes nine counties and seven towns.
“One thing that has become very evident to me is that there’s a real need for rural Alberta to have strong representation and that’s what I believe my role is in this term,” said Glenn during our interview with him over weekend while he was out getting ready for spring seeding.
From our vantage point, Kenney made a mistake by not finding a place in cabinet for a guy like Glenn van Dijken.
