So, you’re a former capital region mayor, who was popular as mayor, has good progressive credentials and now finds themselves on the inside of provincial government. You might be looking in the mirror today, thinking about the health portfolio and wondering how the world unfolded to put you where you are today. If this is you, then you’re not alone.
Sure, you might be Stephen Mandel, but you might also be Cathy Oleson, Ken Lemke or George Rogers, for that matter.
There is an important distinction however between Sherwood Park MLA Cathy Oleson and Health Minister Stephen Mandel. Oleson was elected to office by discussing her views on provincial healthcare (amongst other issues) with constituents as part of an election. In fact, Oleson had to discuss healthcare extensively with Sherwood Park constituents who were unhappy with not getting the hospital that they felt they had been promised – and still got elected.
The fact that Stephen Mandel was chosen by Premier Jim Prentice to be health minister over, say, Cathy Oleson, or any of 57 other PC MLAs raises an important question: what is the status of the mandate given to the Progressive Conservatives in the 2012 election?
That mandate was a progressive mandate. It is common knowledge that the PCs won the election because progressives all across the province, in ridings like Sherwood Park, coalesced around the PCs in an effort to defeat the lake-of-fire and anti-climate-change views that became emblematic of the Wildrose Party. Oleson, Lemke, Rogers, and most of the other PC MLAs were elected with that progressive mandate.
It is important to note that while the Alberta public has since come to reject Alison Redford, they haven’t necessarily rejected that mandate. Redford was tossed aside not because of her policy but because of her personal ethics (Indeed, it could be well argued that she would have been safer if she had stayed true to her original policy directions). In fact, a group of PC MLAs who were largely progressives and were instrumental in her downfall are all now on the outside of cabinet looking in.
In the days leading up to Redford’s resignation as premier, a group of10 rebel MLAs started clandestine meetings to discuss the growing spending controversies of the premier. They included Oleson and Lemke, but also included Janice Sarich, Matt Jeneroux, Moe Amery, Neil Brown, Jacquie Fenske, Mary Anne Jablonski, and David Xiao. Arguably, these people did more to bring down Redford than anyone else at that time. Most of them were very much elected on that progressive mandate.
I suspect that these MLAs were motivated by uneasiness amongst their constituents and growing disappointment with the Redford government. Not just disappointment over the spending controversies but also disappointment over the abandonment of the mandate that voters gave to the PCs in 2012.
So, does the appointment of outsiders like Mandel and Education Minister Gordon Dirks over these 10 MLAs speak to a rejection of the 2012 PC mandate or will the new Prentice government embrace that mandate that its caucus was elected on? Time will tell.
However, if Prentice wants to pursue a new direction then he needs to obtain it from the electorate. A set of by-elections may provide him with a limited new mandate, but then he has to fight those by-elections with a clear policy agenda and not just vague messages of change or accountability. Only then will he have the authority to change the policy directions given to government. If he doesn’t get that permission from voters, then he has an obligation to follow up on the commitments that got his MLAs elected.