Doug Horner appointed deputy premier, treasury board president

When Premier Alison Redford unveiled her new cabinet Wednesday, it included a mix of familiar and new faces, young and veteran politicians, and rural and urban constituencies.

Joining Redford around the cabinet table will be Spruce Grove-Sturgeon-St. Albert MLA and Barrhead native Doug Horner, who assumes the role of deputy premier and president of the treasury board.

Redford said the new cabinet is going to help her deliver on her promises.

“I am proud of this cabinet. I believe Albertans will be proud of this cabinet. We will deliver change,” she said.

Redford said her cabinet is full of parents of young children, grandparents and people from all walks of life.

“We are the people who are living in this province and I think those are the people who Albertans want,” she said.

Horner said he was thrilled at the appointment and is eager to dive into the role.

“I am very, very honoured with the trust that the premier has put in me and I look forward to fulfilling the role,” he said.

Horner, who also ran for the PC leadership, said he and the premier share an approach to budgeting that focuses not just on dollars and cents, but on achieving policy outcomes.

“I feel pretty confident that we are going to be in sync and I think she does as well or she wouldn’t have put me there,” he said.

Redford’s first cabinet also introduces some changes to how government is organized. Immigration is no longer tied to the employment ministry and the department of aboriginal relations is no longer a stand-alone cabinet post.

Redford has also placed a secretariat for regulatory review in her office. She said Wednesday the secretariat will aim to ensure the province is achieving what it sets out to.

“This is to me about doing something that we have always said we needed to do in government and that was to actually take a look at whether or not our regulatory framework is coinciding with the policy outcome we wanted to achieve,” she said.

In staffing her cabinet, Redford was looking for people wiling to shake things up.

“I looked for people who were bright and energetic and are open to new ways of doing thing and are not complacent with the status quo,” she said.