Danielle Smith's cabinet: New doors and handles, but Jason Kenney's frame

In the run-up to her cabinet announcement, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was fond of citing what former Reform Party leader Preston Manning said about cabinet making, even though he never actually won power to select a cabinet himself.

Smith's borrowed wisdom goes like this: You have to make a cabinet with the wood you're given. She would extend the metaphor: "And we've got some pretty good wood."

Sure, she had the same bits of lumber that Jason Kenney had to deal with beforehand. But given how much she criticized her predecessor and his team's decisions, it wasn't expected that she'd keep so many key components of Kenney's woodworking in place.

Scanning the faces of Smith's cabinet, two things are immediately clear.

First, with only four women among the 26 ministers joining Smith, it's the most gender-imbalanced cabinet in a long time, since then-premier Ed Stelmach picked only two women back in 2006.

Also, the faces look very familiar.

For the (arguably) five most influential and big-budget portfolios, Smith kept Kenney's picks intact: Travis Toews returns to Finance, Tyler Shandro stays in Justice, Jason Copping in Health, Adriana LaGrange in Education and Demetrios Nicolaides in Advanced Education. (In another of the big ministries, Sonya Savage leaves Energy to rookie Peter Guthrie, but lands in the heavily-overlapping Environment file.)

Bitter folks both outside and inside the United Conservative fold will recognize two of those faces (Toews and Shandro) from the infamous Sky Palace patio whisky-and-wine gathering, that iconic image of the haughty attitudes that ultimately sank Kenney's fortunes. Some change this is, those people might fume.

These are the Kenney ministers who did so many things Smith has deplored. They enacted the COVID vaccine mandates and business restrictions, closed schools during the pandemic, slow-walked the fair deal panel's recommended reforms on provincial police and pension, and did nothing after that referendum to do — um, something or other — with equalization.

Smith will now ask Copping to dynamite an Alberta Health Services board that contains a couple of members he appointed (including the chair), and task Shandro to help enact a Sovereignty Act he'd shown no favour toward during the leadership campaign.

These ministers have spent their entire political careers with their watches set to Kenney Standard Time. Can they adjust so quickly and nimbly to the Smith Zone?

Stability you can believe in

Smith, in explaining her changes and non-changes in one interview Friday, said that she wanted to offer some stability amid all the change she wants to implement.

And there are some inherent advantages to a novice premier keeping the past regime's veterans in place — they retain institutional knowledge and bring ample understanding and context to their portfolios, while the premier is still trying to learn the ropes, absorb the briefing binders and get introduced to key figures and officials.

But this also stands to create problems for Smith — an authority imbalance.

The chief executive has far less of a handle on the portfolios than her vice-presidents. She has all manner of big ideas for reform, and her key ministers have spent years doing things a different way, and will understand the reasons they didn't do things Smith's way. (And the answer may not always be "because Kenney said so.")

These returning ministers may apply brakes to Smith's proposals, or wrestle in modifications that dilute her vision. Or they'll try to. The potential for friction is massive.

The revolution that wasn't (yet)

Then there's the friction Smith's hardcore base may bring. For them, there were no greater sins than those of the COVID rule-makers from Kenney's inner circle, like Shandro, Copping and Toews (even if the once and future finance minister signalled he'd pushed back privately). Now they're in Smith's inner circle.

The more revolutionary-minded Smith fans were already miffed at her for apologizing for what she confessed were "ill-informed" views on Ukraine and damaging words about which groups are more discriminated against than others. This frustration may emerge at this weekend's UCP convention.

If the "Kenney 2.0" cries were coming out then, how loud are they when much of her cabinet is a modest upgrade?

She's certainly made her own marks on the team that will be sworn in Monday, naming two deputy premiers with modest portfolios, bringing in a handful of newcomers who endorsed her or were leadership rivals, and sending eight members to the backbenches. However, that's actually fewer demotions than past new premiers Alison Redford, Jim Prentice or Ed Stelmach made.

That may have been practical to quell internal dissent, for someone who's made caucus relations a priority over any public policy action in her first 11 days as premier. But it means she's put the lightest personal stamp on her cabinet than any of her recent predecessors.

Smith will have an opportunity to make the government her own when she finally gets down to the business of governing in coming weeks. But if those moves aren't quite what the premier had promised, maybe it will be because her ministers knew better.