Morinville-St. Albert MLA Dale Nally has been re-appointed minister of Service Alberta and red-tape reduction, Premier Danielle Smith announced last week as she revealed her new cabinet.
Nally, who was re-elected on May 29, held the same portfolio for the six months leading up to the provincial election.
On top of the cabinet appointment, Nally was also named to the Alberta Treasury Board Committee. As a committee member, Nally will work with new Finance Minister Nate Horner and seven other cabinet members to develop provincial budgets, administer tax and revenue programs, and more.
Nally said he is excited to return as Service Alberta and red-tape reduction minister, and there is more work to do.
“Really, in seven months you just get to get your feet wet, and there's so much more work that has to be done on this file,” he said. “I'm excited that I get to focus on it for the next four years.”
Nally said his ministry will look to finish modernizing the province's registry system this term.
“We want to modernize our registries in Alberta and we have secured over $100 million in the last budget to modernize registries so that we can provide Albertans with the services that they deserve,” he said. “Specifically, one of the the key modernizations that we're going to be doing is in land titles, and land titles unfortunately, has been been plagued with slow turnaround times.”
“We have made huge improvements on reducing the time frame to get your land title back, and that's great news, (but) what we haven't done yet is modernize it, which means it's not scalable. So if we were to see an increase in volumes in land titles, we would be very slow to react, but by modernizing land titles, it'll make it more scalable so that we can respond to upticks in the market and things like that.”
When asked about his new appointment to the Treasury Board Committee, Nally said he was “thrilled.”
“There's a number of different cabinet committees that I could work on, and this was the one that I wanted, without a doubt,” he said. “It's a lot of work, but it is, in my opinion, the most influential committee.”
“It is the committee that deals with all budget matters, all monetary matters, and ... it also exposes you to every monetary issue in the province, so it's a great opportunity to participate in the monetary decisions of the province.”
Including the premier, Smith's new cabinet has 25 members, two fewer than her previous cabinet after she won the UCP leadership race last fall.
A few major changes in Smith's new cabinet include a new minister of health, Adriana LaGrange, who takes over from Jason Copping after he lost his re-election bid in Calgary-Varsity; a new minister of justice, Mickey Amery, who takes over for Tyler Shandro, who lost his re-election attempt in Calgary-Acadia by just 25 votes; and a new minister of mental health and addiction, Dan Williams, taking over from Nicholas Milliken, who was defeated in the Calgary-Currie riding.
Smith gave roles to previous ministers, such as Rebecca Schulz, who served as municipal affairs minister for the six months leading up to the provincial election in May. Schulz is now minister of environment and protected areas, while Ric McIver will take over as the new minister of municipal affairs.
McIver was previously municipal affairs minister from July 2021 until last October.
St. Albert's Mayor Cathy Heron posted on Twitter that she has “always enjoyed (McIver's) no-nonsense approach,” and congratulated McIver for his re-appointment to municipal affairs.
