Morinville-St. Albert UCP MLA Dale Nally says he is honoured to be selected for an associate minister spot in Alberta's new provincial government.
Along with the rest of Cabinet and Premier Jason Kenney, Nally was sworn in Tuesday as associate minister of natural gas, a new ministerial portfolio the province hasn’t seen before.
“I’m incredibly excited and I’m also incredibly honoured as well,” Nally said.
“I’m humbled as well in the confidence (Kenney) has put in me.”
Nally said the creation of the associate minister position shows Kenney and the UCP government is going to be putting extra attention on natural gas and the importance of it.
“There's incredible opportunity for this province, not just in terms of revenue, but jobs. So I'm very excited and optimistic about what it's going to mean down the road,” Nally said.
Nally has been named associate minister, which he characterized as “a junior ministry role with a sole focus on natural gas.”
The MLA said the natural gas portfolio will still be embedded in energy, but he will be specifically looking after natural gas because there are things that are unique to that industry.
“There are some unique challenges in the marketplace right now regarding pipeline access as well as access to global markets and it's all kind of coming to a head right now. In order to help kickstart this industry, Jason Kenney has made the decision to put an associate minister on it so we can give the attention we need to to the natural gas producers,” Nally said.
The riding Nally represents includes the Industrial Heartland, which Nally said will directly benifit from having a associate minister of natural gas.
St. Albert Mayor Cathy Heron said it will be nice to have one of the city's local MLAs in a leading role.
"It's going to be positive to have somebody who has a close ear to the premier,” Heron said.
Heron said it wasn’t too long ago when she was a member of council that the city had the deputy premier, the minister of finance and the minister of enterprise and advanced education all living in St. Albert.
The mayor said that strong St. Albert representation didn’t necessarily mean there was more attention paid to the city, but it did make access easier.
“It was just a nice and easy phone call; if you needed to have a problem resolved, you had easier access,” Heron said.
Nally, who was elected during last month's provincial election, is a first-time politician and will now sit as one of 23 members of Kenney’s cabinet. Kenney named 20 cabinet ministers and three associate ministers Tuesday morning.
Nally won the race in Morinville-St. Albert with 50 per cent of the vote (13,435 votes overall), with NDP candidate Natalie Birnie placing second with 33.2 per cent of the vote (8,908 votes) and Neil Korotash of the Alberta Party coming in third with 14.8 per cent (3,963 votes).
Voter turnout in the riding was 69.5 per cent.
