Here are six things you might not know about conservative nepo baby turned minister Devin Dreeshen, Danielle Smith's right-hand transportation man.
He worked for Trump
First, Devin doesn't just like Donald Trump, he worked for him.
Dreeshen spent 2016 not just supporting, but campaigning for Donald Trump. He was on a bus, training volunteers, and knocking on doors all for the Donald. He even shadowed Ivanka Trump.
When Trump won, he was at the victory party in his favorite hat.
Drinking on the job
In 2021, he got removed from cabinet over drinking on the job.
During his time as Alberta's agriculture minister, multiple government staffers told CBC that Dreeshen regularly drank in his legislature office, often starting in late afternoon and going into the evening. There were code words used to signal when the liquor was flowing freely.
In his own resignation statement, Dreeshen said, and this is a quote:
I accept that my personal conduct with regards to alcohol has become an issue for the government as a whole.
But it wasn't the only issue.
The lawsuit
We know about the drinking because of a lawsuit filed by Ariella Kimmel, a former UCP staffer.
In her lawsuit, which names Dreeshen but hasn't been proven in court, she alleges that after telling Dreeshen that he'd had enough to drink, he later confronted her and “aggressively yelled at her to the point where she was in tears and a concerned bystander intervened.”
Dreeshen had been in an off-and-on relationship with the staffer. She sued for $400,000. This was never proven in court, but Dreeshen resigned days after it went public.
Cargill
And rewind to 2020, peak COVID at the Cargill meat plant in High River.
Rachel Notley and the union called for the plant to be shut down to protect workers. Dreeshen, who was in charge of the file, labeled this as alarmist and backed his colleague who called this fearmongering and misinformation.
The ensuing outbreak was the single largest COVID-19 outbreak in Canada. Over 1,500 cases linked to the plant and three deaths.
Documents later obtained by the Alberta Federation of Labour showed that officials knew safety measures weren't enough.
He mocked it as misinformation.
Promoted
But through all of this, he didn't just survive, he got promoted.
Less than a year after he resigned for drinking on the job, Danielle Smith promoted him to a bigger, more powerful cabinet role, Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors.
In the UCP, resigning in disgrace is career advancement.
Separation
And on separation, while Danielle Smith was very convincingly insisting that her cabinet is unified and anti-separatist, CBC asked Dreeshen point-blank if Alberta should remain in Canada. He refused to say.
So who's this guy?
So, if you're wondering, “Who's this guy forcing himself into another government's jurisdiction and trying to legislate changes he knows nothing about? Who's the guy who saw Doug Ford's bike lane law that's facing and losing charter challenges and thought, ‘Let's do that here.’”
Well, it's this guy. This is Devin Dreeshen's resume.
And now he's decided that he knows more about transportation than the municipal engineers, city councils, and the people who actually live there.
Would you hire this guy? Because your premier did.
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