Not to totally regurgitate an Alberta’s Public Affairs Bureau media release, but this is somewhat significant news:
Edmonton… Two veteran journalists will join Premier Ed Stelmach’s office in key communications roles. Premier Stelmach announced the appointment of Paul Stanway as Director of Communications and Tom Olsen as Director of Media Relations.
Tom Olsen and Paul Stanway are two well-known very predictably Conservative columnists from conservative Calgary newspapers. Olsen’s brother worked as part of Ralph Klein’s communications team back in the 1990’s. Other than bringing in two right-wing media pundits into his inner circle, it’s too early to tell how this move will turn out for Stelmach. I guess it may depend on how good of a relationship these two actually have with their soon to be former collegues.
It should also be interesting to look up what Stelmach’s two new spin-doctors have written about him in the past. Google is both a wonderful and dangerous thing.