She might not have supported Jason Kenney in the United Conservative Party's leadership race, but apparently Airdrie's Angela Pitt has Kenney's support.

Pitt was named earlier today (October 30) one of the five MLAs who'll make up Kenney's new Leadership Team, one he says will stand up for all Albertans against the NDP government.  

Pitt was named the Deputy House Leader on the UCP team.  She calls the appointment an honour.

"It's a very big role, a very important role and I'm absolutely honoured and thrilled to be in this position."

Pitt was one of the first UCP MLAs to throw her support firmly behind Brian Jean to become the party's first leader.  Despite that, she says she wasn't greatly surprised to be selected by Kenney.

"The biggest challenge, and we all knew this, was to unify a caucus that just went through a leadership race.  I'm very pleased to see that our new leader Jason Kenney has been reaching out and putting great effort into unifying this caucus and his team so we can defeat the NDP."

The other members of the Leadership Team include Chestermere-Rocky View MLA Leela Aheer who'll serve as Deputy Leader of the party and Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA Jason Nixon who, as Leader of the Opposition in the Legislature and the Opposition House Leader will be responsible for leading the efforts of the caucus in the Legislature until Kenney himself is able to enter the Legislature.

Kenney took a step closer to that by announcing yesterday that he intends to run in a by-election in the Calgary Lougheed riding which is being vacated by the retirement of Dave Rodney.

Calgary Hays MLA Ric McIver will serve as UCP Chief Whip and Calgary Greenway MLA Prab Gill will be Deputy Whip to round out the Leadership Team.

Pitt feels things are already starting to come together for the party under Kenney's leadership.

"Things are good up here.  We had our first caucus meeting this morning and it went really, really well.  Everyone is focused and very positive.  We also had our first question period today and you could tell that the NDP were very displeased at the new Conservative movement in this province."

Kenney also announced that in an effort to hold the Trudeau government accountable to Albertans, the UCP Caucus will seek unanimous consent to introduce a motion calling on the NDP government to respond to Trudeau's use of the National Energy Board to kill pipeline projects like TransCanada's Energy East through regulatory overburden.

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