Front Burner - Who is Jason Kenney, Alberta's next premier?

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Jason Kenney will be Alberta's next premier after leading the United Conservative Party to a majority government in the province.Today on Front Burner, CBC Calgary's Allison Dempster breaks down last night's election results, and Maclean's Paul Wells shares a deep look at Jason Kenney's career so far, and how he came to be a driving force behind conservative political ideas in this country.

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Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. Alberta is open for business. Well, Alberta has returned to its familiar shade of conservative blue. Albertans have elected a government that will be obsessed with getting this province back to work. Last night, Jason Kenney's United Conservative Party unseated Rachel Notley's NDP. The campaign was dominated by anger over the lousy state of the economy in Alberta and frustrations with Ottawa. Because she's incapable of defending her failed economic record, the jobs crisis, her alliance with Justin Trudeau. Now my opponent, Mr. Kenney, wants to stoke fear and division for his political gain.

Today, a deep look at Jason Kenney, who emerged not only as Alberta's next premier, but as this driving force behind conservative political ideas in this country. Let me thank the growing alliance of provincial governments who are champions of jobs, pipelines and our resources. This is FrontBurner. We're going to get to a conversation with Maclean's Paul Wells about Jason Kenney in a bit. But first, the CBC's Alison Dempster has been covering this election from the beginning. And I'm talking to her right after the results came in on Tuesday. And she's in Calgary tonight. bit. But first, the CBC's Alison Dempster has been covering this election from the beginning, and I'm talking to her right after the results came in on Tuesday. And she's in Calgary tonight.

Hi, Alison. Hey there, Jamie. So here's what I know. In order to win Alberta, you need to have two of the following, Edmonton, Calgary, and rural Alberta. And so what happened tonight to give Jason Kenney this majority? Yeah, pollsters like to talk about the Alberta electorate as a three-legged stool. And tonight, the UCP has two and a half legs, you could say, generally speaking. That is a wobbly stool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But a very solid victory, generally speaking, it won in rural Alberta, most of Calgary and some of Edmonton. And as you and I are talking, the party has about 60 of the 87 seats in the province. So that means the NDP has made the kind of history it was hoping not to make as Alberta's first ever one-term government.

Now, the New Democrats still have a foothold in Edmonton. They'll be able to form a relatively, for Alberta, respectable opposition. But just a quick note about the results, Jamie. For the first time, Albertans were allowed to vote outside their ridings in advance polls. And they don't start to count those votes until the day after the election. So we can't really say what the final results are. But it's clear Alberta decided to stay true to its conservative blue roots this time around. The campaign itself was incredibly divisive.

Jason Kenney was plagued with controversy from the beginning, allegations that his campaign ran a kamikaze candidate in the leadership race, allegations of voter fraud in that race as well, candidates who dropped out because of racist or homophobic comments. And the NDP really focused on all of this in their campaign. The leadership campaign of which you were a part is under RCMP investigation, Mr. Kenney. From what you're seeing tonight, do you think that any of this impacted the result? No, not really. The UCP has managed to weather the storm of Bozo

eruption, along with that controversy around the shady dealings in the leadership contest. There are now two investigations into that leadership race, one by the RCMP, the other by Alberta's election commissioner. All of that had Kenny on the defensive for much of the campaign. But in the end, Kenny's message on jobs and pipelines, on standing up to Ottawa, worked. You know, a sizable part of the province is feeling anxious and frustrated about the lingering effects of the recession. And that overrode the other issues. So let's talk about those anxieties for a minute. You know, I understand you recently spoke to some people about this. Yeah, we made a trip to Turner Valley,

a small town south of Calgary, and spent the morning chatting with some people at the Chuckwagon Cafe, which has great burgers and fantastic pie, if you ever get the chance. That sounds fabulous. Yeah, it was a really good place to take the pulse. Our province is hurting big time, and I don't think that we've had the help in this province that we need for the oil and gas industry.

I work for an oil company, and yeah, it's harder to get investment into Alberta because we can't export our product. I think consistently the one thing everybody wants is people to go back to work. You know, people to be able to afford their mortgages comfortably. We've got to get Alberta back to work. So people here are worried. The recovery is taking longer than expected, and stalled pipeline projects are not helping matters. The unemployment rate in Calgary has been stubbornly high.

It's at 7.7%, the second highest among major cities in the country. And as we just heard, in uncertain times, people seem to want to return to what they know. So now that they've returned to what they know, essentially back to a Conservative Party running Alberta and Jason Kenney, what do you think we can expect next? There's a Albertans are angry and we're not going to take it anymore vibe that Jason Kenney has seized on. For one thing, Kenney plans to shred the climate plan that was brought in under the NDP, and that will have wide-ranging implications. The UCP is expected to cancel a 100-megaton cap on oil sands emissions. And Jamie, that's the policy that gave the federal

government justification for buying the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. And Kenny will be a thorn in Trudeau's side in another way. The UCP is promising to repeal the carbon tax the NDP brought in. Kenny is also promising to hold a referendum on equalization if there's not progress on the Trans Mountain Pipeline. So, you know, this was all the red meat he fed supporters at campaign rallies over the course of the election. And like in any election campaign, you wonder how much of it is political theater, but many Albertans want to see that theater play on. Right. So a significant result tonight for Alberta, but also for the rest of the country. That's right. Alison, thank you so much. You're welcome.

Alison, thank you so much. You're welcome. So Jason Kenney is now premier elect of Alberta. This is someone who has decades of experience in politics. But this is the first time that Kenney isn't working in someone else's political shadow. He has a province now and a pulpit. What Jason Kenney might we see emerge? I spoke earlier this week with Paul Wells. He's McLean's senior politics writer, and Paul has been following Jason's career since the

1990s. Hi, Paul. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks for having me. So you've written about how you remember there were these three portraits in Jason Kenney's old MP's office. And can you tell me what they were? One was a picture of Abraham Lincoln, which is self-explanatory. The other was Sir Thomas More. He was an advisor to Henry VIII. He's kind of a standard bearer of faith and consistency, especially among Roman Catholics.

And the third guy was William Wilberforce, who was much less known, was a reformer in the 19th century. Those three portraits, first of all, remind us that Jason Kenney is read deeply into history. His role models, the people he wanted to look at every day in the office, are from, you know, the fairly distant history. And I was struck at the time by the fact that only one of them, Abraham Lincoln, had been leader of a government. The other two, Wilberforce and Thomas More, had been counsellors to the king or the prime minister. They had not actually led government themselves. Jason Kenney's a student of political influence as much as of political leadership, and he would draw a distinction between the two. And finally, to some extent, they're all martyrs. Lincoln was assassinated, Moore was beheaded, and Wilberforce was seen as

a guy who sort of gave his life to the advancement of certain social goals. And then the last thing about Wilberforce alone is that he's remembered in contemporary politics as a leader of the anti-abortion movement. And the Wilberforce movement in Alberta is the name given to an NGO that campaigns full time against abortion rights. Hi, this is Stephanie Family and Cameron Wilson from the Wilberforce Project. We just wanted to send an update today for the pro-lifers in Alberta who are following the policy developments in the province. And that didn't strike me at the time, but it became very germane during this campaign when the Wilberforce movement not only backed Jason Kenney's Conservatives. We know a lot of you have purchased memberships with the United Conservative Party to support pro-life Jason Kenney and his leadership race.

But congratulated itself on getting a bunch of pro-life candidates nominated under the United Conservative Party banner. OK, so I want to come back to these three portraits a little bit later. But before we do that, let's get a sense of his life so far, particularly in politics. So he started making a name for himself in Canadian politics in the late 90s with Preston Manning and the Reform Party. They were the official opposition in 1997.

Come a long, long way because we're the only third party, the only party outside of the traditional parties to ever have made it to being the official opposition to Parliament of Canada in this century. That's an achievement. Conservative Western Canadian politicians, very unhappy about the way federal politics work in Ottawa. What was Jason Kenney's role at that point? So Kenney was in his, he'd be about 30 years old at that time, and he had just been elected for the first time. This is a grassroots party. This is a grassroots victory. And this is going to be a grassroots MP. So thank you all very, very, very much for everything you've done. Thank you. So thank you all very, very, very much for everything you've done.

Thank you. And he was tasked by Preston Manning with reaching outside the Reform Party to try and find the basis for building a broader, more electorally successful Conservative movement in Canada, the so-called United Alternative. It's true that the Reform Party in 97, 98 was the official opposition, but they had barely gained any seats in the election of 97. By the standards of Manning's ambition, the 97 election was a bitter disappointment. Reform was, by some definitions, a failure because it didn't have national appeal and it was time to build something new. And the guy he reached out to to sort of do Sherpa work to try and figure out whether that was possible to talk to people outside the reform family was Jason Kenney. Does Jason Kenney sort of have a reputation at this point as like a bridge builder or? Well, he was a very strongly fiscally conservative activist. So he gets to Ottawa.

I would also like at the beginning of my first maiden speech here in the House of Commons to thank my constituents for this great privilege. And he's seen as a conservative firebrand. What about tax fairness for families? What about cutting, heaven forbid, capital gains taxes to increase investment and productivity to reward people for taking risks in our economy? But he ends up exercising much more sort of diplomatic skills in

reaching out to Ontario Conservatives, Ontario Provincial Conservatives, to some disaffected members of the Progressive Conservative Party and that becomes the basis for what became the Canadian Alliance Party. The Canadian Alliance has a plan that will allow every Canadian to pay less tax. Okay, and I know he also played a significant role in the early days of the Canadian Alliance Party when Stockwell Day ran for leadership. You know, as you mentioned, the Alliance was the successor to the Reform Party, also fiscally and socially conservative.

And can we talk about what Jason Kenney did or didn't accomplish there? The alliance was supposed to have broader electoral appeal than the Reform Party. It was designed to succeed where the Reform Party had failed. But the alliance was kind of a case of be careful what you wish for, because no sooner was the alliance formed than it essentially turned on Preston Manning and instead selected Stockwell Day as the leader. I accept the judgment of the members of the Canadian alliance and I congratulate our new leader, Stockwell Day. On the odd theory that if the Reform Party didn't have broad national appeal, that what would have broad national appeal was a more conservative leader. Stockwell Day's campaign manager, chief strategist, chief of staff was Jason Kenney.

And so he owns some of Stockwell Day's failure as a national leader. Was there disappointment? Yes, certainly. Was I disappointed? Yes, I was. It was between 1998 and 2000 that this whole party was hammered together, and then he flames out horribly in the 2000 election. But the excitement in the day camp faded quickly last night when it became clear the opposition was going to finish more than 100 seats behind the Liberals. The message to us is not yet, not this time.

What do you think Jason Kenney may have learned from that time? That it's really hard to arbitrate between your heart and your electoral calculations. Almost every politician, including politicians on the left, has to spend part of their time splitting the difference between what they wish Canada was and what they think they can make Canada do. And Jason Kenney essentially botched that calculation, picked a guy like Stockwell Day, who was, you know, strongly pro-life, very much a heartland Alberta conservative. And the graph didn't take. The rest of Canada wasn't buying it.

So is a lesson there that you can have these socially conservative beliefs, but you can't necessarily win a national campaign? I think so. I think every politician has to figure out how much of their soul is going to influence their policies. And the Canadian Alliance experience of 1998 to 2000 essentially was a bad guess about how much social conservative skin you could have in the game. And it took yet another bridge building exercise by Stephen Harper after Harper became the next alliance leader in 2002, 2003. He's the guy who manages to succeed in a formal merger with the Progressive Conservative Party, and you build a National Conservative Party. It's time to demand better. It's time for the new Conservative Party. My name is Stephen Harper. And Jason Kenney did not have a huge role in that. He was viewed with suspicion by Stephen Harper. Right. How so?

Well, because he was Stockwell Day's guy. He was in the doghouse for the first couple of years of Stephen Harper's national leadership career. And he had to kind of win himself back into Harper's good books. So let's talk about how he managed to win himself back into his good books. Because at some point, he becomes a federal cabinet minister under Harper. So, you know, obviously they mended those fences. By May of 2006, four months after the election. Minority governments don't usually have a long shelf life.

Stephen Harper is well aware of that. And he knows he has a limited amount of time to take care of business. He gets a special mission from Harper, which is to be the leader for outreach to new Canadians, ethnic minorities, the kind of diversity vote that had pretty spectacularly never been a core conservative strength. It is because sometime before that, he went out, had a beer with Stephen Harper, and he said, look, the growth market for the conservative movement in Canada is among new Canadians who are often more socially conservative than the mainstream.

They're often very entrepreneurial, small business types. They're suspicious of crime. There's all kinds of reasons why new Canadians should be an easy get for the Conservative Party. Right. It sounds like a conservative platform. Exactly. And Stephen Harper said, well, that's crazy because these communities just almost always tend to vote for the Conservative Party. Right. It sounds like a conservative platform. Exactly. And Stephen Harper said, well, that's crazy because I like these communities just tend almost always tend to vote for the Liberal Party. A few months after he's been prime minister, Harper calls Kenny up and he says, look, I still don't think that you're right, but I'm going to put you in charge of proving me wrong. And Jason becomes essentially the Conservative movement's full-time evangelist to immigrant communities.

Since he has no life to speak of, he's a bachelor. He doesn't need to be campaigning in his writing. And he is busy, right? Yeah. Seven, eight, ten events per weekend, frequently in Montreal or Toronto or Vancouver. And starting at about that time, in 2008, 2009, I started to run into liberals who were saying, my God, Jason Kenney's in my writing almost every weekend. I don't know what to do about it. And what they ended up doing was losing to him. And, you know, I find this so fascinating.

Can you tell me the story about how he connected with this one Korean community in Vancouver, as an example? He'd gone out to meet a bunch of Korean-Canadian business leaders in Vancouver, and not any of them had ever thought of voting for the Conservative Party. And he said, well, why not? And they said, well, we think you're racist. And it didn't really faze him because he heard that all the time. And he said, well, but how did you come to support the Liberals or the NDP? but how did you come to support the Liberals or the NDP?

And the head of a group called the Vancouver Korean Evangelical NDP Association said that. Which sounds like, that doesn't even make any sense. Like, I don't know how many evangelical New Democrats you know, but this was one of them. And he said that someone came to one of our events like 20 years ago. And so there was a personal bond of interest that was developed. And we kind of never looked back. And Kenny said that a light went on over his head. And he realized that if you simply show up, take an interest, that can be the basis for something. His colleague Raheim Jaffer called

him the minister for curry in our herd. I followed him for two days for a book that I was writing. One of his staffers congratulated me on being able to keep up with him. It wasn't only impressive that he was showing up for meetings with the editorial boards of Chinese language newspapers and round tables with Muslim community leaders and so on, but that he knew the names of just about everyone he showed up. We'll be back in a second. Discover what millions around the world already have. Audible has Canada's largest library of audiobooks,

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At this point, you know, he's made it through the Reform Party, he's made it through the Canadian Alliance, he has proven Stephen Harper wrong, and of course we know he went on to take some pretty important roles in Stephen Harper's government beyond this. He was considered a potential party leader following the defeat of Stephen Harper in 2015. When the next time comes, this party will offer Canadians

a strong and clear alternative based on our conservative values. And so up to this point, what does this tell you about Jason Kenney? Is he like a survivor? Is he a crafty politician? What are you thinking about him at this point? Well, just about everyone who deals with Jason Kenney, who is not themselves an evangelical, Catholic, pro-life activist, is aware that Kenney's politics is often very different from their own. What do we know exactly about Kenny's personal upbringing?

Well, he was born in Saskatchewan and raised as a very ardent Roman Catholic, so much so that he pursued his post-secondary education at a Roman Catholic institution in San Francisco, and that that has been kind of a pillar of his self-conception, his personal life ever since then. The pro-choice group, which is politically activating to legalize abortion on demand on this campus, by using campus facilities, is essentially destroying the mission and the purpose of the university.

And yet he has proven himself again and again able to reach out to people who don't share his politics on a core level. During the entire time that he was the immigration minister, he was working in a minority government that did not command a majority of seats in the House of Commons. And yet he often had his initiatives on immigration passed with not only majority support in the House of Commons, but a few times with unanimous support. not only majority support in the House of Commons, but a few times with unanimous support. He absolutely comes from further right on the political spectrum than most of the people we're used to dealing with in our politics. But he could frequently build bridges across the spectrum. He sounds really strategic. Absolutely. I mean, he lives and breathes politics.

He's got an extraordinary command of political minutiae and trivia. He can tell you how many votes the NDP got in a local election in Regina in the late 70s. I guess what that does is it gives you an intimate understanding that people can vote in different ways. And that the only way you can win is by getting them to vote your way. And you're not going to do that on charm. And you're not going to do that on being doctrinaire. You have to find other ways.

I want to talk with you a little bit about his personal politics, this social conservatism that a lot of people aren't used to. So this campaign that he's been running in Alberta right now, it's been dogged by a lot of controversy. There was allegations that his team ran a kamikaze candidate in the leadership race. Documents leaked to CBC News show the sole purpose of Jeff Calloway's leadership bid was to inflict damage on Kenny's main political rival, Brian Jean, then drop out of the race to support Kenney. There have been these so-called bozo eruptions in his party with candidates being disqualified or dropping out largely because of racist comments and some homophobic comments. Kaylin Ford has resigned as a UCP candidate in the riding of Calgary Mountain View after a report claiming she echoed white nationalist rhetoric.

Kariakis talked about a past social media post that included a retweet of a story about Germany's, quote, migrant rape crisis. And we've dealt with all of these issues on the podcast. You can find those episodes in our feed. But what I want to focus on with you today is what was talked about in a recent interview with Talk Show host Charles Adler, which was a real barn burner of an interview if people haven't heard it yet. This is a show that I never wanted to do, Mr. Kenney, and I think you understand why.

We've been very good friends for a number of years. I've got to ask some uncomfortable questions tonight. Jason Kenney was asked about his decision to stand by UCP candidate Mark Smith. And this recently came out that in a sermon six years ago, Mark Smith compared in sort of a roundabout way homosexuality to pedophilia. You don't have to watch any TV for any length of time today where you don't see on the TV programs them trying to tell you that homosexuality and homosexual love is good love.

He likened abortion to killing a child. These are largely thought of as homophobic and misogynistic remarks. And in the interview, Kenny says he doesn't agree with Mark Smith's comments. He condemns them. He called them deeply offensive. I condemn Mark Smith's remarks that he made in his church several years ago. I did not recruit Mr. Smith. He was elected to the legislature four years ago for a different party, the Wild Rose Party. And when it comes to abortion, he does say the law is settled on that. But he also is not asking Mark Smith to step down. I think that people should not be condemned for a life because they've said something that is offensive or at some point in the past.

He's, I think, acted as a responsible legislator. He's apologized for those remarks. And so what do we know about where Jason Kenney has stood on these issues historically? Because I ask this because I think this scares some people. He has not answered a lot of those questions to the satisfaction of a lot of critics of himself and of his party. And that will hurt him as premier in his ability to be seen as the premier for all Albertans. Also, why did he not dump that candidate and replace him? Because the deadline for replacing candidates had passed.

At that point, if he dumped the candidate, he was going to have to, the party would not be able to run a different candidate in the riding. Do you think he would have dumped him if the deadline hadn't come up? I think it would have been much likelier to. I think for some people, they're concerned about his unwillingness to be strong on these issues in part because of his background. So when he was in university during the AIDS epidemic, he took part in San Francisco in an initiative to take the rights of people with AIDS to see their spouses away. He says now that he regrets this, but in the interview with Charles Adler, Jason Kenney refuses to apologize for this. I wouldn't take the same position today. I don't

take the same position today. I can tell you that what motivated me was not desire to separate people. That never occurred to me. Yeah. Part of it turns on a dispute over what the nature of apologizing is. He does say he regrets the positions that he took at a different time. He's essentially saying that was then, this is now. And the very strong message that a lot of voters are getting, the strong message they're saying is that had better be then and this had better be now. Look, the art of the deal that I described as one of Kennedy's political strengths came during a time when he was not the party leader

and he was operating within a minority environment where the government could stand or fall from day to day based on his ability to compromise. That's not the environment he's going to be operating in now. He's got a majority government and he is the party leader. And the big question is, is he willing to compromise? Does he feel like splitting differences and rounding off the edges? Or does he now feel like his word is law and he can govern any way he wants? And will that lead him to make different decisions and different choices than the ones he made during his decade in Ottawa? Right. That's a really good point. I mean, there are also anxieties, even though he has said the issue of abortion is settled. I know that there are also anxieties from women because Jason Kenney, when he was at a Catholic university, he opposed people on campus who were

informing women about their abortion rights. Yeah. And he had William Wilberforce's portrait on it. That's a good point. The anti-abortion lobby in Alberta is called the Wilberforce movement. He's the guy who had Wilberforce's face on his wall. That leaves us with the right to ask questions. And I want to unpack what you were just saying. You know, this idea that he's in a different position now than he was back then. Is the Jason Kenney you're seeing today the same Jason Kenney that you've known? In some ways, he isn't.

And it'll be very interesting to see what he does with the responsibility of government in the very angry and highly polarized circumstances in which he finds himself. In the last weekend of the campaign, he threatened to enact a law passed by Rachel Notley, but not enacted, that would give the Alberta government the right to stop petroleum exports to British Columbia, to turn off the taps to British Columbia. If they continue to obstruct our energy and violate the economic union of the constitution in doing so, that we will be prepared to use the turn off the taps legislation. He's talked about having a provincial referendum to force a constitutional change to change the terms of equalization payments, which is a federal responsibility. This would be the strongest assertion of our

fight for fairness in the Federation. This is a series of highly confrontational moves. It's worth wondering what he's going to do next. Does he get more confrontational? Does he get more polarizing? And I don't know the answer to that. I think it'll be the central question of his time as premier. I want to wrap up this conversation today by reading you a quote from your own writing, a 2010 profile you wrote of Jason Kenney. And the piece looked at some of what we talked about today, namely Kenney's role in courting this diverse vote for the Conservative Party. And you quote an anonymous Conservative

insider, and he or she says this, I don't think Jason Kenney wants the leadership of the party necessarily, so much as he'd like to be seen as the leader of the conservative movement in Canada. And whoever this person is that you quoted, he or she goes on to say that we may be moving towards a time when, quote, leading Canadian conservatism isn't necessarily synonymous with being prime minister. And fast forward to today, what do you make of that quote now? I think there may still be some juice left in that quote. Say Andrew Scheer becomes the next Prime Minister of Canada, which I think is still a bit of a long shot, but the Conservatives have been doing well in the polls. Is it obvious then that that point that Andrew Scheer is going to be the leader of Canadian Conservatives? Or when Jason Kenney walks into a room, will he get more attention and more applause from Conservatives than Andrew Scheer

will? To me, the answer to that is not obvious. And already, as an opposition politician in Alberta, Kenny has worked with the Conservative premiers of Saskatchewan and Ontario and Manitoba to build a common front against federal carbon tax. So what do I say to the other provinces? You've got an ally in standing up for taxpayers. So already, Kenny has hinted strongly that he wouldn't be content only to be the premier of Alberta. Does that mean he'll seek federal conservative leadership down the line? I don't

think it needs to. I think he may want to lead from the sidecar of the legislature in Edmonton. He may want to lead national conservatism, even without being the national conservative leader. Paul, thank you so much for coming by today. Thanks. Just as we were recording this on Tuesday night, Rachel Notley was delivering her concession speech. Notley did win her Edmonton riding, and she said in her speech that she'd be remaining in the legislature, though it's unclear at this point whether she'll continue as leader.

And I will make sure that our vision of Alberta endures through a rigorous and robust opposition holding government to account and making sure that voices of all Albertans are heard in their legislature. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog.

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