When Jason Kenney talks about Donald Trump, it’s hard to shake the feeling he’s really talking about Danielle Smith.
We all remember “Perfesser Kenney,” back when he was the United Conservative Party premier of Alberta, taking off his blazer, rolling up the sleeves of his crumpled white shirt, and addressing the jaded journos at a mid-afternoon news conference on COVID or some similar calamity as if he were lecturing to a room full of unruly and hungover freshmen at 8:30 in the morning.
That was a tough act to pull off for a college drop-out, and Mr. Kenney usually didn’t succeed. Just the same, the Perfesser is back, only this time he’s playing a public intellectual on Youtube.
Lately, at any rate, he’s started appearing in video interviews defending his record as the first United Conservative premier of Alberta, bloviating about such topics as teachers unions and abortion, and letting us know what he thinks about John A. Macdonald (good) and Donald Trump (not so good).
One has the feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot more of this annoying version of Mr. Kenney in the near future, too. Who knows? Maybe he aspires to become Canada’s next Jordan Peterson, who, say what you will, used to be a real professor.
Consider Mr. Kenney’s smarmy recent “Off Script” Youtube interview with Steven Edginton, a young right-wing British journalist and Brexit campaigner who sat down with the former Alberta premier for an obsequious on-air interview published by The Telegraph, the U.K. Conservative Party’s virtual house organ, also known for that reason as the Torygraph.
Let’s start with what Mr. Kenney, scruffily bearded but kitted out with a nicer blazer than he used to wear back in the days he was pretending to enjoy driving that Dodge Ram, had to say about Mr. Trump, the former and possibly future U.S. president, heaven forfend.
“As a conservative, my own view on this is that his brand of weaponizing populist anger, with no kind of governing conservative principles that are discernible to me, is toxic and poses an existential threat to anything that could properly be called the conservative movement,” Mr. Kenney opined.
“I think much of his appeal to people is not based on any policies or principles, per se, but on a kind of stylistic approach … as his willingness to be vulgar and insult the cultural elites, political and economic elites, which a large segment of the Republican electorate so deeply despises. … I think if that becomes the face of conservatism in the Western world, that it’s a movement that does not deserve to be in government.”
Many of us, of course, would heartily agree with that sentiment. But these seem like sharp words for someone who seemed to channel Mr. Trump’s populism early in his tenure as premier. One just can’t shake the feeling that Mr. Kenney is really talking about the Take Back Alberta faction of the United Conservative Party that ran him out of office last year and handed over the keys to the Premier’s Office to Ms. Smith.
“I think it’s massively disruptive,” Mr. Kenney rambled on, as he tends to do. “It has nothing to do with this sort of Burkean conception of meaning, of learning from the past, preserving this past about our institutions and customs. It’s all about burning things down. As he says, ‘I am your revenge.’ You know, anger and revenge do not constitute an appealing political vision, in my view.”
Naturally, Mr. Kenney is anxious to defend his record as premier, and as a federal cabinet minister before that.
“Do you have any regrets as the premier of Premier of Alberta in terms of those lockdown policies and how it impacted the church?” Mr. Edginton gently wondered.
“Actually, Alberta had the lightest restrictions of any province, and that would be, I think, universally acknowledged,” Mr. Kenney responded boastfully. “I was the premier at the time, widely condemned by most of the mainstream media and my political adversaries for being, they would claim, recklessly liberal on COVID restrictions.
“We were the only province to allow for congregational worship to continue throughout the entire pandemic. Some of the provinces shut all places of worship for months at a time. And we were in constant communication with faith leaders about how to get it right. …
“So, no, I don’t regret the policies that we had. Because we have in our single payer health care system a rationing system with very limited capacity. And we came, a couple of times, perilously close to having to triage patients, deny people care, withdraw care from others. And we did at times have to cancel half or more of the surgeries to repurpose surgical staff into intensive care.”
Most faith leaders agreed, he rambled on, but there were two or three “independent evangelical pastors who very flagrantly, publicly, repeatedly, for months, refused any communication with the public health authorities and just ignored all of the measures.
“They just told the people not to wear masks and to jam in next to each other and so forth, and, eventually, the enforcement authorities got court injunctions against those two or three churches.”
“I do regret that all of that happened,” he finally wrapped it up. “But if they had acted more – I think, from my perspective, more responsibly – it could have been avoided.”
So, you see, Dear Readers, it turns out the problems Mr. Kenney faced during the pandemic were the fault of the single-payer medicare system, and if not that the media and the Opposition, and if not that reckless evangelicals, or maybe all of those things, but Mr. Kenney is certain he got it right.
If you’re made of stern stuff, you can hear what he has to say on his other enthusiasms, such as teachers unions (“it just so happens that the teachers’ unions and their ideological allies completely dominate [school board] elections, and are, you know, radically removed from the sort of centrist political consensus in Canada”), abortion (“there’s some state interest in protecting vulnerable unborn human life, and yet, it’s become almost impossible … to have any kind of debate”), and John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister (“there’s absolutely no question, without John Macdonald, there’d be no Canada.”)
But that’s all I can stand transcribing. If you want more, you’re going to have to listen to it yourself.
We were just starting to enjoy his absence and now like an unwanted ghost from the past he unexpectedly pops back up from his mom’s basement, apocryphal or real, I’m still not sure. Oh well, the break was nice while it lasted and now we are reminded of all the things we really didn’t like about him. I suppose the only consolation is a political come back is unlikely now.
Hopefully, Kenney doesn’t get a talk radio show and figure out to channel populism more effectively. I suspect at this point that is unlikely, because although anger and revenge actually do seem to constitute a fairly effective political strategy for some these days, unfortunately for him, Kenney was never that good at it. This is probably the real reason he is so upset about it.
I suppose he can continue to snipe from the sidelines and try to undermine those who undermined him. I doubt this will succeed, but in time people will also tire of them and their flaws will become more evident. So perhaps the best Kenney can hope for is some partial rehabilitation of his image, like Mulroney, although without his subsequent business success. But you never know, perhaps bags of cash await for Kenney too in some nice big city hotel in Calgary or Ottawa, although in his case probably not Montreal or New York.
In any event, I suppose the sysyphean quest to try rehabilitate Kenney’s image has now begun in earnest. So as someone used to say, stay tuned.
Kenney is already cashing in – he’s on the board at Atco, and is a “senior advisor” at Bennett Jones in Calgary.
Guys like him never have to miss a meal.
I did watch this interview, David. And I was struck by Kenney’s strange interpretation of Canada’s development of a political underpinnings/philosophy. His comments bore no resemblance to what I learned in my undergrad years at the University of Alberta getting a BA in Political Science and a minor in Canadian history. Although I did notice his peculiar obsessions. Like you I had a hard time watching this flatulence.
J-Kenney seems to be back, though for what reason is uncertain. I mean his own version of populism was equally reckless, idiotic, stupid, moronic, and just plan bad. The only failing that Kenney had was that he ran afoul of his own adle-minded voting base. Okay, so now Kenney is warning about the evils of ‘weaponized populism’ and its inherently destructive nature to what he calls his CON principles.
He’s always aspired to be PM, so this maybe just a step in the rehabilitation of his public image, like Brian Mulroney before him.
JM: I had that thought and probably should have said that. There will be other opportunities, though. Rehabilitating Mr. Kenney’s reputation at this point would be quite a struggle. He’d probably need to hire a reputation management consultant like like Robin Sears to get anywhere with that. DJC
Maybe he has sensed some blood in the water around PP [metaphor!] and hopes to replace him, whether before or after the next federal election.
I thought about that, is he trying to get back to running for leader of the Federal Conservatives? But I cannot see it. This is a pretty obscure website from a Canadian audience viewpoint for one. The second is he looks like he needs a wash and a brush up. Did he sleep rough in Totting?
But J-Kenney is his own expert on everything. Those who know him say he NEEDS to be the smartest person in the room. Having had a few encounters with him during my RPC days, I found him to be like that, a relentless blowhard, with little regard for how stupid he sounds. Of course, when the room is packed with the choir (AKA. the perverted) the preaching comes easy. We’ll have to see how far this rehabilitation goes to turning, to paraphrase Andrew Coyne, the most complete destruction of a political career he had ever witnessed.
The poor guy looks like he spent three days ‘rasslin bears at the Stampede.
‘Rasslin bears
I could never vote for Mr. Kenney, but, as you note, he does make some good observations in the interview you summarized. My problem with him is he seemed to be a fake what with the truck and now even his beard looks artificial. It brings to mind the quote attributed to George Burns, that being, with some revision, “In politics (Burns says show business) authenticity is everything. Once you learn how to fake that, you’ve got it made.” Well, Jason never learnt but the current Premier seems to have a natural talent for it.
there’s some state interest in protecting vulnerable unborn human life, and yet, it’s become almost impossible … to have any kind of debate
Yeah. That’s a lie. A woman’s right to plan her family has BROAD support across all party lines in Canada. Only far right monarchist Catholics like Jason Kenney, who has never been married, or had a child (has he even been laid?) want to control woman’s bodies.
Go back to whatever you were doing loser, no one in Alberta wants a damn thing to do with you.
Compare and contrast Pierre Trudeau in 1967 to Jason Kenney in 2023:
Pierre Trudeau said, “Take this thing on homosexuality. The view we take is, there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. What’s done in private between adults doesn’t concern the Criminal Code.”
Jason Kenney said, “…there’s some state interest in protecting vulnerable unborn human life, and yet, it’s become almost impossible … to have any kind of debate.”
Storm on from the bedroom to the womb! Jason Kenney has no place in the uteruses of the nation, or uteri. And that is why Jason Kenney will never be Prime Minister. Some other conniving Conservative might try, but is there room in your womb for him, too?
The first thing that came to mind was “pot, meet kettle”.
Mr Kenney proves, once again, that hypocrisy, irony, and self-knowledge are concepts completely foreign to modern conservative politicians of any persuasion.
After courting the populist right in Alberta, he seems surprised that they turned on him when he did not pander to them enough.
Let it be noted, he pandered to them plenty.
Sorry David, but all I can say is Fuck Kenney. I’m not buying his self-serving redemption tour. He was poison for Alberta, just as Batshit is now.
No need to apologize, Athabascan. I’m not exactly defending him! DJC
You have a stronger stomach than me, David, to watch that pompous ass in action.
He’s been a plague, both in and on AB, and is apparently trying to sanitize his time as premier. Earplugs, anyone? Laws for the peons, while he dined on the Sky Palace balcony during restrictions. That was some of the nonsense he developed while in office, with a side helping of “the Matts”, who had his approval to destroy anyone who dared speak out against him or his govt. I notice that there is no mentioning of his despicable treatment of doctors and teachers, or his overstep in controlling the Covid decisions, that should have fallen to Dr. Hinshaw.
Some reports are that he is Harpo’s fave as leader of the federal CONS. *Massive sigh* I think I need to take a break already!
I don’t know. It’s not surprising that he resents the people that kicked him out, but the way he talks about Trump sounds to me more like a critique of Pierre Poilievre than of Alberta conservatives.
That’s a good point, Alfredo. Perhaps he’s plotting to snatch the leadership from Mr. Poilievre in the even PP snatches defeat from the jaws of victory in the next federal election. DJC
In my opinion, Smith and Poilievre are in lockstep at least in their approach to politics, so Kenney can conveniently diss both with one innuendo.
Alfredo Louro: I have heard that the former UCP leader is likely going to try to be the next CPC leader. We will see what happens next. I have a theory that Danielle Smith will shoot her mouth off, and prevent Pierre Poilievre from being Prime Minister. Danielle Smith will get dumped by the UCP.
Hello DJC,
Oh, but it was so peaceful without him.
Duplicitous Dani is more than enough to deal with . Now we have Kenny 2, too.
Kenney was relived of his post for a reason. We were suppose to be open for worship yet ministers/pastors were arrested. The man speaks from both sides of his mouth.
Lolita Webber: Danielle Smith is great at speaking out of both sides of her mouth. She does it so often. It’s also a driving factor as to why she was defeated in her own riding, in 2015. We end up paying big time for her gaffes, and doublespeak. At one point in time, Danielle Smith was dead set against the new hockey arena for Calgary, because it didn’t make economic sense to her. Then, as the premier of Alberta, she is promoting it, dressed in a Calgary Flames hockey jersey. Now, Albertans have to ante up $1.2 billion for the hockey arena that many will never even set foot inside. Carbon capture and storage was something that Danielle Smith was slamming Ed Stelmach for supporting, because it was a waste of money, and there was no guarantees that it would work. Presently, she is promoting carbon capture and storage, and she believes it’s wonderful. It’s not foolproof, under any circumstances. We have also seen the UCP’s expensive ads, blaming the federal Liberals for Alberta’s electricity problems, and warning about impending blackouts. Danielle Smith then responded to a caller on her radio talk show, and said that economic witholding is what is driving up Alberta’s power prices. She acknowledged that the UCP allowed this to happen. Economic witholding is extremely expensive, and the UCP have done nothing to rectify this. Danielle Smith denied speaking to Crown prosecuters in the Artur Pawlowski incident. Yet, she is on a recording, talking to him, saying she did just that. There are plenty of missteps by the UCP, which are costing us a fortune, and also costing us in human terms. There is absolutely nothing wonderful about that.
Oh give it a rest, Lolita. The rules for congregating were meant to protect people. Our church did just fine. We lost a few people because they refused to wear a mask (oh boohoo!) but the church pulled together and we are stronger for it. As for Jason Kenney, he was a hypocrite in a lot more important things and a lot of people died because of it.
The one accurate thing Kenney is quoted as saying in this interview is that churches were allowed to gather for worship, in fact with special provisions for churches, but with some restriction.
The ministers who were arrested decided they were going to push the idea that ANY restriction was the same as the removal of all their religious freedoms, which was ridiculous on its face then, is ridiculous now, and fwiw made A LOT of albertans very angry, and we won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Quit moving the goalposts, and quit trying to obfuscate what you really are talking about; you believe that religious albertans should be able to dictate terms to the rest of the population, we still don’t live in a theocracy though, as much as folks like you maybe wish we do.
“Kenney was removed” the arrogance of you folks when you LITERALLY voted for him to take over and destroy TWO conservative parties in order to make one horrorshow party that has accomplished next to nothing of importance other than what, change the rules around MLA gifts ?
Really Machiavellian, y’all are geniuses, I cannot wait to see what you come up with next. Can’t wait till the UCP is in the dustbin of history right along side Jason Kenneys political career.
Y’all really think you can build a party based on bullying, infighting, corruption and naked venality huh. Good luck with all that.
I think he has started campaigning because Poilievre is certain he has won the next federal election and he wants to recreate the disastrous Stephen Harper days and wants Kenney to be part of it to fill his pockets with taxpayers money. It’s no secret that the Reformers take care of their friends like Smith has been doing. I wonder which rural riding he will run in ? The hillbilly’s will surely elect him. You can bet Albertans are dumb enough to allow it to happpen, and they know it. All you need is the word Conservative and you’ve got their vote.
“…it’s a movement that does not deserve to be in government.”
I never would have expected Jason Kenney to give us such a pithy and honest summation of the modern Conservative movement of which he is a part.
For some reason, Conservative parties in Canada have a hard time retaining their leaders. The UCP has gone through this, the Saskatchewan Party had it happen, the Manitoba PCs went through it, and so has the CPC. I’m doubtful that Danielle Smith will remain as the UCP leader, and premier. She couldn’t endure as the Wildrose party leader. I don’t even know if the R.C.M.P investigation into the former UCP leader is a thing anymore. It has taken so long. When Take Back Alberta gets through with things, Alberta will be in such a mess that it is unrecognizable. It will take years and years to undo the damage. The former UCP leader will have a nice political pension to fall back on, from spending his entire life in politics.
Jeez! K-Boy’s got the smugging cruiser effect down pat, making it hard to tell if he’s hypocritical —like blaming everybody but his short tenure as premier for Alberta hospitals getting swamped due to, as he boasted, “the lightest” Covid restrictions in Canada—or historically ignorant—as in, the Underground Railway leading slaves to “Canada” from “American colonies” (like, a hundred years after their were no American colonies, back when there was no Canada, either. Just sayin’…)
Fifty items in his stultifying interview with Brit co-anti-wokeist “news-media”, the Telegraph, stuck in my craw. Three groupings are apparent: Quebec and morality— the diminishment of which he claims is killing Canada—with a dozen mentions each, and JT, the Liberals, and “the academy” with twenty (with remarkably little overlap between the groupings). I’m not one of the Telegraph’s regular consumers, but if its readership is used to misinformation it could hardly do better than get it from the great autistic-didact, Jason “K-Boy” Kenney himself, both accretor and excretion of the Alberta’s governing UCP, former federal CPC cabinet minister, and onetime prime ministerial aspirant. If bitterness is any indication, Kenney is speaking from post-politics perspective after a lifetime immersed in the art of the possible, including during his incomplete university days.
Suffice to say JT, the governing federal Liberal party, and academia get the blame for everything, especially the nation’s alleged moral decline exemplified by, for example, MAid, or Medical Assistance in Dying (the interviewer incorrectly referred to it as “killing yourself” and Kenney concurred). Nothing too surprising with that, rather it’s K-Boy’s flights of historical fiction, uttered with supremely glib self-righteousness, that astounds. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten…
Once upon a time the Liberals were a centrist-consensus party but, through a “cult of diversity,” “radical personal autonomy” and “ideological zeal,” it acquired “the obsessions of the left.” So goes K-Boy’s history lesson. There would be no Canada without Sir John A, but Canada’s first Liberal PM heinously expanded his predecessor’s heinous policies of bigotry and injustice. So there. Kenney keeps implying conservatism has supplanted the Marxist Liberals who abandoned the centre, and the Telegraph’s British audience probably won’t twig that, in reality, JT’s Liberals have actually occupied centre-right territory the CPC has abandoned as it slides ineluctably to the extreme right, and the left, such as it is, is occupied by the nominally socialist NDP which supports the Liberal minority. K-Boy’s occasional belch about Westminster didn’t mention this parliamentary fact even though it’s one Brit’s can surely understand. And I would say that there’d be no Canada without Bill Smith, aka Amor de Cosmos, who founded BC’s Confederation League in 1868 and became its second premier in 1872, the year after BC joined Canada. But that’s just me.
K-Boy continues to misquote JT and misattribute mistaken moments of historical revisionism —which he also blames on Trudeau while lamenting its inconsistent application, something K-Boy curiously says history should be. Less curious is Kenney’s right-wing hypocrisy about “belief,” saying that JT—of course!—and his demons of academia foster an “intolerance of diversity of belief”—that is, “intolerance” of the right’s belief that anti-abortion and anti-gender-freedom polices should be imposed on everybody. His only mention of the “socialist” Alberta NDP was in this context, falsely claiming that the one-term Dipper government made it “illegal” for teachers to inform parents if students had joined a Gay-Strait Alliance on their own time. In fact, his subsequent UCP government made it illegal for teachers NOT to report such to parents. And “there hasn’t been any negative consequences,” he said, ignoring the fact that certain UCP candidates were probably thus encouraged to spout absolutely galling comparisons of gay students with a little but of “poop” in “cookie batter.”
His worst inhistoricisms were about Quebec history which he got so upside down and backwards that it’s little wonder Anglo-conservatism is effectively persona non grata in la Belle Province. He even called Quebecois an “ethnic minority” when the federation was cobbled together: in fact Quebec citizens at the time outnumbered english-speaking Canadians by four to one. Quebec reflected “relaxed pluralism”? I dunno, the Conquest, Duplessis, the Quite Revolution, the FLQ, the PQ and BQ, and two emotion-filled separatist referenda don’t sound too “relaxed” to me. According to the Captain Knowledge Kenney, at confederation Habitant culture was matched with “more traditional British culture.” Again, I guess K-Boy doesn’t really know that British emigres in the day were looking to liberate themselves from British conservatism whereas Quebecois were then—and still are to some extent—very rural and very, very conservative.
I could go on. I’m left wondering how many Brits will spot the many falsehoods Kenney chuffed out. Just about as many, I suppose, who understand federalism, for example provincial authority over public healthcare, from their unitary-state point of view. I suspect Kenney knew this, too, and availed the opportunity to just make it up.
Astounding—but, then gain, not.
Kenney had a similar podcast with Herle Burly
Mordant wit? Too often it’s just pride even when/if it’s written for sales.
Thank you for your “transcription”. It may be a good time now to go to Maui and recover. OMG, what is that man trying to do? The language, is obviously meant to try to impress some one or a bunch of some one’s, but not the “base”.
Don’t know what type of “look” he is trying to cultivate, but the man needs a shave and a tie. He looks like he rolled out of bed, after a 3 day bender. Don’t know if the look is supposed to be the inpersonation of something or some on, but he might want to consult a “stylist”.
His line about “As a conservative……”. Trump nor Kenny are conservatives and lets include Smith. They’re “wack jobs” or on some days they’re extremists.
Kenny does appear to be going for the religious types, with his wording, omg, oh, yes he is trying to appeal to the religous types. These anti vaccers and no maskers who pretend to be some sort of religous, are just another brand of nutbars who think their jesus or god is going to save them.
Do wonder who is funding his current tour? Wonder if its private interests in eliminating the public health care system? Perhaps a group who wants Smith out. Some of these religious types do not see women as suitable for leadership anywhere.
There is no need for debate on any one’s womb or what goes on there. Trudeau Sr. got it right. No business in the bedroom. Don’t know why Kenny and his ilk are so interested in what other people do with their bodies. If he is trying to see what interest there is in an anti abortion party, good luck with that one.
Perhaps Kenny wants to return to politics because the salary isn’t bad or perhaps he is auditioning for a place on some right wing organizations board of directors. What ever Kenny is thinking or doing, its best to ignore him and hope he goes away. I suspect he wants a senator’s position. I know ignoring people such as him and hope they go away is not the right attitude. They don’t go away. Extremists never do. Health care and its administration is the business of doctors, scientists, etc. not some religious leader or politician.
He got a board position w ATCO, and I believe his pension kicks in this year, I don’t think he’s interested in electoral politics anymore, I do think he wants to be a Preston manning type “statesman” though, too bad he’s not a legacy because then he could be a fail son too.
Just a note about him cultivating religious extremists; he IS a religious extremist. The one thing I’ve always believed about Jason, he loves the crown & he loves the Vatican, me pointing out he’s also a bad dresser is just because I don’t like him.
Bird: “he loves the crown & he loves the Vatican…” which is weird, if you think about the history of those two institutions, as Mr. Kenney says we should. His Parliamentary pension kicked in at the end of May last year. DJC
I’ve said it before on these pages, and I’ll say it again….
Imagine things get so bad with Fraulein Schmidt that, seemingly out of the blue (and taking a page from the shock doctrine), Jason “Randy Bobandy” Kenney swoops back into the picture to “save” us rubes from the clutches of the evil queen. At that point would he not be greeted with open arms and be unopposed to continue his own brand of neofascist garbage? Say it ain’t so but apparently here in Oilberduh we’re just suckers for punishment.
Maybe he has figured out that Smith will crash when oil crashes a lot sooner than she thinks it will, and he hopes to replace her as the less loopy candidate.
“The Death of King Oil”
https://nitter.net/politicalham/status/1743000710323863999#m
This has been most entertaining to read (your comments). All I can add is how very much Kenney looks to have rolled out of bed after a three day bender with some questionable people. Thanks David.