Jason Kenney

Early Life

Jason Kenney is one of three sons born to Lynne Kenney (née Tunbridge) and Robert Martin Kenney, a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force who became a private-school teacher and administrator. His grandfather is Mart Kenney, a famous big-band leader (see Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen) who once ran for the Liberal nomination in North Toronto. Jason Kenney was born in Oakville, Ontario. The Kenney family then moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and in 1976, when Jason Kenney was eight, to Wilcox, Saskatchewan, for his father’s work. Jason Kenney’s secondary education was split between the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame and the St. Michaels University School in Victoria, British Columbia, from which he graduated in 1986.

Young Liberal

In his youth, Jason Kenney was a member of the Young Liberals of Canada, the national youth wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. In 1986, he ran for election as vice-president of policy for the organization but lost. After graduating from secondary school, Kenney became an aide to Ralph Goodale, who was leader of the Saskatchewan Liberal Party and the only Liberal member of the legislature.

Postsecondary Studies

According to Jason Kenney, he discovered conservatism while at the University of San Francisco (USF), through reading the National Review, a conservative magazine. In 1987, he began studies in philosophy at the St. Ignatius Institute at USF.

Months into his degree, Kenney wrote an article in the campus newspaper that criticized American Catholics for ignoring church teachings. The next year, he led a charge to suspend the charter of the Women’s Law Student Association, which was collecting signatures for an abortion rights petition. When the university announced a new policy confirming the right to free speech in the winter of 1989, Kenney organized a petition that demanded the archbishop of San Francisco remove USF’s designation as a Catholic institution. The archbishop refused.

Kenney did not return to finish his degree in philosophy.

Taxpayers Federation

Jason Kenney’s activism at USF caught the attention of libertarian Kevin Avram, founder of the Association of Saskatchewan Taxpayers (AST). In 1990, the AST merged with the Resolution One Association of Alberta to form a national organization, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). Avram chose Kenney to head the Alberta chapter of the CTF. In 1993, 25-year-old Kenney became president of the organization. Two years later, he was featured on the cover of Maclean’s magazine as “The Tax Fighter.” By that time, the CTF had 83,000 supporters and boasted considerable political influence.

Member of Parliament

Reform Party leader Preston Manning recognized Jason Kenney’s potential and asked his campaign manager to approach Kenney about entering politics. In the 1997 federal election, Kenney easily won a seat in Calgary Southeast for the Reform Party and was appointed revenue critic (see Member of Parliament).

He was soon appointed co-chair of the party’s United Alternative campaign, which was established to explore potential mergers with the Progressive Conservatives. As negotiations proceeded, Kenney informed Manning that he would be supporting Stockwell Day in his bid for leadership of the new Canadian Alliance.

In 2000, Day became leader of the party, but he was replaced by Stephen Harper in 2002. The following year, the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives merged to form a united Conservative Party. Kenney became an important voice for the social and religious conservatives in the party and helped bring Harper to power in 2006.

Parliamentary Appointments 2006–08

After the Conservative victory in the 2006 federal election, Jason Kenney was named parliamentary secretary. The following year, he became secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity. In this position, he developed a strategy to expand the Conservative Party base by reaching out to immigrant voters from Africa and Asia. The impact of this strategy has been debated. In the 2011 election, the Conservative party won several ridings it considered “very ethnic.” However, analysts found that on a national level, Kenney’s strategy had not resulted in a significant increase in ethnic support for the party.

Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, 2008–13

In October 2008, Jason Kenney became minister of citizenship and immigration while keeping responsibility for multiculturalism. Changes to the Citizenship Act in 2009 included the “first generation limitation,” which meant that children born outside of Canada would not automatically receive citizenship unless at least one of their parents had been born in Canada. Kenney also introduced a new citizenship guide, Discover Canada, in 2009. The guide required newcomers to have a broader range of knowledge about the country and included denunciations of “barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, honour killings, female genital mutilation or other gender-based violence.” Critics noted that the guide did not include information about LGBTQ2 rights. In the 2011 revision, a sentence was included about LGBTQ2 rights.

Under Kenney’s leadership, the ministry made significant changes to the immigration system. These included limiting the number of skilled immigrant applications and removing a backlog of applications, refunding millions of dollars in application fees. Reforms to the Federal Skilled Worker Program mandated that applicants had to be qualified in one of 29 eligible occupations or have an offer of employment before immigrating to Canada. They also had to demonstrate a certain level of language proficiency.

Kenney also took measures to prevent the abuse of the immigration system, focusing on human smugglers, fraudulent marriages and refugee claims. During his tenure, 115,000 refugees were resettled in Canada; however, privately sponsored refugees no longer received basic provincial health care benefits.

Kenney also sponsored the Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act (2012), aimed at keeping “bogus claimants out.” The Act drew considerable criticism from immigration and refugee lawyers and advocates.

Under Kenney, the ministry investigated fraudulent citizenship claims. In 2012, Kenney announced that more than 3,000 Canadians were under investigation for fraud and would have their citizenship revoked. These numbers were later questioned.

Minister of Employment and Social Development, 2013–15

Jason Kenney became minister of employment and social development in a 2013 Cabinet shuffle, while keeping his position as minister of multiculturalism. As minister of employment, he focused on speeding up reviews of disability appeals for Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security. He also negotiated an agreement with the provinces and territories (except Quebec) to implement the Canada Job Grant, a program to help employers train new or existing employees.

Minister of Defence, 2015

After Foreign Affairs minister John Baird left politics, Cabinet was shuffled again, and Jason Kenney became minister of national defence. He kept his role as minister for multiculturalism. As defence minister, Kenney stressed the danger of Islamic militants to Canadian security and the need for a hardline approach to ISIS. This included the authorization of airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria, a decision passed by Parliament in March 2015.

Kenney was criticized in March 2015 for tweeting photos that were allegedly of ISIS enslaving women. In fact, one of the images was staged by Kurdish protestors while another was a photo from a ceremonial Shia Ashura procession celebrating the heroism of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson, Hussein, who was beheaded, and his sister, who was taken to Damascus in chains.

Provincial Politics

After the Conservatives were defeated in 2015, Stephen Harper resigned as leader. Jason Kenney, who was reelected in his riding (renamed Calgary Midnapore), was considered a serious contender as party leader. However, in 2016, he announced that he would seek the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in Alberta and that he wanted to unite the province’s centre-right parties.

He resigned from the House of Commons in September 2016 and was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta in March 2017. In July, the PCs merged with the Wildrose Party, and in October, Kenney was elected leader of the new United Conservative Party (UCP) of Alberta.

In the 2019 provincial election campaign, Kenney and the UCP held a strong lead against NDP Premier Rachel Notley. The UCP platform focused on shrinking the deficit through reduced spending and lower taxes, which it hoped would stimulate the economy. This included lowering the corporate tax rate from 12 to 8 per cent and eliminating the carbon tax (see Carbon Pricing in Canada). While the NDP emphasized Kenney’s social conservatism, including his opposition to same-sex marriage, most polled voters seemed to believe that Kenney and the UCP were most likely to get pipelines built and solve the province’s economic woes. Kenney retained this lead despite allegations of voter fraud during his 2017 leadership campaign and the resignation or expulsion of several UCP campaign workers and candidates due to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and homophobic comments.

On 16 April 2019, Kenney led the UCP to a majority government in the Alberta general election, defeating Notley and the NDP. He was sworn in as premier of Alberta on 30 April 2019.

Premier of Alberta

Jason Kenney began his premiership with harsh criticism of the federal government’s climate change and energy policies. “We Canadians have been had,” he said on election night. “In Ottawa we have a federal government that has made a bad situation much worse.” Kenney accused environmental groups of carrying out “a campaign of economic sabotage against the province” and promised to reverse many of the former NDP government’s climate action policies.

Energy Policy

To defend the oil and gas industry, Jason Kenney announced plans in June 2019 to create a so-called war room with a budget of $30 million. It would respond to what he considered misinformation spread by opponents of fossil fuel development. 

Frustrated with the slow speed of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project to bring oil to coastal British Columbia, Kenney threatened to hold a referendum on removing equalization payments from the constitution. He claimed that Albertans had contributed more than $600 billion more to the rest of Canada than it had received back from the federal government over the past six decades.

After Teck Resources Ltd. announced in February 2020 that it would cancel a proposed $20.6 billion oilsands project, Kenney blamed federal government indecision about the approval process and said he would use “every tool available” to give Alberta greater autonomy within Canada.

In early 2020, Kenney appeared poised to take a step toward government investment in the oil and gas industry, which faced slumping oil prices in the global market. In February 2020, he began to muse about the need for an “energy transition” away from fossil fuels over the coming decades. He stated Alberta could become a global leader in “greening non-renewable energy,” while also increasing its renewable forms of energy.

Budget Cuts and Employment Figures

Alberta's first budget under Jason Kenney in 2019 was filled with deep cuts to spending programs and the elimination of hundreds of public sector jobs. The corporate tax rate was also cut from 12 to eight per cent by 2022–23 as part of a strategy to lure investment, resurrect the oil and gas industry and stimulate employment. When the first cut of one per cent came into effect in July 2019, it gave Alberta the lowest corporate tax rate in Canada.

However, by the end of 2019, more jobs had been lost in the province than under Rachel Notley’s NDP government. By early 2020, the unemployment rate among young men was almost 20 per cent. Kenney’s approval rating fell below 50 per cent for the first time since he became premier.

In its second budget, which was released in February 2020, the government announced plans to cut $4 billion in spending over the next four years. This included a $400 million cut in postsecondary education and reduced drug benefits for seniors. The budget also forecast that the Alberta economy would return to full employment by 2023, falling from 7 per cent to prerecession levels of 5.1 per cent by 2023.