Jason Kenney spent his evening in St. Albert pitching a potential deal that could shake up right wing Alberta politics.
Jason Kenney spent his evening in St. Albert pitching a potential deal that could shake up right wing Alberta politics.
Kenney announced in June that he was leaving federal politics to return to his home province and he has made uniting the right wing of Alberta the focus of his cause.
In a room in the St. Albert Inn on Monday night, addressing a crowd of around 50 people, Kenney spoke for 90 minutes and took almost 20 questions.
He presented the audience with a ‘five point unity plan' that outlined the timeline to fuse the Wild Rose party and the Progressive Conservative party as a new, united party.
This plan, he said, would be more effective than Danielle Smith crossing the floor to join then Alberta premier Jim Prentice in Dec. 2014, because unlike Smith, he would seek the grassroots mandate to join the parties first.
Kenney, who was first elected to the House of Commons in 1997 at the age of 29, pitched a “democratic approach where members get to cast judgment and ratify – or not – the agreement” to merge the two parties.
He said his passion for bringing together the right wing in his home province is born from his desire to remove the NDP from office. Kenney currently serves as an MP in the riding of Calgary Midnapore but he has confirmed he is leaving his post on Friday, Sept. 23 to pursue the provincial leadership position and attempt to shake up right wing Alberta.
“We know that commodities prices are beyond our control but what Albertans don't understand is a government that is making a bad situation worse,” Kenney said.
Kenney's criticisms of the NDP were wide-ranging but he frequently circled back to his disdain for taxes. Kenney took aim at income tax, business tax, property tax, CPP tax, payroll tax and beer tax before an audience question prompted him to delve into the carbon tax.
“Now they are about to impose the single largest tax increase in Alberta history,” Kenney said about the carbon tax. “A tax that they did not even mention in the last election – so much for taxation with representation. The largest tax increase in our history, with no democratic mandate, in the midst of a recession. That is all economic pain and no environmental gain.”
The tax, Kenney said, was the beginning of a series events, stating that Justin Trudeau has since announced his plans to kill the NDP approved Northern Gateway pipeline, along with mayors across Quebec and British Columbia coming out against pipeline projects.
“Barack Obama vetoed Keystone XL a week after the Harper government left office, he didn't dare do so when we were in office due to the diplomatic implications he knew would follow,” said Kenney, who served as a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper's government.
Kenney also took aim at the minimum wage increase and criticized the provincial NDP government for “raising the cost of labour in the midst of a historic recession,” by citing it as a “triumph of ideology over common sense or evidence.”
Despite having many critiques of the current administration, Kenney has yet to present any formal platform of his own. He said it may be a while before any official details are presented.
“I think it would be wrong, presumptuous and arrogant of me, as a candidate, to begin dictating the details of policy of a party which does not yet exist before the grassroots members have had any input, particularly for a platform for an election that is three years from now,” Kenney said.
And arrogance, he said, is the word he hears most frequently as he travels Alberta, from PC members to characterize what went wrong with leadership in recent years.
“I'm sorry, it's difficult but that's what I hear,” Kenney said. “I think the worst thing I could do would be to replicate a leadership posture of arrogance by dictating policy. I think we need to get the democratic horse in front of the policy cart.”
Kenney is one of two candidates who have announced their bids for the leadership position for the Progressive Conservative party. Donna Kennedy-Glans, a lawyer and former PC MLA of the Calgary-Varsity riding, announced she was running on Sept. 8.
