UCP leader Kenney’s colleagues expect him to draw on federal experience
As Jason Kenney sets the direction for the new United Conservative Party, nearly two decades of Ottawa experience will shape — if not define — his leadership of the new party.
Friends and colleagues expect that Kenney’s life as a federal politician — from firebrand opposition MP to top lieutenant in Stephen Harper’s Conservative government — will deeply inform how he operates.
But they also say Albertans shouldn’t expect to see Kenney bring a carbon copy of the federal Conservative playbook to the provincial scene.
“I don’t think he’s Harper 2.0. He’s not the same as Stephen Harper,” said Conservative MP Michelle Rempel, who served in Harper’s cabinet with Kenney and backed him in the UCP leadership race.
The Calgary-Nose Hill MP said that while Harper’s style was managerial as he focused on making incremental change, Kenney has the potential if he becomes premier of being “transformative” in his approach to Alberta politics.
Rempel said Kenney has the same sense of discipline as his former leader, but he is more relaxed with the public and media than the famously buttoned-down Harper, as well as being a better retail politician.
However, there were some echoes of Harper — renowned for keeping a tight lid on his caucus — in Kenney’s first week on the job.
With the fall sitting of the legislature falling hard on the heels of last weekend’s UCP leadership vote, observers noted that UCP MLAs stopped talking to reporters, information from the caucus was hard to come by and much of question period was tightly scripted attacks on both the NDP government and the federal Liberal government.
Kenney staffers though said that it’s simply the case of a new leader and a brand-new caucus working to stay on message, not a crackdown on MLAs. This is the first legislature sitting of the UCP caucus since the new party was founded this summer by agreement of Progressive Conservative and Wildrose.
Rempel said that Kenney takes a page from Harper in having high expectations that those who serve under him will work extremely hard and know their duties well.
“Jason is intense in that he expects a high degree of knowledge and excellence from people,” she said. “People who sat around Stephen Harper’s cabinet table ... you have to bring a level of discipline and understanding of how government works.”
Kaz Nejatian, a former aide to Kenney when he was immigration minister, said the former MP demonstrated has the interpersonal skills needed to manage a caucus in how he dealt with fellow MPs, civil servants and staff in Ottawa.
“He’s the best boss I ever had,” said Nejatian.
One of the most sensitive subjects that Kenney faces will be dealing with former Wildrose leader Brian Jean, the MLA for Fort McMurray-Conklin whom he defeated for the UCP leadership.
This isn’t Kenney’s first time around a bruising leadership race however.
Kenney was a key organizer for Stockwell Day, the first leader of the Canadian Alliance.
Divisions within caucus and the party forced Day to put his leadership on the line, losing to Harper in the resulting leadership race.
Yet Day went on to serve loyally under Harper. In the first Conservative cabinet, Day was one of Harper’s top ministers.
Day thinks the experience likely isn’t lost on Kenney, who paid glowing tribute to Jean on the night of the UCP vote and promised him a key role in the new party.
“I think he knows from having worked closely with me, it’s a very tough moment right now for Brian Jean, when you don’t win,” said Day. “Jason has already shown he’s learned the advice of experience, which is, reach out right away. And I think we saw that very clearly when the vote was announced,” he said.
There aren’t just personality differences that Kenney will have to navigate however.
The federal Conservative party was founded as a merger between Reform/Canadian Alliance and the federal PCs.
Likewise, the UCP was created as a new party to join together the Alberta PCs and Wildrose.
Many moderate PCs left the UCP before it got off the ground, but Kenney will still be responsible for melding a party with disparate views among its members and MLAs.
Nejatian said that while Kenney was known in Ottawa as a red meat conservative, some of his closest ties within the federal Conservative caucus were with Red Tories.
Ted Morton, the conservative academic and former PC cabinet minister who is a longtime friend of Kenney’s, said that the former MP’s years in politics helped teach him pragmatism.
“I think he understands the politics of how to mix principle and pragmatism to build a winning majority coalition,” said Morton, who expects Kenney to take a similar tack to Harper, especially on hotbutton social issues.
“Stress the issues conservatives agree on and downplay the ones that they don’t.”
Since entering provincial politics in 2016, Kenney has stressed his desire to create a “big-tent free-enterprise coalition.” During the leadership race, he refrained from issuing detailed proposals, instead saying policy would be set by members.
Kenney’s backers range from Rempel — who spearheaded the effort to reverse the Conservative party’s historic opposition to gay marriage — to hard-right former MP Rob Anders.
But Kenney has also been a target for the NDP, which depicts him as an arch-social conservative on issues such as gay-straight alliances.
With the government introducing legislation that would ban parents being notified if their children join GSAs to ensure students aren’t outed, Kenney will immediately be faced with a question over how he will handle such issues as leader.
Rempel, who describes herself as a “secular pluralist,” said she has confidence that Kenney will take the right approach.
“Jason is going to really have to listen to Albertans on these issues and understand where they’re at,” she said.