KENNEY’S MINDSET POINTS TO CONSERVATISM’S FUTURE
HE KNOWS WHERE HE STANDS ON ISSUES, BUT IS WILLING TO TAKE RISKS
THIS, KENNEY SAYS, IS THE ‘FIGHT OF HIS LIFE’ AND YOU CAN FEEL THAT URGENCY IN ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE UCP. AFTER A 15-MONTH SLOG HE WILL IMMEDIATELY BE FIGHTING A NASTY TWO-YEAR ELECTION CAMPAIGN TO GOVERN THE PROVINCE — STUART THOMSON
Jason Kenney entered the United Conservative Party leadership race as a man without policies. Sticking rigidly to his “grassroots guarantee,” a pledge that all policy would be democratically decided by the party’s members rather than imposed by the leader, Kenney left himself open to time-honoured accusations of a “secret agenda.”
That guarantee, though, was a political gambit designed to help shed the image of an outof-touch interloper from Ottawa. Up against Brian Jean, who was undeniably in touch with the conservative grassroots and who appeared comfortable in jeans in a way most politicians aren’t, Kenney had little choice. But he is not by any stretch of the imagination a blank policy slate.
It may be unfair to call him an ideologue — a word with a sinister undercurrent — but he certainly has an ideology. At the very least, though, an ideologue has thought things through. And for all its baggage, the word means, simply, the study of ideas. Over two decades in public life, Kenney has made serious study of ideas and he has developed a political philosophy in a way that many politicians never do. And it’s a world view that hasn’t much changed since his days agitating for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, his time as an MP and cabinet minister in the Harper government has given it shape and a realworld application.
You could call it Harperism, or as two former Harper staffers dubbed it in Policy Options magazine, Ordered Liberty.
The ideology driving dayto-day government decisions is rarely obvious. It’s the foundation. Hidden underground and rarely considered until cracks start to form. American political scientist Elliot Cohen compared governing to baking bread and said ideology is like the yeast: A tiny part of the whole, but likely the most important thing.
For all his wonkiness as a parliamentarian, few see federal Conservative leader Andrew Scheer as a deep conservative thinker — something that likely makes him more attractive to voters. One former senior Harper aide described Scheer as a “happy go-lucky guy,” compared to more ideological thinkers like Kenney and Harper.
There are few enough like them in Canadian politics, so given Kenney’s national profile and the respect he commands across the right, a closer look at how his brain works provides more than just clues as to how the UCP, whose leadership he won last weekend, might govern Alberta if it ousts Rachel Notley’s NDP in 2019.
It could also provide a roadmap for Canadian conservatism as it enters the post-Harper era.
“The modern conservative movement radiates out from Alberta,” says Tom Flanagan, a former adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and a longtime player in Alberta politics. And it’s not hard to get the impression the movement might be in some trouble.
Consider the plight of a Calgary conservative who wakes up each morning governed by a progressive trifecta of Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Premier Rachel Notley and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “It’s a nightmare,” says Flanagan, ruefully.
Conservatives missed their chance to replace Nenshi in the recent municipal election and at the moment Trudeau’s majority looks safe. So the objective is to defeat Notley’s NDP, something the poll numbers suggest a newly united opposition stands an excellent chance of doing.
A conservative re-awakening in Alberta could also revitalize the national brand.
For some conservatives, the stakes are global. Conservatism has always flirted with and sometimes been propelled by a raucous populism. Preston Manning’s Reform party was the clearest expression of it in Canada and Harper himself left that party because it was dipping too deeply into that populist ire. Kenney had similar misgivings. “Jason always had problems with that,” says Flanagan.
Kenney sees room for populism in the conservative coalition, especially on matters like government spending, but knows that where nationalism becomes anti-immigrant sentiment it runs the risk of undoing his work as immigration minister and, more importantly, his years of voter outreach in ethnic communities for the Conservative Party.
One out of five Canadians is now foreign-born and, by 2036, Statistics Canada expects that nearly half the population will be immigrants or the children of immigrants. Kenney saw this coming in the 1990s and spent his entire career wooing those voters.
With a left-wing government in Alberta and nativist forces threatening the conservative movement, it’s not hyperbole to say everything Kenney has worked for is under threat.
Years before it appeared in Policy Options magazine and before Stephen Harper became prime minister, ordered liberty was first debated at an exclusive conservative think-tank called the Civitas Society.
Both Kenney and Harper were no strangers to the group. Civitas describes itself as a place where conservative, classical liberal and libertarian ideas can be exchanged and debated.
Fittingly, the idea of ordered liberty is to bring those strains of conservatism together.
The conservative coalition has always been uneasily comprised of traditionalist conservatives, the followers of Edmund Burke who prize the social fabric and religion’s role in maintaining traditional values, and the free market classical liberals who, at times, appreciate individualism so much that it almost seems in direct contradiction to Burke’s ideas.
Both Kenney and Harper saw, in ordered liberty, a way to bring these worlds together. In his 2003 Civitas speech that pundits have frequently cited as the best window into his political thinking, Harper described how free market, liberty-focused conservatives should look to social conservatism to form an election-winning coalition.
There is a philosophical depth rarely seen in politicians’ speeches, but also a pragmatic eye toward electioneering. Although Harper was sometimes attacked by pundits for compromising his principles to keep his electoral prospects alive, Edmund Burke himself would’ve understood that pragmatism.
Burke knew that conservatism is a Sisyphean journey, constantly pulling back against society’s constant forward march. It would have to adapt to a changing world the way a politician does.
In his book The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk draws a line between this necessary expedience and the toxic opportunism of many politicians. “Expedience is wise application of general knowledge to particular circumstances; opportunism is its degradation,” he wrote. As a thinker and politician, Burke didn’t have time for abstractions. Any political theory worth a damn would have to adapt to the real world and couldn’t live purely on the page.
That could easily apply to Harper’s government, which certainly made compromises, but overall followed the path of ordered liberty.
The federal leadership race earlier this year that saw Scheer become leader also featured the sputtering campaign of Kellie Leitch, who tried to capitalize on anti-immigrant sentiment. Leitch fizzled, but there’s always the chance that a more capable politician could pick up where she left off.
Kenney was quick to condemn her and, in an interview with the Post, he was openly contemptuous of Leitch.
Kenney happily describes himself as a multiculturalist and he wants Canadian conservatism to reflect that. As the self-appointed protector of the Conservative brand in Canada, here’s where his pragmatic side and his philosophical side meet.
In their Policy Options piece, former Harper advisers Sean Speer and Ken Boessenkool argued that Harper’s policies, most obviously his relentless assault on the overall tax burden, were classically liberal and his manner of governing was Burkean to the core. Harper governed incrementally and cautiously, with the humility necessary for minority governments but also natural to the conservative mind.
Or as conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott described it, “The man of conservative temperament believes that a known good is not lightly to be surrendered for an unknown better.”
To be a conservative, then, is to be a little bit dull but to take a certain satisfaction in it.
Kenney was a perfect fit for Harper’s government and it’s not hard to find people who describe him as the most competent person in cabinet.
Speer, a co-author of the ordered liberty article, who was also senior economic adviser to Harper and is now a Munk Senior Fellow at the MacdonaldLaurier Institute, says Kenney is steeped in the intellectual history of conservatism and is one of the few politicians who has a fully thought-out political theory (Harper, of course, being one of the others).
That made him one of the most confident ministers at cabinet meetings and — maybe surprisingly, as a conservative who might be inclined to prefer the “known good” — the biggest risk-taker. Speer says he attributes that to Kenney’s selfconfidence and the fact that he always knew where he stood on any issue.
Where a colleague may prevaricate or weigh up the political pros and cons, Kenney already had his answer.
Kenney weaves a socially conservative perspective into free market ideas with ease. In a 2004 speech, Kenney touted a $3,000 tax credit that would be available to parents raising children at home, as well as those using daycare. For a relatively mundane policy position, Kenney’s speech hits broad philosophical notes, examining the role of government and quoting John Diefenbaker.
“Economic freedom is expressed by the degree to which individuals are able to retain and use according to their own priorities the fruits of their labours,” Kenney said. In other words, a lower tax burden means more freedom.
More taxes, Kenney said, means “economic choices are captive to the decisions that we as political leaders take.” That is in direct opposition to ordered liberty, or a “disordered priority,” as Kenney calls it.
The role of government — and Albertans take note here — is to provide “freest human action under the natural law.” That means slowly dismantling what a tabloid editorial might call the “nanny state.”
Asked how a Burkean conservative can reverse four years of NDP policies, Kenney laughs and says, “well, there’s a time and place for incrementalism...”
The ellipsis speaks volumes. Now is not that time and Kenney promises to “energetically” undo the policies of the NDP government.
In the face of a recently implemented carbon tax, beefed up labour laws, controversial farm safety legislation and others, Albertans may be more likely to see Kenney the proactive risk-taker than the Burkean incrementalist.
Candidates always have a skewed idea of the stakes in any election. If politicians get a little apocalyptic during an election, it’s usually a career apocalypse they’re concerned about. But not always.
The unite the right movement was founded on a single organizing principle: that the NDP can’t be allowed to govern the province past 2019. Decades of bickering was put aside which, for conservatives in Alberta, is almost a sign of the apocalypse itself.
The apocalyptic feeling leans both ways. The NDP has been attacking Kenney since he launched his campaign for the PC leadership and the assaults have been personal and ferocious ever since.
This, Kenney says, is the “fight of his life” and you can feel that urgency in anyone associated with the UCP. After a 15-month slog he will immediately be fighting a nasty twoyear election campaign to govern the province.
The stakes, in other words, are high. With the rapt attention of politicos nationwide, Alberta’s 2019 election will be a two-party battle fought along clear ideological lines. And, after last weekend, at the end of a long road for the province’s conservatives, it just started.
THE MODERN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT RADIATES OUT FROM ALBERTA.