Juno News - The four reasons Jason Kenney got ousted as Alberta Premier

00:00:00.000 Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has resigned as leader of the United Conservative Party and has announced his intention to resign as Premier.

00:00:07.000 We're going to break down all the reasons why. I'm Candace Malcolm and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:00:23.440 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. So we had quite the eventful night last night in Alberta.

00:00:28.260 We learned the fate of the Premier Jason Kenney and as I said, he lost the leadership review.

00:00:33.220 We'll break down all of the facts, go through all of the news, but they held a leadership review to determine whether or not he would go forward as leader of the party.

00:00:40.460 So this was an internal vote among Conservative Party members in Alberta, United Conservative Party members in Alberta.

00:00:46.560 And the vote was so close that Premier Kenney decided on his own that he didn't want to stay on and lead this party, that he was going to resign and make way for a leadership review.

00:00:55.520 So we're going to go through the news of what happened. We're going to go through my personal analysis of why I think Jason Kenney lost.

00:01:01.300 I think it can be boiled down to four specific distinct reasons why he lost.

00:01:05.620 And then we're going to talk about how this is very bad for Canada and for the Conservative movement in Canada specifically.

00:01:12.020 Before I get into all of that, though, I want to do a personal disclosure here.

00:01:15.460 So I think that listeners and viewers of this podcast should know that Jason Kenney is a personal friend of mine.

00:01:21.340 I once worked for Jason Kenney back when he was the Minister of Immigration in the Harper government.

00:01:26.500 It was sort of early in my career. I got a great opportunity to become his press secretary.

00:01:30.520 I got to work closely with Jason and I learned a tremendous amount about politics and the media from working with him.

00:01:37.100 I think he is an incredible human being.

00:01:39.540 I think he is incredibly intelligent, incredibly hardworking, very insightful, very thoughtful, very well read.

00:01:44.500 Just a very overall wonderful person.

00:01:48.220 And I also have a personal friendship that endures.

00:01:50.860 I met my future husband working in Jason Kenney's office.

00:01:53.960 And so my husband was also a political staffer in the Harper government working in Kenney's office.

00:01:58.340 And that is how we first met.

00:02:00.060 So in a way, Jason introduced me to my future husband.

00:02:03.200 So I'm obviously forever grateful and indebted for that opportunity and to have been able to meet my husband that way.

00:02:10.540 So my husband is also friends with Jason Kenney. Their friendship remains.

00:02:15.100 And so I am not a neutral observer when it comes to the premier.

00:02:19.300 I am biased in his favor because I have so much respect for him for my personal experiences

00:02:23.640 and from the things that I gained from having that work experience there.

00:02:28.720 So that's all on the table.

00:02:30.640 I want you to know that.

00:02:31.740 So I'm going to do my best to provide the facts, provide the news, tell you why I think he lost.

00:02:36.780 And I think he made some critical missteps in that is why he's no longer going to be premier of the province.

00:02:42.840 And so we'll go through all of that.

00:02:44.900 But that disclosure, I think, is important for you as a viewer or a listener to know.

00:02:51.100 So as I said, quite the night in Alberta last night.

00:02:53.520 And as I said, the party had decided to do a leadership review of the premier.

00:02:57.180 It was supposed to happen, I believe, in the fall.

00:02:59.200 And then they decided to compromise and do it earlier because if the premier were to be removed,

00:03:03.300 which is what ended up happening, they wanted time to find a new leader and have them be well-positioned

00:03:09.080 for the general election in Alberta, which will happen a year from now in 2023.

00:03:13.820 So they moved it forward.

00:03:15.360 It was supposed to be an in-person vote in Red Deer last month.

00:03:18.080 There were so many people, though, that signed up and were reported that they wanted to vote in this race

00:03:23.460 that the premier's office and the party decided to move it to a ballot vote.

00:03:28.420 So they were going to do a vote instead.

00:03:29.700 And that had its own controversy.

00:03:31.320 There were a lot of people who were opponents of Kenney and critics of Kenney who said that

00:03:35.360 this was all sort of planned and schemed to sort of rig the election.

00:03:38.460 And even if Kenney had won, it still would have been a loss because he probably was cheating.

00:03:42.420 I heard a lot of people making those kind of comments.

00:03:45.120 Regardless, I mean, look, we had 34,298 votes cast.

00:03:49.100 It's hard to imagine a party facilitating that many people to allow that many votes in person

00:03:55.480 in a place like Red Deer that just isn't a very big place.

00:03:58.460 So I think in the end that that part was justifiable.

00:04:02.240 But again, we had 34,298 votes cast.

00:04:06.460 The vote counting took place Wednesday at 4 p.m. and lasted till about 6 p.m.

00:04:11.140 The accounting firm Deloitte was hired by the party to oversee the ballot count and audit the results.

00:04:17.760 And so here is the results being announced last night.

00:04:21.720 It came in at I think it was around 830 or something like that Eastern time.

00:04:26.260 So it would have been about 630 or 7 mountain time.

00:04:30.040 And here is what that looked like.

00:04:31.580 Our party's leadership review and selection rules set out that the question in a leadership

00:04:37.580 review shall be, quote, do you approve of the current leader, unquote.

00:04:44.740 Members were given the option to vote yes or no.

00:04:47.980 Those same rules require we announce the number of votes cast for and against the question as well as the total numbers for the vote.

00:05:00.040 So here are those numbers.

00:05:01.860 I can advise that there were 34,298 votes cast.

00:05:10.240 There were 17,638 yes votes and 16,660 no votes.

00:05:19.480 These numbers represent 51.4 percent yes and 48.6 percent no.

00:05:29.440 So as you see, Kenny technically won the race.

00:05:32.180 He had 17,638 votes in favor of for members saying that he should stay on.

00:05:37.420 That's 51.4 percent of the vote.

00:05:40.040 Contrast that with the 16,660 members who voted to have him removed, which was 48.6 percent.

00:05:46.620 So incredibly close.

00:05:48.300 But Kenny still won.

00:05:49.420 And remember that going into this race, he said, look, if I get 51 percent of the vote, I will consider that a victory and a mandate big enough to stay on.

00:05:57.040 However, that's not the case.

00:06:00.020 So given how close it was, given how split this party is, Jason Kenney came into the room and he made the following speech, essentially just saying that he's going to respect the vote.

00:06:10.840 And you can see the audience starts cheering at that because they interpret that as saying, I'm going to respect the vote.

00:06:15.780 I won the vote.

00:06:16.700 So I'm going to stay on as premier.

00:06:17.980 And then he changes tune and he says that he's going to resign.

00:06:20.380 And you can feel the sort of disappointment and angst in the room because they obviously don't want Kenny to step down.

00:06:25.820 So here is what that clip looked like.

00:06:27.880 I've been clear from day one that I will respect the decision of the members in this leadership review.

00:06:32.920 And I expect all members of our party to do just that.

00:06:47.900 Friends, while while 51 percent of the vote passes the constitutional threshold of a majority, it clearly is not adequate support to continue on as leader.

00:07:00.200 And that is why tonight I have informed the president of the party of my intention to step down as leader of the United Conservative Party.

00:07:10.820 I'm sorry, but friends, I truly believe that we need to move forward united.

00:07:16.120 We need to put the past behind us.

00:07:18.240 And our members, a large number of our members have asked for an opportunity to clear the air through a leadership election.

00:07:24.220 And so Kenny did the honorable thing.

00:07:25.640 He did the right thing.

00:07:26.260 I saw I saw a lot of people sort of commending him on social media, saying, look, I don't necessarily agree with you.

00:07:31.480 I didn't like you as premier, but you definitely did the honorable thing.

00:07:33.740 Your party is clearly very in battle is clearly very split.

00:07:37.120 And Kenny felt that he just didn't have the mandate to move forward.

00:07:41.780 So he announced that he is stepping down.

00:07:44.420 And basically what I see from that is this party is split.

00:07:47.640 So go back to the history of the United Conservative Party.

00:07:50.660 It was the party that was founded by Jason Kenny.

00:07:53.100 He united two different parties.

00:07:54.840 He united the Progressive Conservative Party, which is more the establishment Edmonton political party versus the upsert, the Wild Rose Party, which is the sort of more grassroots populist libertarian party.

00:08:06.720 So we still have these two factions, right?

00:08:08.840 These two different types of conservative in Alberta.

00:08:11.900 I mean, there's many, many different types of conservatives, but they sort of fit nicely into these two camps.

00:08:15.940 The camps merged together because they saw that the ultimate goal really was to beat the NDP in an election and to govern the province.

00:08:24.400 However, in practice, you could see how they didn't really want to govern.

00:08:27.600 They wanted, they still had that split.

00:08:30.120 They still have that divide where the populist libertarian party wants a certain set of policies.

00:08:35.880 And the establishment conservative party has a different standard and a different, different expectations of what may happen with a government.

00:08:43.980 So I want to get into the reasons why I think Jason Kenny lost because, because he did lose.

00:08:49.380 He, he lost control of the party that he himself created.

00:08:52.200 He didn't have his, his finger on the pulse in the province.

00:08:55.120 He allowed an uprising and an insurgency and a resistance movement that ultimately took him down.

00:09:00.940 And, you know, as a premier of the province and as the head of the political party, that's ultimately on Jason Kenny.

00:09:06.280 That he, he let that happen.

00:09:07.620 And I, I've been thinking about it, you know, this, this news just came out last night, but I've been thinking about the reasons why I think that Jason Kenny lost.

00:09:15.300 And I think it can really be boiled down to four reasons.

00:09:17.840 So I'm going to go through the four reasons right now.

00:09:20.020 Number one, I think the most obvious reason that the pundits and the media are going to is COVID.

00:09:24.760 It's a COVID response.

00:09:25.700 It's a COVID handling.

00:09:26.540 It's the pandemic.

00:09:27.480 I think that's true.

00:09:28.240 But there was one particular part of the COVID pandemic management that really stuck out.

00:09:32.900 And I think that this really was a turning point and something that was a sticking point for many conservatives.

00:09:37.480 And that was his flip-flop when it came to vaccine passports.

00:09:40.560 I think Kenny could have been forgiven by the conservative base, by many conservatives in Alberta for the initial lockdowns, for closing down schools, for doing all the things that everyone else was doing.

00:09:49.580 But when it came to the vaccine passports, this is like a red line for many conservatives, especially those of us with libertarian leanings.

00:09:57.080 The idea that the state is going to track our health status and determine whether or not we can get into certain places and have access to certain parts of society based on our personal health status, that that's a bridge too far for most of us.

00:10:08.940 And the fact that it happened all over Canada is a total disgrace.

00:10:12.760 The thing about Jason Kenney, though, and the way he rolled it out, is that his initial response to the idea of a COVID vaccine mandate was completely correct.

00:10:20.780 And he was incredibly articulate.

00:10:22.780 He was incredibly forceful in his opposition to the concept of a vaccine passport.

00:10:28.620 He came out with the exact correct position.

00:10:31.620 And this is in the summer of 2021.

00:10:33.420 This is a clip of Jason Kenney on July 12th, giving the correct response and saying exactly why he vows to not cooperate with the federal government.

00:10:42.660 And he vows to not bring in a vaccine passport.

00:10:46.000 Here's that clip.

00:10:46.700 What's your position of vaccine passports for those individuals unwilling to be vaccinated?

00:10:50.740 Opposed.

00:10:51.220 And we've been very clear from the beginning that we will not facilitate or accept vaccine passports.

00:10:55.780 And that, in fact, we regard, I believe that they would, in principle, contravene the Health Information Act and also possibly the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

00:11:07.240 We also amended the Public Health Act to remove the 110-year-old power, allowing Alberta to force people to be inoculated.

00:11:15.080 So these folks who are concerned about mandatory vaccines have nothing to be concerned about.

00:11:19.360 And there will be no vaccine passports in Alberta.

00:11:21.120 Will the provincial government act on behalf of Alberta's citizens if the federal government seeks to impose such restrictions?

00:11:26.760 Yes.

00:11:27.320 So there you have it.

00:11:28.040 Jason Kenney was unequivocal in his opposition to vaccine passports.

00:11:32.700 However, a mere two months later, on September 15th, Jason Kenney announced a new set of lockdowns, a new set of restrictions, and, yes, a vaccine passport.

00:11:41.640 So dealing with another surge in COVID that came after his, you know, open for the summer marketing campaign that kind of fell flat because it caused a huge spread in COVID, or at least facilitated and allowed a huge spread in COVID in Alberta.

00:11:55.560 He sort of reluctantly came out and announced, he didn't even announce it as a vaccine passport, though he called it a restrictions exemption program, which sounded very Orwellian.

00:12:04.940 And so here is a sort of defeated looking Jason Kenney announcing the exact opposite position of the principled stance that he had taken just two months earlier.

00:12:13.700 Here's what that looked like.

00:12:14.680 But it has now become clear that to save lives and prevent business closures, we must go further in encouraging vaccination and reducing the chance of infection for those who are unprotected.

00:12:26.720 That is why the government has reluctantly decided to adopt the restriction exemption program, a proof of vaccination program for participation in certain discretionary activities that have a higher risk of viral transmission.

00:12:43.660 No one will be compelled to get vaccinated against their wishes, and a negative test option will be offered as an alternative.

00:12:52.580 But with unvaccinated patients overwhelming our hospitals, this is now the only responsible choice that we have. 0.97

00:13:01.480 So there was Jason Kenney even admitting that he had obviously done a flip-flop on this issue.

00:13:06.760 And again, I think that this was just so damaging for the premier, so upsetting to principled conservatives who, first of all, don't want to see a vaccine passport in their province. 0.98

00:13:16.120 And second of all, just don't like the idea of a politician reneging and flipping.

00:13:20.120 And so I think that was, to many people, the final straw and the reason why they could just no longer support Jason Kenney.

00:13:27.300 Okay, so the first reason, COVID, and specifically the COVID vaccines.

00:13:30.800 Second reason I think Jason Kenney lost last night was just bad timing.

00:13:33.440 This is the first opportunity that many people have had the opportunity to go to the ballot box and express their frustration with the establishment, with the elites, with the experts since the trekker convoy and since the COVID pandemic, really.

00:13:45.560 I know we had a federal election in 2021, and I think a lot of Albertans were just disgusted because there were not a lot of differentiation between the federal leaders.

00:13:54.500 And, you know, regardless of how Alberta votes, we all know that really the people who determine a federal election are people in and around Toronto and Ontario.

00:14:04.440 So I think that this was the first opportunity that many conservatives and many Canadians had to just express their dismay and their anger and their frustration over government lockdowns, government overreach.

00:14:15.660 This sort of expert class is completely out of touch with the Canadian public.

00:14:20.620 And then we also have, you know, all kinds of sort of scary economic situations on the horizon.

00:14:25.360 It looks like we're going into a recession.

00:14:27.940 Inflation numbers are out of control.

00:14:29.900 We're going to have higher interest rates.

00:14:31.640 And there's just a lot of problems in the economy in general.

00:14:34.300 I know the economy in Alberta is doing a bit stronger because of the high price of oil.

00:14:38.280 But still, there's just sort of a lot of precarious situations on the horizon.

00:14:43.740 And I think Jason was a little bit of a victim of bad timing.

00:14:47.780 The third reason why I think Jason Kenney lost last night is just a total lack of organization and awareness.

00:14:53.900 Now, if you look at the numbers of the vote last night, so Jason Kenney, as I said, he got 17,638 votes in favor, 16,000 votes against.

00:15:03.420 There's only 34,000 people who voted in that race.

00:15:06.820 So, really, we're talking about a few thousand people here.

00:15:10.360 A few thousand votes would have made all the difference in the world.

00:15:12.740 I think if Jason Kenney had managed to get, say, 55% of the vote, which is really just an extra 3,000 votes, he would have been fine.

00:15:19.920 He would have been able to justify staying on.

00:15:22.740 And yet he couldn't even muster up an additional 3,000 votes.

00:15:26.280 So, 17,000 votes.

00:15:27.760 Just to put that into context, when Jason Kenney became leader of the party back in 2017, again, it was a party that he founded and he created.

00:15:35.020 He had 35,000 people vote just in favor of him, right?

00:15:39.460 Compare 35,000 to last night where he got 17,000.

00:15:42.720 So, he just wasn't organized.

00:15:44.640 He wasn't able to get his vote out.

00:15:47.040 He wasn't able to mobilize his people, to energize his people, to get them.

00:15:50.580 All they had to do was just fill out a little ballot and put it in the mail.

00:15:53.880 It wasn't like they even had to go and leave their house and go show up somewhere.

00:15:57.020 All they had to do was fill out a ballot, but the sort of groundwork and the organization work just wasn't there.

00:16:03.000 And, again, I mentioned I think Jason Kenney is one of the hardest-working people I've ever met and one of the hardest-working, if not the most hard-working person in Canadian politics.

00:16:12.040 And yet, for some reason, they couldn't find an extra 3,000 people out there in the entire province of Alberta to lend them support and to vote in this race.

00:16:20.480 So, I mean, just going back to when Jason Kenney was a member of Parliament, in the 2015 federal election, he managed to get 42,000 votes.

00:16:29.620 And this is just in his Calgary-Minnaipore riding in Calgary Southeast.

00:16:33.540 He got 42,000 people to vote for him in an election when everyone knew that the conservatives were going to win in Calgary regardless because there wasn't really any opposition.

00:16:43.500 I mean, look at these numbers.

00:16:44.380 Jason Kenney won with 66% of the vote, and he still managed to get 42,000 people out just in Calgary.

00:16:52.480 Go back to the 2011 election campaign, again, when Jason's riding was Calgary Southeast, 48,000 people to vote for him in one riding, in one federal riding, in one part of Calgary.

00:17:05.300 So, if you can get 48,000 people to come out to vote for you in a general election, you can't find an extra 3,000 votes across the entire province of Alberta.

00:17:14.120 I think this goes to show that I don't think the Premier took this vote very seriously.

00:17:18.800 I don't think that he was organized in the right way.

00:17:20.720 I don't think that he was working with the people at the grassroots level in Alberta to mobilize the vote, activate the vote, energize the vote,

00:17:29.320 and just wasn't communicated, wasn't organized in a way that he needed, obviously, because otherwise he would have been in a much better position to continue to lead this party.

00:17:40.920 So, I really think the lack of organization there was a problem.

00:17:44.720 And finally, the fourth reason why I think Jason Kenney lost, and this one hits a little closer to home,

00:17:50.420 this was that the Premier ignored the influence of independent media.

00:17:54.100 There is no doubt that the independent media in Alberta had a significant impact on this vote,

00:18:00.640 and it is a major part of the reason why we are in this situation, why Jason Kenney will no longer be Premier of Alberta.

00:18:07.840 It's clear.

00:18:08.920 Albertans get their news increasingly from independent media.

00:18:11.640 I mentioned I was just in Calgary two weekends ago for a conference, and I couldn't believe how many people came up to me,

00:18:16.820 how many people recognized me, how many people knew about True North and knew about the work that we do here.

00:18:22.780 And I think out of the entire country, there is an outsized interest and viewership of independent media in Alberta,

00:18:30.440 and specifically on the conservative side of the spectrum, right?

00:18:33.180 We're not talking about a general election last night.

00:18:35.520 We're talking about the conservative base and why the conservative base in the most conservative province in the country, Alberta,

00:18:42.260 voted against Premier Kenney.

00:18:44.000 And I think that most of those people, more of those people than anywhere and any other sample group in society gets their news from the independent media.

00:18:51.860 And I'm not just talking about True North.

00:18:53.140 I'm talking about The Rebel, The Western Standard, and many other independent journalists, people like Kian Bexte, and of course, us here at True North.

00:19:00.860 But I think as far as the Premier goes, it wasn't part of his strategy.

00:19:03.820 He didn't take an interest.

00:19:04.840 He's never really liked The Rebel.

00:19:06.160 He's never wanted to have anything to do with The Rebel.

00:19:09.000 He doesn't go on their shows.

00:19:10.040 He doesn't really engage with them.

00:19:11.180 Maybe he did five, six years ago, but it's not on his horizon now.

00:19:15.260 And The Rebel was really relentless in the way that they covered the Premier, covered the United Conservative Party.

00:19:21.240 They didn't treat him with kid gloves.

00:19:24.420 They weren't friendly to him.

00:19:25.580 They didn't give him the benefit of the doubt.

00:19:26.940 They pushed hard against the UCP and against Premier Kenney, trying to embarrass him at any opportunity, trying to expose the things that were happening.

00:19:36.340 And frankly, thank goodness they did.

00:19:37.780 I mean, the high-profile arrests of Christian pastors, I'm talking about Tim Stevens, the Fairview Baptist Church in Calgary, Archer and David Polunsky in Calgary, and James Coates of Grace Life Church in Edmonton.

00:19:51.140 So The Rebel's relentless coverage of the attacks on churches, the attacks on Christian pastors, the way that they were treated.

00:19:58.500 And sure, you could say, look, they were breaking the law.

00:20:00.300 They weren't supposed to be having their church service and their church gatherings.

00:20:03.880 I don't care about that.

00:20:05.200 Any time that you have a government telling a church, telling religious people that their right to pray and their right to go to church has been upended,

00:20:14.320 meanwhile, you know, grocery stores and Walmart are still open, it is absolutely unconscionable.

00:20:19.900 And for Jason Kenney, who has been a heroic advocate for religious freedom throughout his entire career,

00:20:26.560 to see that happen in his province under his watch was just a level of hypocrisy that I think that many conservatives in Alberta just couldn't get over.

00:20:36.700 And again, I credit The Rebel News for that.

00:20:39.460 I think that had Jason Kenney taken a more collegial approach to The Rebel and been more willing to talk to them and more willing to engage with them,

00:20:47.200 The Rebel wouldn't have been so dead set on exposing this kind of stuff.

00:20:51.540 And of course, Jason Kenney should have never allowed for the arrests of Christian pastors under his watch in his province.

00:20:57.960 So I think that regardless of which way you look at it, it was a failure on behalf of the Premier and his comms team.

00:21:05.340 So those are the four reasons why I think Jason Kenney lost.

00:21:07.840 And I think that there is a lot of room for valid criticism against the Premier and the way that he governed and the mistakes that he made.

00:21:15.440 And he'll have to live with that.

00:21:16.900 That is the fate that he has been delivered.

00:21:20.360 Now, I want to get into a bit of a broader analysis because I don't think this is really good news for Albertans.

00:21:26.800 I don't think it is good news for conservatives.

00:21:28.760 And I don't think it is good news for Canada.

00:21:31.240 So I want to pick up on some of the analysis that I've seen out there that I think raises some good points.

00:21:37.260 So we have Brian Lilly of the Toronto Sun tweet this.

00:21:39.720 He says,

00:21:40.460 Alberta has lost a great champion and a great politician.

00:21:43.300 It's a case of people saying they won't accept anything but purity, a warning for the full conservative movement.

00:21:50.120 And so this is the idea that Jason Kenney accomplished some good things.

00:21:53.940 He was a solid conservative leader.

00:21:55.880 And yet, you know, there was this anger.

00:21:58.840 There was this anger that existed over the pandemic.

00:22:01.160 There's this divide that persists in the UCP party between the old Wildrose and PC factions.

00:22:08.700 And they just couldn't get over that.

00:22:10.300 They allowed sort of the petty differences within the party to bring down a leader.

00:22:14.140 And it's hard to imagine a year from now, the UPC really standing a chance against the NDP.

00:22:19.940 You know, Rachel Notley, the former Premier, sort of back.

00:22:22.620 She's popular among a certain subset of Albertans. 0.98

00:22:26.300 And they kind of feel like the government in waiting right now while the UCP party is in shambles.

00:22:31.160 And so you could also observe this as, hey, the conservatives just took down their own leader.

00:22:36.160 And they're going to suffer for the next five years because of it under an NDP government, which will be way worse than Jason Kenney.

00:22:43.000 Another insightful analysis that I saw on Twitter came from Kaylin Ford.

00:22:46.720 Kaylin Ford was supposed to be a star candidate in Jason Kenney's caucus.

00:22:50.460 She ran for the UCP, but ended up getting ousted before the 2019 election.

00:22:55.260 She was sort of the victim of cancel culture by a smear piece published by the left-wing activist outlet Press Progress.

00:23:02.680 Basically derailed her entire political career.

00:23:05.600 Well, she writes this.

00:23:06.480 And I think this is sort of the conventional thinking among many conservatives in Canada right now.

00:23:11.080 She writes this.

00:23:12.320 Albertans, once again, living up to the stereotype as a congenitally quarrelsome bunch.

00:23:17.280 We become ungovernable.

00:23:19.520 There is something admirable about the libertarian spirit of Albertans, or if not always admirable, then reassuring.

00:23:25.920 It's a pretty effective check against bad government.

00:23:28.280 Unfortunately, she writes, it's also a check against good and effective government.

00:23:32.480 Insofar as this leadership review reflects an unwillingness to just forget the damage caused by COVID measures, especially school closures, mask children, and internal passports.

00:23:41.740 I'm sympathetic.

00:23:42.360 The war on memory should be resisted.

00:23:45.120 Accountability is important.

00:23:46.680 But of all the elected leaders who should face some kind of reckoning over zealous, irrational, and inhumane COVID measures, it's ironic that this is the only leader who's likely to go down for it.

00:23:57.620 And that sort of speaks to my point about bad timing for the Kenney government, because had this review happened a year from now, I think a lot of men's would have been healed and we would have moved on.

00:24:08.560 And the focus would have more been on economic management of the province as opposed to people just casting their vote out of anger and frustration about COVID and putting it towards any political elite they could find.

00:24:19.000 And Jason Kenney was sort of the target at the time.

00:24:21.740 I'm going to share one more piece that I thought was insightful this morning, and this came from Sean Speer, writing over in The Hub.

00:24:27.880 Sean Speer is a policy advisor, and he is a founder of The Hub.

00:24:31.920 It's a great website.

00:24:32.640 I encourage everyone to go check it out at thehub.ca.

00:24:35.320 But he wrote this this morning.

00:24:36.540 He writes,

00:24:46.720 Alberta's Kenney-led government wasn't perfect, no government ever is, but it was the country's most ambitious, centre-right provincial government since the Harris government's common-sense revolution in Ontario more than a quarter century ago.

00:24:57.860 There are virtually no areas of provincial policy, from taxes and spending to education and healthcare and virtually everything in between, that wasn't the subject of energetic reform.

00:25:07.000 The totality of the government's reformist impulses shifted the Alberta government decidedly in a more conservative direction, and in doing so, set out a policy playbook for other provincial conservatives to draw from.

00:25:18.540 One would think that such a successful agenda would have widespread support among conservatives and conservatives.

00:25:23.700 Yet nearly half of UCP members who cast their ballots in the party's leadership review disapproved of Kenney's leadership.

00:25:30.160 The obvious question is, what gives?

00:25:32.220 Even accounting for the naked ambitions of some of the anti-Kenney forces, such as the self-evidently unserious Brian Jean or serially foolish Danielle Smith, doesn't quite explain it.

00:25:42.740 There's something bigger going on.

00:25:44.620 There's a small yet spirited minority of grassroots conservatives who's come to define their politics in solely oppositional terms.

00:25:50.980 It derives from a position of perceived weakness in modern society.

00:25:54.800 They see mainstream institutions, including corporations, universities, and the media, succumbing to an assertive form of progressivism, and feel increasingly embattled in a culture war that at times can be quite hostile to their ideas and values.

00:26:08.200 These feelings of powerlessness, marginalization, and condescension are reinforced by online sources of American conservative media.

00:26:16.340 The result is a siege mentality that's more reactionary than it is conservative.

00:26:20.340 These people aren't interested in incremental policy reform.

00:26:23.900 They're looking for a fight.

00:26:25.340 They want to toss a hand grenade into a cathedral of our mainstream institutions.

00:26:30.860 This oppositional conservatism has, of course, been exacerbated by the COVID-19 lockdowns.

00:26:36.160 The entire pandemic experience laid bare in their minds the corruption of the political class and so-called experts.

00:26:42.600 The so-called freedom convoy was the clearest expression of their anger.

00:26:46.460 Now, Kenney's sacking is its most significant.

00:26:49.580 So I think that there is a lot of truth to that.

00:26:51.440 I think there's a lot of anger.

00:26:52.500 But again, rather than blaming the masses or blaming the conservative base, as I think Sean is sort of getting at here, and I think many sort of Kenney insiders and establishment conservatives will do, I think that there needs to be some internal soul-searching as well.

00:27:05.260 And I think that there are real and significant missteps that the premier has taken that have led to this situation.

00:27:13.180 Sadly, unfortunately, I'm not happy about it.

00:27:14.900 I do think it is a sad day for conservatism, an unfortunate day in our country.

00:27:21.160 But, you know, there are consequences to political actions, and I think that that is what is playing out in Alberta right now.

00:27:27.680 All right.

00:27:27.840 Thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in.

00:27:29.300 I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.

00:27:31.200 Thank you.

Juno News - May 19, 2022

The four reasons Jason Kenney got ousted as Alberta Premier

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