Nutty Jason Kenney, A History: Part 1

Jason as nationalist cowboy.

Jason Kenney’s an interesting guy. He’s not likeable like Ralph Klein or Justin Trudeau. He’s not a policy wonk like his mentor, Stephen Harper. And, like Jim Prentice, he's a federal politician who's come to Alberta to make it big in provincial politics. 

So, what does he have going for him? First, he works 80 hour days. Second, he’s kind of nutty and in this day and age of populist rhetoric, people like nutty.

Just think of Donald Trump’s brag when he was running for president. “I will build a Great Wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, Great Wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words” Who talks like that and who believes it? Nutty right? But the people ate it up chanting “Build the wall. Build the wall” in many of his speeches.

Jason doesn’t say anything that nutty because, even here in Alberta, we don’t have the U.S. appetite for misogynist, racist crazies who have answers to all the world problems without having picked up a book. However, that doesn’t mean we don't like nutty within reason. 

Take for example, Jason’s claim that he speaks for the average Albertan. Yet, he’s spent less time in Alberta than either of his major rivals, Brian Jean or Rachel Notley. In fact, one could argue that Alberta is a home of convenience for Jason Kenney; political opportunism if you will. 

Jason was born in 1968 in Oakville, Ontario but didn’t move to Alberta until 1993. In 1976, he moved

Martin Kenney

to Saskatchewan, when his dad, Martin, took the position of president at Notre Dame College in the tiny town of Wilcox, population 339. As well as being an oasis of academia in the middle of nowhere, Notre Dame was known for its athletics program.

Martin continued a focus on athletics by raising enough money from donations to build an Olympic sized hockey rink. His efforts resulted in more than a few NHL stars graduating from his program; guys like Wendel Clark, Brad Richards, Curtis Joseph, Jordan Eberle and Vincent Lecavalier. Ron Maclean even paid tribute to Martin on Hockey Night in Canada when he died in 2010.

But Jason had no interest in hockey. He loved politics so much that his childhood hero was John Diefenbaker who he’d met at the school. He memorized election results, both federal and provincial that he can still recall with surprising accuracy, says Canadian journalist Paul Wells.  

Jason’s other big interest was religion. Despite being raised Anglican, he studied Catholic history and theology in a monastic community and regularly attended mass. Some thought he even had his heart set on becoming a priest. Yet, he didn’t convert to Catholicism until his third year of university.

After graduating from high school, Jason followed this passion for religion by entering St. Ignatius Institute at the Jesuit run University of San Francisco. St. Ignatius had been started in 1971 by a right-wing priest by the name of Father Joseph Fessio who didn’t think the university was following Catholic doctrine. The institute attracted only 150 of the university’s 6600 students yet caused controversy out of all proportion to its numbers.

Pope John Paul II, Ron & Nancy

Compared to Pope Francis of today, Pope John Paul II was a pretty pious dude. In 1990, he signed a decree that stipulated all professors get a mandate from the bishop proving they followed the church’s proclamations regarding contraception, abortion and homosexuality. St. Ignatius institute signed the decree. The department of theology at USF did nor did many other Catholic theology departments in the U.S.

Back in 1987, Jason Kenney, let everyone know where he stood on the issue of homosexuality, abortion and contraception in an opinion piece he wrote for the campus paper, The San Francisco Foghorn. In it, he criticized American Catholics for picking and choosing what Catholic teachings they would obey and ridiculed them for their "blatant dissent of Papal teaching authority." Yet, he wasn’t even Catholic at the time.

His pious pomposity made him popular among the tiny group of students at St. Ignatius. As a result, his classmates elected him freshman class president. From there, he’d take his self-righteous rigour to the student senate where he began advocating for the saying of a traditional Catholic prayer before every session of the student senate. Father Christopher Cartwright, who disagreed with Jason at the time, said that he was one of those people who believe “there’s right, and there’s wrong—no grey areas. If you don’t agree with them, then you’re pretty much the enemy.”

When the Woman's Law Association set up a table at a USF campus fair to collect signatures for a national abortion rights petition, Jason and a bunch of his henchmen showed up demanding that the women leave. One of the women, Laurie Moore said, “we knew we had to go—we were afraid—but we knew this was wrong.” Jason didn’t. He demanded that the student senate suspend the Association's charter, which they did. (Video of the CNN report of the UFS campus controversy.)

Then the American Civil Liberties Union got involved and Jason was accused of infringing on free speech. He responded by saying, "there are certain absolute values” and called abortion, “the legalized mass-murder of innocent unborn children.” To Jason’s chagrin, the university acquiesced to demands for free speech and instituted a policy to that effect in 1989. The Women’s Law Association could continue to advocate for women’s right to an abortion

So, Jason, with a bunch of his St. Ignatius buddies, made an ecclesiastical petition to the archbishop demanding that he remove the Catholic designation from the university. The controversy got the attention of the media and, in an interview with CNN, Jason stated that the women were “essentially destroying the mission and purpose of the university.” The archbishop refused to remove USF’s Catholic designation so Jason and one other student said they would appeal the archbishop’s decision by sending a petition to the Vatican.

Jason went away on summer break and the petition was never sent because he and the other petitioning student were no longer attending the institution. The administrators at USF were getting a little tired of Jason and St. Ignatius Institute in general. In 2001, Father Stephen Privett, the president of the university, fired the entire staff at the institute.

Without university, Jason decided to pursue politics that may have become more than a passion for him at this time. In a cyclical, Pope John Paul II had argued that politicians had an important role in fostering “a culture of life” and the use of abortion, contraception and assisted suicide. After reading it, Jason told USF Republicans, that, like the priesthood, he would make politics a vocation. He said, “I was called to politics, not qua [for the sake of] politics but…as a promotion of the message of the gospel of life.”

More to come.