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Kenney makes return visit to Taber in campaign
Posted on August 30, 2017 by Taber Times
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By Trevor Busch
Taber Times
tbusch@tabertimes.com
Hitting the hustings as the campaign heats up for the leadership of the United Conservative Party, former PC leader Jason Kenney was in Taber last week to take in part of the community’s annual celebration.
“I’m here for the parade, and for Cornfest. I was down here with Grant Hunter two or three weeks ago when he endorsed me, and the mayor and everybody asked me to come out for Cornfest, they said it was a big deal. I’ve never been here (for Cornfest), so it was great to be down here for that. I was told it was a big deal, everybody was pushing for me to come down here.”
A long-time federal Conservative MP and cabinet minister, first elected in the riding of Calgary Midnapore in 1997, Kenney has served as Parliamentary Secretary for the Prime Minister of Canada in 2006, Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity in 2007, Minister for Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism in 2008, Minister for Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism in 2013 and, most recently, as Minister of National Defence.
Kenney admits he was surprised at the results of the unity vote in Cardston-Taber-Warner, the only constituency in the province whose party memberships voted universally in favour of a merger to create the UCP.
“We’re excited to have created this United Conservative Party, to put behind us the vote splitting and bury the hatchet. This constituency – Cardston-Taber-Warner — has been way ahead of the curve on the whole unity effort. In fact the PC and Wildrose boards were meeting together here even before I launched our unity campaign last summer. This area was a real leader in the unity effort, in fact on July 22, 100 per cent of both the PC and Wildrose members voted yes to unity. This was the only of the 87 ridings in the province where we had zero no votes, on either side. I said to these guys it almost looks like a North Korean election, but I think that shows you a lot of enthusiasm down here for the project.”
One of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hell for leather campaigners and a go-to cabinet minister, Kenney was considered to be a front runner for the leadership of the federal Conservative Party until making the announcement that he would be leaving federal politics to enter the provincial arena. Kenney touts his federal experience as indispensable in getting a new government off the ground should the party achieve victory over the NDP in 2019.
“On October 28, our party will be choosing a leader, and I’m offering myself as someone with the experience to hit the ground running as government on day one, as a former senior minister of Stephen Harper’s government, a former president of the Canadian Taxpayer’s Federation, and as someone who has a proven track record of getting things done, including the unity. The second thing is, we’re going to need someone who can stand up to Justin Trudeau and defend Alberta, and I know I can do that, in both official languages, here and in Ottawa and Quebec and Ontario. Thirdly, I think we need somebody who has consistent conservative convictions, who doesn’t get rattled when attacked by the left. Finally, I’m proposing that the new party be very much grassroots democratic, that the grassroots members develop its basic policy direction — one of the reasons the PC party blew up is because in recent years, a kind of arrogant top-down style of leadership (developed), with leaders telling people what to think rather than listening to them — I don’t want us to repeat that mistake, so I’m proposing that policies really be developed, initially, by the grassroots members.”
Kenney promised to take on the federal government and serve as a check to the power of the Trudeau Liberals if elected UCP leader, with sights set on the premiership.
“I think I have a lot more relevant experience of actually running government. I was one of the most senior ministers in the national government for 10 years. We’re going to be inheriting a mess from the NDP in 2019. It will be the toughest time in Alberta government in at least 25 years. A fiscal disaster, a huge loss in investor confidence, hundreds of thousands of unemployed Albertans, and other major challenges — we’re going to have to hit the ground running, and I’m not going to have to do any on the job learning. I’ve run the largest government department in the country, Employment and Social Development. I’ve been the Minister of National Defence during a time when we were engaged in a war overseas against ISIS. I’ve led fundamental reforms of a broken immigration system successfully. I worked on a project that doubled the support for the Conservative Party of Canada amongst immigrants to our country, I think showing that I can reach out, and I led this project that got us united in Alberta, so I think what I offer is a proven track record of leadership in government and politics.”
Righting the fiscal ship and stimulating the province’s flagging economy are chief pillars in Kenney’s platform.
“A government focused on getting our economy back on track, by restoring investor confidence, showing that Alberta is open for business again. If I were premier, I would like Bill 1 to be the carbon tax repeal act — in fact I would bring in an extraordinary summer sitting of the legislature in the summer of 2019, to repeal the carbon tax, repeal Bill 6, repeal the attack on workplace democracy, repeal the NDP’s massive subsidies of unreliable forms of power that are going to hike power prices. Basically I call it the ‘summer of repeal’. We would start by undoing the damage inflicted by the NDP, and then get our province back on a credible track to a balanced budget, and then fight like heck for pipeline construction so we have market access and get a fair price for our oil. But those are some of the initial steps, which will be focused on economic growth.”
The recent first quarter fiscal update is just more evidence the NDP are losing touch with the financial realities of the province, according to Kenney.
“It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors from the NDP. What it shows — just today (Aug. 24) another credit rating agency has come out and published another warning that they are likely to further downgrade Alberta’s credit rating. That’s the day after their fiscal update. There’s been five credit downgrades for Alberta since they came into office, and according to Standard and Poor’s, Alberta is on track for a debt of $94 billion by 2020, that’s a quadrupling of the provincial debt under the NDP. And as our credit rating gets downgraded, it means we have to pay higher interest rates, so basically in fact we’re paying $400 million more in interest than when the NDP came to office. That’s money that’s not going to schools, hospitals, roads or services, but to bankers and bondholders in Toronto, Zurich and Tokyo. They’re headed over the debt cliff, adding a billion dollars to the debt every month, with no credible plan to get back on track.”
More and more Albertans need to get involved in the political process and give back to the province for the movement to be a success, concluded Kenney.
“We need to renew Alberta democracy. One of the reasons we ended up with this accidental socialist government was half of us didn’t bother voting in provincial elections. Ninety-five per cent of Albertans never got involved in a provincial campaign or party. We need to change that if we want to get our province back on track. We’re going to need hundreds of thousands of Albertans to take responsibility for this province. Alberta has been good to all of us, it’s time for us to be good to Alberta, to give back through the democratic process. I hope people, for example, will join the United Conservative Party as members so they can vote in the leadership, develop its policies, and choose its candidates for the next legislature. I guess my message is that individuals like myself can’t do this, we’re going to have create a grassroots army of Albertans to defeat this government, and do the heavy lifting of getting our province back on track.”
One response to “Kenney makes return visit to Taber in campaign”
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So what Kenney is saying is the people in your area have been a lot easier to fool than in the rest of the province. Maybe you can explain to this former long time conservative supporter, whose family spend countless hours volunteering for the Lougheed and Getty governments why you are letting this former Liberal, like Klein was, turned Reformer, never was a true Conservative, treat you like morons?
It’s no secret that this province is in financial ruin because of what the so-called Conservatives did to this province under Klein, a well known Liberal, Stelmach and Redford. The NDP that us true conservatives elected have no choice than to take us further into debt and wouldn’t have needed to if they had left Lougheed’s tax and royalty structures alone. All you have to do is look at what Alaska and Norway have accomplished with their oil wealth, while they gave all ours away.
Alberta was 55 schools short and Klein left our health care system in a horrific mess, with a huge shortage of beds and these Reformers want you to believe that we shouldn’t be correcting the situation. They are also promising their rich friends that they will continue to help them clean Albertans our of their oil wealth by not increasing their royalties and taxes, back up to the Lougheed levels, like the NDP are promising to do. In other words they have no intention of getting us out of this “Horrific Mess” as Lougheed called it.
They claim they will cut billions off our government spending by dumping the cost of health care onto the backs of the people, like Klein tried to do with his Third-Way and like he did with deregulation. Doctors tell us that it’s just another way of them helping their rich friends by giving them first priority to our health care system and it will destroy your rural health care services. There is no way they will be able to keep doctors and nurses working in rural Alberta if they can make twice as much money working in these private-for profit hospitals, and clinics, in the cities, their scheme will create. It could cost some of you your lives.
Maybe you had better ask Kenney to explain why he is deliberately trying to destroy the Carbon Tax that the oil industry created to try to show the world that we are doing something about our pollution to try to open up oil markets for our oil? While he wants you to believe that the Carbon Tax was something created by Trudeau and Notley to steal your money the fact is it has been in place in B.C. since 2008, long before Notley and Trudeau were elected. Look it up on the internet if you don’t believe me. You had better also look up what Dennis McConaghy had to say. Dennis is retired senior executive of TransCanada Pipeline and was furious with Harper for not listening to him and implementing the Carbon Tax. He is convinced that if Harper had done so, Obama would have approved the Keystone XL pipeline and his corporation could have saved millions of dollars. So why are these Reform Party boys, like Harper, pretending to be conservatives, so hell-bent on trying to make things more difficult for our oil industry and why are you willing to help them do it?
Allowing yourselves to be treated like morons doesn’t impress any of us true conservatives who have been trying for years to put a stop to what Liberal Klein, Stelmach and Redford did to us, there was nothing conservative about any of them. And we certainly have no intention of allowing these Reformers to take over this province. It’s a well known fact that the federal reform party failed because of their policies of a lot less government and a lot more privatization, they changed their name to the alliance party and once again failed, and the federal conservatives foolishly allowed them to take over their party and when Harper began ramming through his reform party policies Canadians voted them out, and we had better not let them do it to us here.