It's impossible to read any discussion of the post-Harper future of the Conservative Party without coming across the name Jason Kenney, largely because the ex-immigration minister has exerted so much effort marketing himself as the Tory party's heir apparent.

Some pushback is long overdue. The conservative case against Kenney is clear.

He's wrong on immigration

At a time when centre-right parties in other western democracies are defining themselves as a voice of cautious moderation on unrestricted third world immigration, Kenney has championed the precise opposite.

Under his tenure as minister, Canada's immigration rate shot to its highest levels in half a century, giving Canada the highest per-capita immigrant intake of any country on earth. There is no economic justification for this — over 75% of those admitted have simply been relatives of other immigrants, while the supposedly economically-grounded programs that admit the rest have proven train wrecks of corruption and abuse. I once asked Kenney if his department had ever bothered to audit the net effect of immigration on the Canadian economy and he lazily linked me to a report from the Fraser Institute that claimed immigration was costing Canadians $23 billion a year.

The next Tory leader doesn't have to be some Marie LePen-style xenophobe, but it would be nice for them to have an inclination of some restraint in utilizing one of government's most serious and transformative powers — the power to change the population.

He's not actually a strategic genius

Conservatives have traditionally given Kenney a pass on immigration because popular lore suggests his management of the portfolio has produced massive electoral gains for the Tory party. Alas, there is little hard evidence supporting this.

A thorough study on voter data for Policy Options magazine concluded facts "do not support the hypothesis that the Conservative success in 2011 was a product of making headway with immigrants," noting most immigrant voters who abandoned the Liberals simply moved to the NDP. Ipsos exit polls agreed — the majority of immigrants (64%), particularly "new" immigrants (62%) and visible minorities (61%) claimed to vote for left-wing parties in 2011, and the Policy Options people observed "a tendency for immigrants to vote slightly less for Conservatives in 2011" (emphasis added).

The proof was even blunter in 2015. As the anti-Tory vote unified behind Justin Trudeau, immigrant-rich ridings that narrowly elected Conservatives four years ago due to vote splitting produced Liberal landslides this time. Kenney had simply taken credit for a short-lived fluke.

He's gaffe-prone

Kenney is a deeply confident man — though often about things he shouldn't be.

The supposed master of global cultures once sent outraged tweets of photos depicting Muslim women in chains not knowing they were participants in a religious play about slavery. As defense minister, he bragged Canada was the only country other than America with "smart bomb" technology, claimed a Canadian naval ship was "buzzed by Russian fighter jets," and boasted about being the "only Canadian minister who's been in Syria in four decades." All these cocksure assertions were completely false.

Kenney speaks with a brisk self-assurance that no doubt easily impresses the ill-informed. I'd prefer a leader who actually knows what he's talking about.

He's an odd duck

The next Tory leader should be human and relatable. Without putting too fine a point on it, Kenney is a weird little man.

He has a strange obsession with the British empire and often seems to regret that Canada is not still a colony. He insists on calling Canada Day "Dominion Day" (the name was changed when Kenney was 14), he's bragged that his redcoat ancestors fought on "the right side" of the American Revolution by opposing independence, and once mused that Canadian multiculturalism was "an inheritance of what was best about British liberal imperialism." Beyond colonial nostalgia and Canadian politics, he does not appear to have any identifiably humanoid hobbies or interests.

Kenney has never married, and has no children. A staunch Catholic, he proudly claims to be a 47-year-old virgin. There has been predictable gossip about this over the years, and while we shouldn't rush to dignify it, it is worth asking — as Warren Kinsella did in a 2013 column — if Canadians are going to easily warm to a nerdy, overweight bachelor when the other party has glamorous Justin Trudeau at the helm.

The media loves him

Kenney is unquestionably the media's choice for next Tory leader, and his praises have been sung in endless fawning profiles over the decade. Much of this is due to his various "ethnic outreach" initiatives, which the liberal press loves because it allows them to reenforce a narrative that "normal" conservatives are racist bigots, and Kenney is an exceptional outlier.

The media pushes Kenney as hard as it does not because most reporters or pundits honestly think he'd be a good or successful party leader, but simply because they believe all politicians bear moral obligation to bow at the shrines of open-borders immigration and anything-goes multiculturalism. Kenney gets brownie points for grinding against his own party's base, but Conservatives should know better than to take seriously an endorsement for party leader grounded in underlying contempt for the party itself.

 

Written by J.J McCullough