Jason Kenney is a man who loves to trumpet the importance of common sense.

He reveres the phrase so much you would think he was speaking about free markets and unbridled capitalism.  To him, the two are practically synonymous.  In his 2019 campaign platform, Kenney mentions common sense almost as much as he does cutting taxes, which really is saying something.  Just check out the document.

In the chapter on infrastructure spending, you can find Kenney promoting the need for "common-sense financing options like public-private sector partnerships."  On matters relating to K-12 curriculum reform, Kenney promises to "bring common sense to education."  And on environmental protection, Kenney pledges to implement a "Common Sense Conservation Plan" (which ironically, as we know now, doesn't include adequate funding for waterway monitoring, but does involve rescinding policies that protect the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains from destructive open-pit coal mining).

Heck, just last year, when the Federal Court of Appeal rejected legal challenges to the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline, Kenney hailed the decision as a "victory for common sense."

He reiterates the phrase so often, it is as if his NDP predecessors were all a bunch of fanatical, uncompromising zealots, incapable of good sense and sound judgement.

But of course, that is exactly what Kenney seeks to convey.  It is why he alleges so frequently that the NDP were, and continue to be, driven by radical ideology, as opposed to the sageness he himself displays whilst in office.

It is a rather fascinating observation.

For a man who loves to pronounce his devotion for prudence and level-headedness, he really has not demonstrated a whole lot of it as premier.

Under his tenure in government, Alberta has reverted away from the NDP's necessary and long-overdue efforts to tackle climate change and income inequality, and instead, implemented massive corporate tax cuts, reductions in social expenditures and the elimination of various environmental regulations, among other destructive, neo-liberal policies.  It is hardly the stuff of sensible decision-making.

Then there is the Keystone pipeline.

For more than a decade, now, Keystone XL has been mired in controversy.

Long before Kenney was ever Premier, and even before Rachel Notley was in office, significant opposition to the pipeline was mobilizing.  As far back as 2011, thousands of protesters chained themselves to the gates of the White House to oppose the construction of the pipeline.  Resistance to the project only increased in the years afterward, including from not environmental activists and their progressive allies, but also from many indigenous groups, and even some Texas and Nebraska ranchers.

With such intense lobbying against Keystone, it was hardly surprising when Barack Obama signed in the pipeline's first death knell in 2015, much to the joy of progressives, and eventually, the majority of the Democratic establishment.

Still, many conservatives, in both Canada and the U.S. held out hope for the project's resurrection.

And for a time, after Donald Trump's surprise 2016 election victory, they did have some reason for hope.

Yet if the project had even the slightest chance of coming to fruition, it required Trump's re-election; a prospect which appeared more and more unlikely as Trump increasingly lost favour with the American public, while the Democrats under Joe Biden, maintained a significant polling lead over their Republican opponents.

To any sane-minded politician, the project appeared like a non-starter.  It was simply far too financially risky (let alone environmentally hazardous), to be anything other than a likely sinkhole for investment dollars.

But not to Kenney.

Even with the regulatory challenges ahead (of which he had no control) as well as the high possibility of Biden securing the presidency and outright axing Keystone, Kenney still poured billions of Alberta tax dollars into the project.

While a final tally of the doomed investment is not yet known, we do know that at least $1.5 billion was invested in project equity, along with billions more in loan guarantees.

It was an example of irresponsible financial mismanagement at its very worst.  And one even more repugnant coming from a government that has justified spending cuts to some of the most vulnerable in society by claiming that such social spending is not currently feasible in Alberta.

Its utterly absurd.  And a complete insult to the everyday, working class Albertan.

The Alberta government has the money. Kenney just chooses to prioritize its spending on near-hopeless infrastructure projects, that even if implemented, would hinder meaningful action on climate change, over that of helping Albertans in need.

Despite all his big talk, Kenney's reckless investment in Keystone shows once again that he is clearly found wanting when it comes to common sense.