I had a pretty good hunch that Jason Kenney would win the race to be selected as the leader of the Alberta Progressive Conservative (PC) party. All of the polling information I had read showed very strong support for his concept of uniting conservative voters into one party rather than splitting votes between the Wildrose party and Progressive Conservative party again. During the PC leadership race Jason Kenney spoke of building a big tent party that all conservative minded voters could support.
It came as a complete shock to me that the first notable thing that Jason Kenney did as the new leader of the PC party was to firmly stake his claim in social conservative territory. While talking about gay-straight alliances in an interview with the Calgary Herald he stated; “I do, however, believe parents have a right to know what’s going on with their kids in the schools unless the parents are abusive.”
That has given his critics and opponents all of the ammunition they need to accuse him wanting to force schools to “out” youth to their parents and drag up any and all social conservative comments and actions in his past politics. Leader of the Wildrose Party, Brian Jean has already stated that he disagrees with Kenney on this. David Eggen, Education Minister in the Alberta NDP government has responded that gay-straight alliances save lives and that notification to parents should not occur.
On the one hand, this is a free and democratic society and Jason Kenney has a right to his opinions as we all do. On the other hand, continuing on his current course is problematic for him because there aren’t enough social conservative voters to win the next Alberta election. Can he repair and maintain that big tent party vision he spoke of in the PC leadership race or is he already destined to a small social conservative pup tent?
