Jason Kenney

Infobox CanadianMP
honorific-prefix = The Honourable
name = Jason T. Kenney
honorific-suffix =
PC, MP


imagesize = 150px
riding = Calgary Southeast
parliament = Canadian
term_start = 1997 federal election
term_end =
predecessor = Jan Brown
successor =
birth_date = birth date and age|1968|5|30
birth_place = Oakville, Ontario
death_date =
death_place =
party = Conservative
otherparty = Reform (1997-2000)
Canadian Alliance (2000-2003)
portfolio = Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity
spouse = single
profession = Political advisor
residence = Calgary, Alberta
religion =
footnotes =

Jason T. Kenney, PC, MP (born May 30, 1968 in Oakville, Ontario) is a Canadian Member of Parliament. He has represented the riding of Calgary Southeast in the Canadian House of Commons since 1997. Initially elected as a candidate of the Reform Party of Canada, Kenney was re-elected as a Canadian Alliance candidate in 2000, and has since been re-elected twice as the candidate of the Conservative Party of Canada. Following the Conservative victory in the 2006 general election, Kenney was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada. On 4 January 2007, he was sworn in as the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, and as a Privy Councillor.

Education and early life

Kenney was born in Ontario and raised in Saskatchewan. He graduated from the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a Catholic residential college located in Wilcox, Saskatchewan. He studied philosophy at the St. Ignatius Institute of the University of San Francisco, a private Roman Catholic university founded by the Society of Jesus, however, Kenney dropped out before completing his undergraduate degree to begin work in Saskatchewan provincial politics.

Political career

Kenney was originally a member of the Saskatchewan Liberal Party, and in 1988 he served as an executive assistant to Ralph Goodale, who at that time was party leader. Kenney later served a term as Executive Director of the Alberta Taxpayers Association, and President and CEO of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a political advocacy organization.

He was a member of the Reform Party of Canada (1997-2000), which became the Canadian Alliance (2000-2003). He co-chaired the United Alternative Task Force, and served as the national co-chairman of Stockwell Day's campaign for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance. He also served as National Co-Chair of the Canadian Alliance 2000 election campaign. While on the Opposition benches in 1997-2005, Kenney served in a number of prominent roles in the Shadow Cabinet, including Deputy House Leader for the Official Opposition, critic for Canada-United States relations, critic for National Revenue, and critic for Finance.

He has also served as a volunteer director for several non-profit political organizations. These include the [http://www.ccrl.ca/ Catholic Civil Rights League] and the National Foundation for Family Research.

Kenney has been named one of Canada’s "100 Leaders of the Future" by "Maclean's" magazine, "one of Canada’s leading conservative activists" by the "Globe and Mail", and "one of 21 Canadians to watch in the 21st century" by the "Financial Post" magazine.

Kenney was one of the leading supporters in the Canadian House of Commons of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In 2005, during parliamentary debate on same-sex marriage in Canada, Kenney was criticized for attempting to show that fellow MPs Libby Davies and Svend Robinson, both of whom had opposite sex relationships before coming out, were proof that marriage law doesn't discriminate against LGBT individuals since they can still marry members of the opposite sex.

In a later debate, when Don Boudria noted that a Christian group had registered a web domain in his name, using it to attack his position on same-sex marriage, Kenney criticized Boudria for being too "ignorant" to register his own web domain. In a spoof of Kenney's remarks, comedian Rick Mercer created [http://jasonkenney.org jasonkenney.org] . Mercer made the domain redirect to the website of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, and subsequently changed it to Egale Canada and more recently to the site of Michael Chong (a Conservative MP who resigned from cabinet on November 27, 2006 over a government motion recognizing the Québécois as a nation within a united Canada.)

Kenney has also been active in promoting human rights (particularly freedom of religion) in autocratic countries. He is a member of Parliament's Canada-Tibet Committee, and was instrumental in causing honorary Canadian citizenship to be granted to the Dalai Lama in June 2006.fact|date=July 2008 | How was he instrumental?

In January 2005, during a government trade mission in China, Kenney visited the home of recently deceased Zhao Ziyang, the deposed Communist party chief. Zhao was a reformist purged for sympathizing with pro-democracy protesters before they were crushed by the military in 1989.

Then-Prime Minister Paul Martin, who also attended the Chinese trade mission, was critical of him for this visit which made Kenney the first and only western politician to pay respect to late pro-democracy leader.

On February 6, 2006 he was appointed to be Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper, with the portfolio of multiculturalism.

In August 2006, Kenney compared Hezbollah with the Nazi Party of 1930s Germany. He also rebuked Prime Minister of Lebanon Fuad Saniora for having criticized Canada's support for Israel in the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. Saniora had argued that most nations of the world, apart from Canada, regarded Israel's military actions in Lebanon as disproportionate. Kenney's response was, "Canada took a responsible position and I would hope that the Lebanese prime minister would express gratitude". [http://www.embassymag.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2006/august/23/lebanon/]

In April 2006, Kenney attended a rally supporting the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a group designated by Canadian federal legislation and UN agreements as a terrorist organization because it advocates the violent overthrow of the Iranian government and the purging of Western influence from the region. Kenney later claimed that he did not remember attending the rally, and then that he did not know at the time the group was connected to a terrorist organization. [cite web |url = http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060824/kenney_rally_060824/20060824?hub=Canada |title = Tory MP attended rally for group on terror list.| publisher = CTV News | accessdate = 2006-09-24]

In May-June 2007 Kenney attended the 2007 Bilderberg Meeting in Istanbul, Turkey with other Notable Canadians Heather Reisman, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc.,,, and Gerald Butts, Principal Secretary in the Office of the Premier of Ontario [" [http://www.canadianactionparty.ca/cgi/page.cgi?aid=920&_id=128&zine=show Bilderberg 2007 - Towards a One World Empire?] " (Canadian Action Party, 2007)]

In early 2008, Kenney openly supported Progressive Conservative candidate Jonathan Denis, who later became the MLA for Calgary-Egmont, defeating Liberal Cathie Williams by a large margin. The independent, Craig Chandler, came in a distant third.

References

External links

* [http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/key/bio.asp?lang=E&query=9124&s=M Political Biography from the Library of Parliament]
* [http://www.jasonkenney.com/ Official website]