Jason Kenney

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says he doesn't need overwhelming support in a leadership review because the pool of voters has been diluted by thousands of ...

Kenney has framed the vote not as a yes-no referendum on whether he has done a good job, but rather as a takeover bid by fringe extremists and hate pedlars. His critics, including a number of his own backbenchers, say it’s about more than that. The party said it couldn’t logistically handle so many people. “I was involved with (former prime minister) Stephen Harper in helping to create the merger that led to the Conservative Party of Canada and a decade in office federally,” said Kenney. Former Alberta premier Ralph Klein left soon after receiving 55 per cent of the vote in 2006. Of that voting pool, Kenney said, a significant number signed up to cause harm to the big-tent conservative party he helped construct from the merger of the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties in 2017.

WATCH ABOVE: (From May 15, 2022) With the results of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's leadership review just days away, his political future hangs in the balance.

The issue boils down to trust and Kenney no longer has that, he said. The vote itself was drastically altered at the last minute from an in-person, one-day vote of 15,000 members to a mail-in ballot open to all members. Well, that’s going to lead to a purge in the party, either voluntarily walking, or him forcing people out.” Kenney has said if he gets any majority, even a slim one, he’ll stay on. “If he gets over 50 per cent and stays, the party continues to splinter.” “The divisions in the party and the province are profound.”

Jason Kenney and Jonathan Wilkinson are in Washington addressing a Senate energy and natural resources committee on the issue of energy security.

The Canadian government-owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project is expected to be finished late next year, and will add another 600,000 bpd, he said. Canada exports around 3.8 million bpd of oil to the United States and until recently faced pipeline constraints that left crude bottlenecked in Alberta. U.S. President Joe Biden revoked a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline in early 2021, infuriating the Canadian energy industry. Canada could add over a million barrels per day (bpd) of oil export capacity to the United States over the next two years, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney told a U.S. Senate committee on Tuesday, while also calling for a new cross-border oil pipeline.