Maclean's Interview: Jason Kenney - Now Partially Annotated

Since Kenneth Whyte's interview with Jason Kenney seems to have missed a few key points, I've taken the liberty of adding a touch of context to Kenney's first few answers.

Q: When you’re speaking at citizenship ceremonies, you tell new Canadians our history is now their history, that you don’t want Canada to be viewed as a hotel where people come and go with no abiding commitment to our past, or to citizenship. What is the meaning of our citizenship?

A: Legally speaking it gives people status in Canada and certain rights like voting, but I think we need to reclaim a deeper sense of citizenship, a sense of shared obligations to one another, to our past, as well as to the future. In that I mean a kind of civic nationalism where people understand the institutions, values and symbols that are rooted in our history.

In case it actually needs to be said, the government knowing or suspecting something about a Canadian citizen isn’t enough to essentially exile him. Ottawa’s incredibly churlish behaviour on this file—endlessly setting conditions, then arbitrarily changing them when they’re met—brings the very foundations of government and citizenship into disrepute. It has to stop.

Q: They don’t understand those things now?

A: Well, heck, if you look at polling data—there’s a massive historical amnesia about the Canadian past, and massive gaps of knowledge about our parliamentary institutions, our democratic procedures. There’s a massive civic illiteracy.

Just how valid is Harper's claim that changing governments without a new election would be undemocratic?

"It's politics, it's pure rhetoric," said Ned Franks, a retired Queen's University expert on parliamentary affairs. "Everything that's been happening is both legal and constitutional."

Other scholars are virtually unanimous in their agreement. They say Harper's populist theory of democracy is more suited to a U.S.-style presidential system, in which voters cast ballots directly for a national leader, than it is to Canadian parliamentary democracy.

Q: For old Canadians as well as new Canadians.

A: Yeah, for younger Canadians in particular, whether they’re new or well-established.

Audio recordings, photographs and documents that were leaked from a recent Conservative Party student workshop at the University of Waterloo expose a partisan attempt to take over student unions and undermine Ontario Public Interest Research Groups (OPIRGs) on campuses across Ontario.

At a session held in early February by the Ontario Progressive Campus Conservative Association (OPCCA) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, campus Conservatives, party campaigners, and a Member of Parliament discussed strategies to gain funding from student unions for the Conservative Party and ways to run for-and win-positions within student unions.
...
"Yeah we had a front group like that: the Campus Coalition for Liberty. It was really just a front for the Conservatives, but it gave us like two voices." said Lee-Wudrick.

He added: "Don't think that the Party doesn't like that, because they do. They're things that will help the Party, but it looks like it's an organically-grown organization and it just stimulated from the grassroots spontaneously. They love that stuff... Remember all of the Rallies for Democracy ... that's just an example of how big those things can get."

Q: But if the problem is general, why are we doing it as an immigration program?

A: Because I’m not in charge of the schools, I am in charge of the citizenship process.

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney made no apologies yesterday for ending the flow of funds to the Canadian Arab Federation...

CAF executive director Mohamed Boudjenane was surprised by the minister's comments, and surprised to learn about the end of funding for programs the organization runs to help settle newcomers and give them English lessons.

"We have a contract to provide English for newcomers," Boudjenane said. "The LINC (language instruction for newcomers to Canada) school and we have a workshop for newcomers. The agreement is until March 2010. I don't know what he is talking about," he said, adding that contracts were signed for two years.

Q: There are questions about civic literacy on the citizenship test. Are they inadequate?

A: It’s pretty weak. We’re reviewing the materials with a mind to improving the test to ensure that it demonstrates a real knowledge of Canadian institutions, values, and symbols, and history. Right now, if you look at the preparatory booklet for the test, there’s three sentences, I think, on Confederation history, and not one single sentence about Canadian military history. It’s bizarre to think that someone could become a Canadian citizen without ever being told what the poppy represents. It doesn’t even show up in the book but it talks about food processing in New Brunswick and how you recycle.

(Kenney) said the information booklet that leads to the citizenship test has a page on recycling, but he said he doesn’t recall seeing one paragraph on Confederation.

Really, minister? Here is the booklet. Flip to page 12.

Need we go on?