Kenney's Rule: Voters Are "Mainstream" When They Obey, "Fringe" When They Don't

By The Canadian Chronicle · Monday, October 26, 2026

Jason Kenney says principled conservatism means ignoring the "crazy fringe." His own results table says the centrist splinter outpolled the populist one. The difference isn't principle — it's who gets to decide.

Jason Kenney has some advice for conservative parties in this country: ignore your own voters — at least, the ones who organized without permission.

In a post on X on October 25, the former Alberta premier took aim at OneBC, the populist party that split from the BC Conservatives, calling it a "crazy right populist splinter party" made up of self-styled "real conservatives" with "weird obsessions & conspiracy theories: vaccines, ostrich farms, chem trails, xenophobia, MAGA North." He placed Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada in the same basket, urged Conservative parties to "ignore the crazy fringe of the hard populist right," and warned: "Don't let the tail wag the dog."

The results table Kenney attached to his own post tells a more interesting story than his sermon does. In the figures he shared, the Conservative Party of BC leads in 64 districts with 777,947 votes — 47.95 per cent. The BC NDP sits at 608,326 votes, 37.49 per cent. CentreBC, the centrist splinter, took 26,220 votes — 1.62 per cent. OneBC took 23,852 votes — 1.47 per cent, and no districts. Kenney's text rounded that down to "1.4%." Even his one hard number got a small shave on the way through.

Now, let's give the man his one true point, because it is true. OneBC is small. A party at 1.47 per cent does not get to set the conservative agenda for a province, and the BC Conservatives did not win by chasing it — they won, and won big, on their own campaign. Nobody serious is pretending otherwise, and we won't either.

But read his list again. Vaccines — shorthand for real, bitter fights over mandates and how far government power reaches into a person's body and livelihood. Ostrich farms — a real dispute in British Columbia over a federal order to cull a farm's flock, and whether the state should be able to do that over the owners' objections. Those are arguments about government power, and reasonable people can land on either side of them. Kenney doesn't argue them. He files them next to chem trails and xenophobia, so the label does the work the argument would have to. One basket, one adjective — crazy — and thousands of voters are dismissed without a single one of their grievances getting an answer.

And notice which splinter got the lecture. CentreBC actually outpolled OneBC on Kenney's own table — more votes, same zero districts — and it earned no sermon about fringes, tails, or dogs. A splinter to the centre is just politics. A splinter to the right is a pathology. The lectures only run one way, and they always have.

The People's Party isn't OneBC, and Bernier's voters aren't a BC splinter party's voters. Kenney equates them anyway — not with evidence, but with adjectives. That's the method, and the method is the story: conservatism is "principled" when it runs through the approved party, the approved people, and the approved boundaries — and it becomes a "fringe" the moment voters build something the establishment doesn't manage.

The Canadian Chronicle is not affiliated with any political party, and we don't carry water for one. We judge every party on the same principles: smaller government, lower taxes, law and order, controlled immigration, Canadian sovereignty, free speech, and respect for the people who actually cast the ballots. On those principles, a conservative movement that answers its own voters with contempt has failed before the first policy is even debated. Voters who organize outside the approved channels aren't a tail, and they aren't a fringe to be managed. They're citizens. They deserve an argument, not a label.

Not party loyalty. Principle. On this one, we stand with the PPC — and we'd say the same for any party Kenney aimed that sermon at.

The Canadian Chronicle replied to Kenney's post on X (from @DavidMilley22):

Conservatives aren't 'mainstream' when they obey and 'fringe' when they don't. His own table: CentreBC 1.62% > OneBC 1.47% — only one splinter gets lectured. Not party loyalty. Principle. We stand with @peoplespca.

This week from the PPC

By The Canadian Chronicle · Tuesday, October 27, 2026

One standard of justice: Bernier takes on race-based sentencing at the Supreme Court. Maxime Bernier (@MaximeBernier) posted on October 26 (19,736 views, 1,235 likes): "The Supreme Court has formally endorsed a sentencing regime in which punishment depends on your race." Writing about the Cope case — where the Court upheld a reduced sentence of three years, recommended by a sentencing circle, for an offender who assaulted his intimate partner, after a trial judge had imposed five years — Bernier argued that traditions should not override law written by Parliament, called the result a discount based on background, and wrote that the People's Party believes in "ONE STANDARD OF JUSTICE FOR EVERY CANADIAN." A French version of the same post followed four minutes later.

The party account (@peoplespca) posted four times on October 26: praising OneBC and Dallas Brodie for "expanding the Overton window" and telling discouraged volunteers their work mattered (its most-liked post of the day, 191 likes); calling a lobbying firm that boasts of working for both the BC Conservatives and the BC NDP proof of a "Uniparty" insider club; telling Conservatives who say "don't split the vote" before an election and "you're irrelevant" after it that "our principles don't disappear when the votes are counted"; and congratulating CPC MP Garnett Genuis on his seventh child while challenging him to demand stronger family protections, noting his party fast-tracked Bill C-4 despite parental-guidance concerns.

The sentencing argument is the same merit principle the PPC raised on October 24, when it argued that elevating race above merit now reaches criminal sentencing. The Chronicle's position is on the record: sentences should turn on the crime and the offender's actions, not on ancestry — one law, applied the same to everyone.