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

By The Canadian Chronicle · Monday, October 26, 2026

Analysis · The Canadian Chronicle

Published Monday, October 26, 2026 · Last updated 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.