Jason Kenney

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Jason Kenney (born May 30, 1968 in Oakville, Ontario) is a Canadian politician. He is a member of the Conservative Party of Canada in the Canadian House of Commons, representing the riding of Calgary Southeast since 1997. Kenney is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada.

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 did undergraduate studies in philosophy at the St. Ignatius Institue of the University of San Francisco, a private Roman Catholic university founded by the Society of Jesus.

In 1988 and 1989 Kenney served as an executive assistant to the leader of the Saskatchewan Liberal Party. In 1988 the leader was Ralph Goodale, and in 1989 it was Lynda Haverstock. Kenney's prior experience also includes a term as the president of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a taxpayer advocacy organization.

He was originally a member of the Reform Party of Canada (1997-2000), and then the Canadian Alliance (2000-2003). He served as the national chairman for Stockwell Day's leadership campaign. Kenney has also served as the official opposition deputy house leader and has formerly been the critic for Canada-United States relations, national revenue, and finance.

He has also served as a volunteer director for several non-profit organizations. These include the 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 cited fellow MPs Libby Davies and Svend Robinson, both of whom had opposite sex relationships before coming out, as proof that marriage law doesn't discriminate against LGBT individuals since they can still marry members of the opposite sex. Kenney was widely criticized for his comments.

In a later debate, 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, and Kenney criticized Boudria for being too "ignorant" to register his own web domain. In a spoof of Kenney's remarks, comedian Rick Mercer created www.jasonkenney.org. Mercer made the domain redirect to the website of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada, and subsequently changed it to Egale Canada.

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.

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.

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