Jason Kenney

Jason Kenney served as Premier of Alberta from 2019 to 2022 and his tenure will be remembered as a masterclass in how not to manage a public health crisis. His "Open for Summer" reopening strategy in the summer of 2021 — which he announced at a rooftop BBQ — preceded one of the worst COVID waves in Canada, with Alberta's hospitals overwhelmed to the point that the Canadian military was called in to help, and patients were being transferred to other provinces because Alberta's ICUs had run out of capacity. This was a failure of governance so complete that it is difficult to fully describe. Kenney had received expert advice about the risks of rapid reopening. He overrode it for political reasons, calculated that his base wanted to be done with restrictions, and gambled with the lives of Albertans. He lost that gamble and Albertans paid for it. Before the pandemic, he came to office promising to create 55,000 jobs in 90 days with his corporate tax cut. He cut corporate taxes. The jobs did not materialize — oil prices fell and investment moved regardless of the provincial rate. He cut $700 million from education — including $128M from post-secondary — during a period when Albertans needed more skills development, not less. He picked fights with doctors (alongside Tyler Shandro) that damaged physician retention in a province that was already short of healthcare workers. He resigned in May 2022 after winning a leadership review with only 51% support — a result that, in any functioning democracy, effectively ends a leader's mandate. The province that fired him was making the right call.