He went to high school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, at the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, a private Catholic high school, of which his father was president, in 1986. Kenney also attended St. Michaels University School in Victoria, British Columbia from 1982 to 1984.

The archbishop rejected the petition that summer, and Kenney never returned to finish his undergraduate philosophy degree. He left university without graduating to begin work for the Saskatchewan Liberal Party. He was “very involved in the young Liberals” as a young man, and in 1988 served as executive assistant to Ralph Goodale, who at the time was leader of the party. Not long after, in 1989, Kenney was hired as the first executive director of the Alberta Taxpayers Association, which advocated for fiscal responsibility. In 1990, Kenney was named president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Taxpayers, a self described taxpayers advocacy group that scrutinizes governmental expenditure with a conservative bias.

He voted against same-sex marriage as an MP, saying “A majority of Canadians support the provision of benefits on grounds such as domestic partnership relationships, which are grounded on unions of economic dependency rather than relationships of a mere conjugal nature, and yet still two-thirds of Canadians, from every culture that exists in this country, from every corner of the globe who have come to this country to build a future for themselves and their families, recognize that marriage is, as the Supreme Court said the last time it spoke to this issue in the Egan case in 1995, “by nature a heterosexual institution”.”

Kenney was first elected to the House of Commons in 1997, at the age of 29 as a member of the Reform Party of Canada. The Reform Party became the Canadian Alliance (2000–2003) and Kenney co-chaired the United Alternative Task Force. He served as the national co-chairman of Stockwell Day’s campaign for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance and National Co-Chair of the Canadian Alliance 2000 election campaign. While on the Opposition benches from 1997–2006, Kenney served in a number of prominent roles in the Shadow Cabinet, including Deputy House Leader for the Official Opposition, critic for Canada–United States relations, critic for National Revenue, and critic for Finance.

In 2002, Kenney received the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal

In 2004, Kenney was 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.

In January 2005, during a government trade mission in China, Kenney visited the family of recently deceased Zhao Ziyang, the deposed reformist critical of Maoist policies and supportive of free market reforms in China. Zhao, the former Premier of China and General Secretary of the Communist Party, was purged for sympathizing with pro-democracy protesters before they were crushed by the military at Tiananmen Square in 1989.

On February 6, 2006, he was appointed to be Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper.

In August 2006, Kenney compared Hezbollah with the Nazi Party of 1930s Germany when two opposition MPs suggested taking it off Canada’s list of terrorist organizations. He rebuked Prime Minister of Lebanon Fuad Saniora for having criticized Canada, reminding him of the $25 million in reconstructive assistance aid given by Canada to Lebanon.

Kenney was widely recognized for his central role in the Conservative Party’s successful 2011 election campaign, reaching out to ethnic minority voters, and the Conservative parliamentary majority that resulted. He has acknowledged publicly that his ongoing strategy of promoting conservative values and policies in government so as to capture the support of ethnic communities has been in the works since years prior to Stephen Harper first winning government in 2006. Kenney has also suggested that Stephen Harper was one of the first people he consulted with on the ethnic outreach strategy when the latter was still an opposition Canadian Alliance MP.

On January 4, 2007, he was sworn in as the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism and Canadian Identity, and as a Privy Councillor. In this capacity, Kenney was the Harper government’s representative to ethnic communities in Canada. In this role, Kenney made frequent appearances at ethnic community events across the country, hosted by groups as diverse as Koreans, Ahmadiyya Muslims, Chinese, Jews, Assyrians, South Asians, and Poles. The Toronto Star has noted some of the more frequently visited groups in the GTA, which also include the Caribbean community, Persians, Filipinos, and Vietnamese.

In early 2008, Kenney posted an announcement on his web site announcing that the Government of Canada recognizes the flag of the Republic of Vietnam as the symbol of the Vietnamese-Canadian community. He said “Our government recognises the flag as an important symbol of the Vietnamese-Canadian community’s independence, strength, and belief in national unity, and attempts to disparage it are a deeply troubling attack on one of Canada’s ethnic communities and on the principles of multiculturalism.” In May 2008, he made a speech at one of their rallies lending strong support to their program.

In May 2008, Kenney launched the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP) which established 13.5 million dollars in funding over five years for commemorative projects for use by ethno-cultural communities such as the Italian, Jewish, Indian, and Chinese communities that had been the targets of discriminatory Canadian immigration and wartime policies. By the project’s conclusion in 2013, all the money had been spent except for half a million dollars earmarked for education about the Chinese head tax was left unspent when one Chinese community group failed to file the required paperwork while others underspent; that money was clawed back into government revenue. Because more than thirty other projects involving the Chinese-Canadian community had been funded through the CHRP, Kenney considered the project a success and declined to release the funding, citing the conclusion of the program. In 2013, Kenney said in his remarks on the end of the CHRP program that the government was “committed to recognizing and educating Canadians about the experiences of those pioneers who overcame such heavy burdens. Their experiences mark an unfortunate period in our nation’s history. We must ensure that they are never forgotten.”

In 2008, Jason Kenney became Minister of Citizenship and Immigration in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Cabinet shuffle of October 30, retaining responsibility for multiculturalism, which he had been given in 2007.

In April 2009, Kenney officially launched Asian Heritage Month to “better understand the rich diversity the Asian Canadian community brings to Canada”. Kenney noted that:

Kenney, speaking in Jerusalem in December 2009 about Canadian government funding of human rights organizations, said “We have de-funded organizations, most recently, like KAIROS who are taking a leadership role in the boycott [of Israel]. We’re receiving a lot of criticism for these decisions … but we believe we have done these things for the right reasons, and we stand by these decisions.” He later added in a letter to the Toronto Star that “While I disagree with the nature of KAIROS’s militant stance toward the Jewish homeland, that is not the reason their request for taxpayer funding was denied.”

In January 2009, Kenney made public statements critical of U.S. soldiers seeking asylum in Canada who were facing punishment for their refusal to participate in the Iraq war. He said that unlike in the Vietnam era, the current asylum seekers are neither “draft dodgers” nor “resisters”, but rather are “people who volunteer to serve in the armed forces of a democratic country and simply change their mind to desert. And that’s fine, that’s the decision they have made, but they are not refugees.” He also said that he considered them to be “bogus refugee claimants”. These remarks have been seen by some supporters of the asylum seekers as being a form of interference in the asylum process. He believed that Kimberly Rivera, an American soldier seeking refuge was not a legitimate refugee. “Military deserters from the United States are not genuine refugees under the internationally accepted meaning of the term,” said Alexis Pavlich, the minister’s press secretary.

Earlier, in March 2009, the Canada Border Services Agency prevented British politician George Galloway from entering Canada, where he had planned to give a series of speeches against the war in Afghanistan. The Immigration Minister’s Office stated that the Canada Border Services Agency deemed Galloway as inadmissible to Canada due to national security concerns. Galloway had openly given what he called “financial support” to Hamas, classified as a terrorist group in Canada.

A new law amending the Citizenship Act came into effect on April 17, 2009. One of the changes instituted by the Government of Canada is the “first generation limitation”, considered a punitive measure by some against naturalized citizens who reside abroad for lengthy periods of time. Minister Kenney said the following in the House of Commons of Canada on June 10, 2010: “That’s why we must protect the values of Canadian citizenship and must take steps against those who would cheapen it … We will strengthen the new limitation on the ability to acquire citizenship for the second generation born abroad.” The new rules would not confer a Canadian citizenship on children born outside of Canada to parents who were also born outside of Canada. Thus for children to obtain Canadian citizenship if born abroad, they would have to have one parent who was born in Canada. Another effect of this law was to abolish automatic Citizenship by birth for the children of parents in Canada in the service of a foreign government. Children born to foreign diplomats in Canada would only become Canadian if at least one parent was either a Canadian citizen or a Permanent Resident.

On May 13, 2009, Maclean’s magazine, in association with the Dominion Institute, L’actualité and presenting sponsor Enbridge presented Kenney with the award for “Best Overall MP”.

In 2010, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney blocked any reference to gay rights in a new study guide for immigrants applying for Canadian citizenship. Internal documents show an early draft of the guide contained sections noting that homosexuality was decriminalized in 1969. But Kenney, who fought same-sex marriage when it was debated in Parliament, ordered those key sections removed when his office sent its comments to the department.

On June 26, 2010, Kenney announced changes to the Skilled Worker Immigration Program. For their applications to be processed, skilled worker applicants are now required to either have an offer of arranged employment, or be qualified in one of 29 eligible occupations (out of 520 occupations described in the National Occupational Classification (NOC), a standardized framework for organizing information about jobs into a coherent system). A cap of 20,000 applications per year for the skilled workers class was also introduced. As of July 1, 2011, a maximum of 10,000 Federal Skilled Worker applications will be considered for processing in the subsequent 12 months. Within the 10,000 cap, a maximum of 500 federal skilled worker applications per eligible occupation will be considered for processing each year.

In 2010, Kenney introduced Discover Canada, a new citizenship guide for prospective citizens. The Canadian Press reported that Kenney blocked information about same-sex marriage from the Citizenship and Immigration study guide for immigrants applying for citizenship, although a sentence was included in a 2011 revision. The revised edition also added information about arts and culture, the War of 1812, and an admonition against importing “violent, extreme or hateful prejudices” to Canada.

On March 29, 2010, Kenney announced an overhaul of the Canadian refugee system. The reform package also committed to allowing the resettlement of 2,500 more refugees living in UN refugee camps and urban slums. The plan also included expansion of the Government-Assisted Refugees Program to 500 places while a further 2,000 resettlement places were added to the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. In total, the new plan would lead to the resettlement of 14,500 UN-selected refugees from refugee camps and urban slums to Canada.

In 2011, he imposed a ban on niqab face veils for those taking the oath of citizenship. In his appeal on behalf of Department of Citizenship and Immigration in Citizenship and Immigration v Ishaq, 2015 FCA 194, the three justices ruled in favour of Zunera Ishaq and her right to wear the niqab confirming that the federal requirement was unlawful.

On July 19, 2011, Kenney announced that the government intends to revoke the citizenship of 1,800 people it believes obtained their status through fraudulent means. The decision to revoke Canadian citizenship is rare, and a large-scale proposed crackdown had no precedent. Fewer than 70 citizenships have been revoked since the 1946 Citizenship Act.

Kenney’s ethnic outreach strategy was also evident when in early 2011, a letter using government stationery was sent to Conservative riding associations seeking assistance in raising $200,000 funding for an ad campaign aimed at bolstering support among ethnic communities in ridings that the Conservatives are targeting in the next election. News of this broke when a copy was believed to have been mistakenly sent to the office of opposition MP Linda Duncan instead of that of fellow Conservative MP John Duncan (no relation). This led to criticism over the letter’s labelling of certain groups and ridings as “ethnic” or “very ethnic”. Kenney publicly apologized for the mailing error, citing a staffer’s inexperience as the explanation.

As part of Kenney’s Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, introduced in June 2012, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism would have the ability to deny entry to Canada based on “public police considerations. He was quoted in The Globe and Mail saying that present immigration laws do not allow someone to be kept out if they are seeking to promote violence. The previous year, both the official opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) and Quebec’s National Assembly had asked Kenney to exercise negative discretion but no such ability existed under Canadian law. During debate in the House of Commons, the NDP criticized this component of the bill, arguing it gives too much power to the minister.

“Protecting Canada’s Immigration System Act”, or Bill C-31, “An Act to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other acts”, was introduced on February 16, 2012, and received Royal Assent on June 28, 2012. It has been broadly criticized as it “gives Ministers broad, unfettered and unprecedented powers” among other new powers. It was sponsored by Kenney.

Responding to feedback in townhalls and public consultations, Kenney took steps in 2012 to fight against marriage fraud. Many cases had arisen in which Canadians had been taken advantage of by would-be spouses simply to facilitate their entry into Canada. These Canadian victims’ trust in their supposed husband or wife was violated for fraudulent immigration purposes. Once status was acquired in Canada the prospective spouse would leave the Canadian spouse who had sponsored him in, revealing their marriage to have been a lie. Kenney instituted a five-year bar or prohibition on spousal sponsorship for those who had already been sponsored by a spouse into Canada.

In 2012, he received the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal

On November 4, 2012 He received the Honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) by the University of Haifa.

Following up on a Conservative campaign promise from the 2011 Canadian federal election, Kenney initiated the creation of the Office of Religious Freedom, an agency of Foreign Affairs Canada, to monitor religious oppression domestically and promote religious freedom internationally. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair endorsed the office in a visit to Canada in 2013, saying, “I think it shows leadership from Canada. And Canada, by the way, in many ways is a perfect place from which to promote this ideal because of the complexion of the country.” The Liberal government which formed after the 2015 Canadian federal election closed the office in 2016.

Kenney reached an agreement with provincial and territorial counterparts—except Quebec—to implement the Canada Job Grant, which aims to train unemployed workers who do not qualify for employment insurance, over the next four years in January 2014. The final agreement provided more flexibility for the provinces and territories than in the initial proposal in 2013, which had been rejected by all Kenney’s counterparts for its “take it or leave it” nature – potentially forcing the provincial and territories to forgo $300 million of the $500 million in federal funding provided to them by Labour Market Agreements if they did not accept the plan. Two and a half million dollars were spent on ads for the program during expensive Stanley Cup playoffs television spots in 2013 and 2014, even before the details of the federal-provincial agreements were finalized or approved, which prompted Advertising Standards Canada to label them as “misleading”.

In 2014, Kenney received the UN Watch Moral Courage Award for speaking out for those who had been victimized by international tyranny. At the ceremony in Geneva, representatives of the 14th Dalai Lama presented Kenney with a traditional Tibetan scarf. Also in 2014, Kenney was awarded the inaugural Benjamin Disraeli Prize by Policy Exchange, a centre-right UK think tank, in recognition of the successful outreach to Canada’s ethnic and cultural communities. The award was presented by British Conservative cabinet minister Michael Gove.

In February 2015, Kenney was promoted to Minister of Defence after a cabinet shuffle in which Foreign Minister John Baird left federal politics, and former Defence Minister Rob Nicholson became Foreign Minister. While Minister of Defense, Kenney took a hard-line approach to security, saying it was necessary for Canada to fight against Islamic State militants to prevent them from becoming a threat to Canada.

In mid-March 2015, Kenney claimed that Russian warships had confronted ships of the Royal Canadian Navy and that Russian fighters had buzzed HMCS Fredericton at low altitude while it participated in a NATO maritime task force off the coast of Ukraine as part of a mission against Russian intervention in the country. NATO officials later stated that Russian ships could be seen on the horizon, but never approached the NATO fleet and that all flyovers of the fleet by Russian planes had been at high altitudes.

Also in March 2015, Kenney faced criticism for tweeting photos purporting to be of ISIS enslaving girls. One of the images was taken years before ISIS came into existence and appeared to be from an Ashura procession; another turned out to be a picture staged in London, England, by actors.

In April 2015, Kenney announced that troops from the Canadian Armed Forces would be sent to Ukraine as trainers for Ukrainian forces as part of Operation UNIFIER. The soldiers, who arrived in September 2015, were from 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (2 CMBG) and were stationed in at the Ukrainian Armed Forces International Peacekeeping and Security Centre near the Polish-Ukrainian border at Yavoriv.

In May 2015, after a report was published on sexual misconduct in the Canadian Forces, Kenney promised that an independent centre at arm’s length from the military would be formed to hear complaints of sexual misconduct in the military and provide support and resources for victims.

In 2016, Kenney supported the removal of “traditional definition of marriage” from the conservative party policy book.

In August 2016, President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine awarded Jason Kenney with Order of Merit, Third Class.

The Conservatives were defeated at the 2015 Canadian federal election, though Kenney was reelected in Calgary Midnapore, essentially a reconfigured version of his old riding. Kenney was named to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. Kenney was long considered a likely candidate to succeed Stephen Harper as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and had been mentioned as a prospective candidate and presumed frontrunner in the next leadership election to be held in 2017, His name has also been mentioned as a prospective leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta who could potentially unite the rival Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties. On July 6, 2016, Kenney announced that he would be seeking the leadership of the Alberta PC Party, citing his desire to unite Alberta’s two major centre-right parties. On July 7, 2016, Kenney announced that he would resign his seat in the House of Commons within three months once the leadership campaign period officially opened, which was severely criticized by his former employer the Canadian Taxpayers Federation for misusing taxpayer dollars. He officially resigned September 23.

Kenney was elected leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta on March 18, 2017, with more than 75% of the delegate votes on the first ballot. He pledged to unite the party with the rival Wildrose Party in a provincial analogue of the federal Unite the Right movement. The PC and Wildrose party announced a merger deal which was completed on July 24, 2017.

On October 28, 2017, Kenney was elected as the first full-time leader of the new United Conservative Party of Alberta. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the riding of Calgary-Lougheed in a by-election held on December 14, 2017, after MLA Dave Rodney resigned his seat in order to create a vacancy for Kenney. Normal practice in the Westminster system calls for an MP holding a safe seat to resign in order to give a newly elected leader a chance to enter the legislature.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Alberta Election Commissioner are investigating allegations that Jason Kenney and his team were involved in orchestrating Jeff Callaway’s campaign for the leadership of the United Conservative Party in an attempt to harm Kenney’s biggest rival, Brian Jean. Documents obtained by The Star confirm that Kenney’s campaign controlled major aspects of Callaway’s campaign, including the providing of strategic plans, attack ads, speeches, and talking points intended to discredit Jean. These documents have since been handed over the election commissioner, according to Callaway’s former campaign manager, Cameron Davies. Davies also said that Kenney had attended a meeting at Callaway’s house in July 2017 where the “kamikaze campaign” was discussed and that Kenney had first-hand knowledge of this strategy.

A leaked document alleged that Jason Kenney’s team first approached Derek Fildebrandt in July 2017 about running a “dark-horse” campaign but ultimately decided against working with him. Fildebrandt confirmed this account but stated that it was he who rejected the idea.

CBC News and CTV News have received documents indicating that fraudulent e-mail addresses attached to party memberships were used to cast ballots in the party’s leadership race in 2017, which Jason Kenney won. CBC News picked a sample of e-mail addresses based on suspicious domains, and determined that 60% of those were used to cast ballots in the leadership election.

Kenney is an anti-abortion politician, voting in favour of abortion restrictions and receiving an endorsement from the socially conservative lobbyist group Campaign Life Coalition. In 2018, a bill to create “no-protest zones” around abortion clinics was introduced to the Alberta legislature following similar legislation in place in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Newfoundland and Labrador. As leader of the United Conservative Party, Kenney refused to debate on the bill and led his caucus to walkout of the house 14 times over the course of two months when the bill was at issue.

In November 2018, Kenney faced pressure to expel an outspoken member of the United Conservative Party who compared the gay pride flag to the flag of Nazi Germany. Although Kenney had previously directed the party to cancel the membership of another member, he said that the decision to expel members rested with the party’s board.

A two-decade-old audio recording surfaced in December 2018 of Kenney boasting about overturning a gay marriage law in 1989 in San Francisco. Kenney was referring to his role in organizing a petition to repeal the city ordinance that extended recognition rights of heterosexual couples to same-sex couples. This ordinance, originating during the 1980s AIDS epidemic, extended rights that were previously exclusive to heterosexual couples, such as hospital visitation, to same-sex couples. Kenney addressed the audio clip by stating that he regrets the comments he made and that since then, his record shows he supports domestic partner arrangements and benefits for couples regardless of sexual orientation. The comments led to backlash from outside and within the United Conservative Party; leading a board member and campaign manager for the party to resign his positions and membership with the party, citing the audio recording of Kenney as his reason for departure. However, Kenney has stated that he supports those issues.

Under the leadership of Kenney, the United Conservative Party won a majority government in the 2019 Alberta general election which was held on On April 16, 2019. They won 63 seats and 54.88% of the popular vote. The premiership of Jason Kenney began on April 30, 2019 when was sworn in by Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, Lois Mitchell forming the 30th Alberta Legislature—becoming the 18th Premier of Alberta.

During the 1st Session of the 30th Alberta Legislature the Kenney government passed about dozens of pieces of legislation, including the Act to Repeal the Carbon Tax, the Alberta Corporate Tax Amendment, and the Public Sector Wage Arbitration Deferral Act, Premier Kenney established a one-year $2.5 million Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns and a Calgary-based $30 million ‘war room’ to “fight misinformation related to oil and gas”. They announced their first provincial budget on October 24, 2019 which fulfilled their “promise of slight austerity” with “cuts to spending programs and the elimination of hundreds of bureaucracy jobs”, according to The National Post. The Post said that these and the corporate tax cuts “were the key planks of a four-year plan to bring the budget into balance.” The goal is to reduce government spending by $4-billion over four years.