How the UCP paved the way for the nation-wide assault on trans students' rights

There's a direct line between Jason Kenney promoting parental notification for gay-straight alliances, and the ugly anti-trans policies of Blaine Higgs and Scott Moe.

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney greets New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs — the first premier to take up Kenney’s mantle of rolling back 2SLGBTQ+ rights in schools. (Facebook/Jason Kenney)

In my forthcoming book, Kenneyism: Jason Kenney’s Pursuit of Power, I detail how remarkably successful Kenney was throughout his career in inching the Canadian political dial rightwards.

Nowhere has this been more apparent in recent months than with New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs’ and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe’s all-out assault on transgender kids’ right to exist under the pretext of inalienable “parental rights.”

It was Kenney, as Alberta premier, who first proposed and passed legislation limiting the rights of 2SLGBTQ+ students in schools, using the precise rhetoric Higgs and Moe use today.