Angry in the Great White North

a heat-seeking missile in the Conservative arsenal

Jason Kenney's speech at the Conservative Convention covered by the press:

The route to a majority government lies in the Conservative party's appeal to ethnic voters and new Canadians, says Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

In a speech here tonight, Kenney laid out just how the party broadened its appeal to visible minority groups, and broke what he has described as 30-year patterns of voting support for Liberals that spanned two to three generations.

Kenney said the party is building a "big Blue Machine" of workers and volunteers to deliver even more new Canadian votes in the next election.

"Thanks to this, no Liberal seat in metro Toronto is a safe seat anymore. In the next election, the Liberals are going to have to defend every last one of them."

I think the media has been doing a good job, but perhaps you might be interested in the full speech as it was delivered.  It's powerful stuff:

Thank-you, friends.  Merci Beaucoup.

First of all, on my behalf of all of my caucus colleagues, let me thank all of the delegates and volunteers here today, and the grassroots Conservatives across Canada who you represent.

Those of you who have donated your time, your treasure and your talent to our party are, truly, the unsung heroes of our election victory.

Vous autres - les benevoles, les militants, les candidats, sont les responsables pour notre victoire historique.

Last night the Prime Minister spoke about what we achieved in this election.

He called it an historic victory.

He reminded us this, the Party of Confederation, is once more Canada's Party.

Is nous a rapelle que ce parti, le parti de Confederation, est le parti du Canada.

Nous savons que notre parti represent les meilleurs valeurs et les aspirations les plus eleves des canadiens.

We know that our party represents the best values and the highest aspirations of Canadians.

Enterprise and freedom.

Hard work, and personal responsibility

Family and community.

And equality of opportunity for all.

That became even more clear in this election.

In growing numbers, and in important new ways, the Conservative coalition is becoming broader and deeper.

We grew our vote with women, and we elected the largest number of women MPs in the history of our party.

We can see that right here in Manitoba, where nearly half of our caucus are strong, principled Conservative women, like Joy Smith, Candace Heppner, and Shelly Glover.

And a message to our Liberal friends: these strong women didn't need quotas, set-asides, or appointments to get elected.  They did it through their own hard work and tenacity!

And the Prime Minister followed through on this party's long tradition of advancing the role of women in public life by appointing the largest share of women ever to a federal cabinet, with energetic new ministers like Lisa Raitt, Lynne Yelich, and Gail Shea.

Friends, we also saw our support continue to grow in urban Canada, from Quebec City to North Vancouver.

And we demonstrated again that our party is the real voice of young Canadians.

On a demontre a nouveau que nous sommes la voix des jeunes canadiens et canadiennes.

We once more elected the youngest caucus in Parliament, with several MPs in their twenties.

Folks, while the Liberals tell young Canadians to go and make busy in the sandbox of youth politics,  Conservatives welcome the energy and idealism of young people right into the halls of power!

That's exactly what the Prime Minister did when he appointed my 32- year old colleague James Moore Minister of Canadian Heritage, and Parliament's youngest MP, Pierre Poilievre, as his own Parliamentary Secretary.

Nous avons renforce que nous sommes le parti des francophones hors du Quebec, dans les comptes comme Glengarry Prescott Russel, Ottawa Orleans, et St. Boniface, qui etataient liberal Presque depuis la Confederation.

Nous avons realise les perces historique au nord du Canada, au Nunavit, Kenora Rainy River et le nord Saskatchewan.

And those gains were in part because, more and more, members of our first nations are seeing that the Conservative Party best represents their values and interests.  Thanks to the hard work of Aboriginal Affairs ministers Jim Prentice and Chuck Strahl, we have replaced cynical and empty Liberal talk with real action to improve the lives of Canada's first peoples.

Perhaps that helps to explain why we are the first federal caucus ever to include an aboriginal Canadian in MP Rob Clark, Metis Canadians like Shelly Glover and Rod Bruinooge, and Canada's first Inuit cabinet minister, Leona Agukklaq!

Mais, avec toutes ces realizations importantes, le premier minister a mis l'accent sur la percee peut-etre la plus importante: que nous sommes en train de remplacer les libereaux parmi les nouveux canadiens.

But of all of these breakthroughs, perhaps the single most important, with the biggest long-term implications for Canadian democracy, was our historic breakthrough amongst new Canadians.

Here is a truth that strikes panic into the heart of every Liberal:  the Conservative Party is fast becoming the number one choice among first and second generation Canadians!

Friends, something's happening here.

Something important, and exciting.

In ridings with diverse populations, Conservative MPs were elected or returned in overwhelming numbers.

In fact, our biggest increase in support in the last election was actually in the most Canada's most ethnically diverse ridings.

In Richmond, a Vancouver suburb, my parliamentary secretary the tenacious Alice Wong beat a sitting MP and former Liberal cabinet minister.

Nearly 70% of Alice's constituents are immigrants.  More than 50% are of Chinese ancestry.  And Alice won with nearly fifty percent of the vote!

Right next door, in Vancouver South, our energetic candidate Wai Young came within twenty votes of winning a similarly diverse riding, against a former Premier.

The brilliant Yonah Martin rallied the Korean community throughout the lower mainland to the Conservative cause, and nearly won in New Westminster Burnaby.

John Weston swept West Vancouver, reaching out to diverse cultural communities.  And by reaching out, I mean speaking Mandarin, learning Farsi, and earning his black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

On the other side of the country, Parm Gill came within 400 votes of winning Brampton Springdale, a riding with one of the largest south asian populations in Canada.

Bob Dechert broke through in Missassauga Erindale, thanks to huge support from the Polish, Croatian, Coptic, Filipino, and other communities.

And our candidates Joe Oliver and Rochelle Wilner came within an inch of winning against former Liberal ministers in the heart of Toronto.

And we're doing more than just winning votes in these ridings.

We're building a strong party organisation, a "Big Blue Machine" of volunteers, activists, supporters and donors that will keep the Conservative Party visible in cultural communities until the next election.

Nous bâtissons une solide organisation, une « grosse machine bleue » de bénévoles, de militants, de partisans et de donateurs qui garderont le Parti conservateur bien visible dans les communautés culturelles jusqu'aux prochaines élections.

Thanks to this, no Liberal seat in metro Toronto is a safe seat anymore. In the next election, the Liberals are going to have to defend every last one of them.

So how did we do it?

Curry in a hurry

Just between us, I'll let you in on our confidential strategy to appeal to new Canadians.

It's top secret.

Here it is.

Our strategy is simple.  It's to take millions of new small-c conservatives, and turn them into Big-C Conservatives.

It's to get people to align their votes with their values.

It's to listen to people, take them seriously, treat them with respect, and actually defend their values and interests.

In other words, its the opposite of the Liberal approach, which is to take for granted the support of new Canadians, because, after all the Liberals are "ENTITLED" to it.

To belittle and disregard the values of new Canadians, their belief in family, enterprise, law and order.

You may have heard that my colleague Rahim Jaffer dubbed me the "Minister for Curry in a Hurry" because of the pounds I've added on the so-called "rubber curry circuit."

But we did not succeed because we attended more community events than the Liberals did—though I suspect both are probably true.

We made inroads with different communities because we did something the Liberals never did.

We listened to their concerns, and then we acted on them.

Nous avons fait des percées dans différentes communautés parce que nous avons fait quelque chose que les Libéraux n'ont jamais fait.

Nous avons écouté leurs préoccupations, et nous y avons donné suite.

The previous Liberal government imposed a deeply unpopular $975 tax on every new permanent resident. We cut that tax in half.

In the 1990s, the Liberals closed the door on hundreds of Vietnamese who had fled to the Philippines to escape communist persecution. Our Conservative government, upon coming to office, allowed these victims of communism to come to Canada, and we are working with the 200,000-strong Vietnamese-Canadian community to give them a better life.

And we lifted travel visa requirements for several Eastern European countries that are supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. In doing so, we made it easier for grandparents, aunts, and uncles from democratic allies like Poland to attend family weddings, and graduation ceremonies, with their relatives here in Canada.

This is more than just good politics; it's good public policy.

We came to office determined to offer cultural communities a better deal and, unlike the Liberals, we delivered.

We succeeded in translating the goodwill we earned into electoral support across the country.

In the last election, we ran a more diverse slate of candidates than any other party.

And do you know what?

We did it without quotas and set-asides.

In a country as great as Canada, and in a party as open as the Conservative Party, hard work and individual merit are all that is needed in order to succeed.

Let the Liberals keep their outdated quotas, their discriminatory set-asides, and their patronising tokenism. That's not the Conservative way. And it's not the Canadian way.

And I believe that growing support in diverse communities won't just benefit the Conservative Party, it will also strengthen the conservative movement in Canada.

Et je crois que le soutien croissant au Parti conservateur dans les communautés culturelles non seulement sera bénéfique pour le Parti conservateur, mais renforcera le mouvement conservateur au Canada.

Normally, for a political party to expand its geographic and demographic base, it has to compromise its core values.

But that need not be the case when we reach out to new Canadians.

I believe that in attracting the support of new Canadians we are actually strengthening support for lower taxes, limited government, and respect for the family within the party.

This is because new Canadians are drawn to our party not in spite of, but because of our core conservative values.

Family, hard work, and personal responsibility.

Respect for tradition, legitimate authority, and an ordered society.

Opportunity, equality, and the rule of law.

And, of course, lower taxes.

Parce que les nouveaux Canadiens sont attirés par notre Parti non pas malgré nos valeurs conservatrices, mais grâce à elles.

La famille, le travail assidu et la responsabilité personnelle.

Le respect de la tradition, de l'autorité légitime et d'une société ordonnée.

Les possibilités, l'égalité et la primauté du droit.

Et, bien sûr, l'allégement fiscal.

Conservatives should intuitively understand something important about immigrant families who come to Canada.

They do not come here in search of a government, they are not looking for a tax-funded program. Immigrants are in search of a country, a new land they will be proud to call home after they have left their homeland. They are looking for opportunities to contribute to their new country, not to become a burden to their relatives or their new neighbours.

It easy enough for Liberals to confuse the country with the government, civil society with the apparatus of the state. And so for too long immigrants have been treated as a class that the government has to do something for, rather than as new Canadians who have much to offer Canadian society. The state may look at immigrants as potential taxpayers, or benefits of this or that program, or even voters to be manipulated. The Conservative Party should not make that mistake. Immigrants are here as new or aspiring citizens. They join Canadians in making their contribution, dedicating their labour and creativity to building our economy, strengthening community and family life and defending those human rights which so often brought them to Canada in the first place.

In fact, if we are honest, Canadians have much to learn from our newest arrivals – the foundation of strong families, the value of faith, the necessity of excellence in education, the benefits of hard work and saving, the rewards of entrepreneurship, the support of community associations. Those are Conservative values; those are Canadian values.  To the extent that those values need to be renewed in every generation if Canada is to remain strong and free, immigrants are our allies.

Last Friday, a few days before Remembrance Day, I spoke at a citizenship ceremony at the Canadian War Museum.

50 men and women from 28 countries took their Oath of Citizenship and became Canadian citizens.

One thing I noticed immediately was that all of these new Canadians were wearing poppies.

In fact, I think I saw more poppies in that room than I saw outside on the streets of Ottawa that day.

Through the simple of act of wearing a poppy while they were being sworn in as citizens, these new Canadians were doing a couple of things:

For starters, they were demonstrating their patriotism, their love of this Dominion.

In pledging themselves to Canada's future, they were also honouring her past.

They were paying tribute to the Canadians who came before them and sacrificed so they might stand here, today, and join her bright future.

They were announcing that our past is now their past.

Our traditions, their traditions.

Our country, their country.

Their Oath bound them to a Canadian tradition that stretches back through Diefenbaker's Bill of Rights, the British North America Act, the Quebec Act, and further still to Magna Carta.

They were joining a millennium-old civic tradition, one that we inherited from our ancestors, and will, in time, pass on to our descendants.

I don't think there's anything more conservative than that.

Immigrants to Canada know from experience how hard won, how rare in history, and how precious our freedoms are.

Their commitment should make us even more determined to pass this legacy of freedom on to future generations - stronger and more secure than ever.

Their pride should make us more proud, and their gratitude should make us more grateful, to be Canadian.

For us Conservatives, that is what it means to be inclusive.

Not just to welcome new Canadians and to celebrate the heritage they bring with them.

But also to include them in the Canadian story, and the Conservative story.

To invite them to write the next chapter.

Thank-you.