Jason Kenney is Canada's least popular premier.

When you add in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, he's also Canada’s least popular first minister.

I'm not going to belabour this point, but Jason Kenney is Canada's least popular premier.

Actually, I am going to belabour the point. I'm just not going to provide a lot of smarty pants analysis. That's because while we can speculate, it's too soon to say why Jason Kenney is Canada's least popular premier, or what that might mean.

Unfortunately, there are caveats. Far too many.

As far as we can tell, Jason Kenney is Canada's least popular premier. Maybe there's a less popular premier in Atlantic Canada, because the Campaign Research Inc. poll that indicates how unpopular Kenney is doesn't include the Maritimes or Newfoundland.

But who can imagine any Atlantic premier being less popular than Kenney? So I'm just going to keep on saying Kenney is Canada's least popular premier until somebody proves otherwise.

How unpopular is Kenney? Well, Kenney has both the lowest approval rating of any first minister about which the Toronto-based pollster asked questions in its monthly omnibus poll and the highest disapproval rating of any premier on the list.

Mind you, another caveat, the Alberta sample appears to be pretty small, tiny even, a mere 181 souls out of the 2,007 who responded to the firm's online panel on May 1 and 2. And, in this province, who knows why people might disapprove of the guy?

Still, even with all those qualifiers, it's nice to be able to say that Jason Kenney is Canada's least popular premier, and considerably less popular than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to boot!

The poll was published yesterday under the heading COVID-19/Coronavirus Study, so you might have missed it. The bit about Jason Kenney being Canada's most unpopular premier is buried rather deep, starting down on page 36 of the explanatory slide show. It's one of those online panel thingies, so all of the usual negative caveats about that apply too.

Just the same, according to Campaign Research, Canada's three most popular premiers are Quebec's Francois Legault with an 83-per-cent approval rating and 13 per cent disapproving, Saskatchewan's Scott Moe (80 per cent/16 per cent), and British Columbia's John Horgan (73 per cent/13 per cent). Ontario's Doug Ford was fourth (76 per cent/17 per cent).

I suppose because they're a Toronto pollster, Campaign research threw in Toronto Mayor John Tory (75 per cent/17 per cent). In fairness, though, Toronto's population is more than twice those of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and a bit larger than both combined, so fair's fair.

Plus Campaign Research added the prime minister (65 per cent/29 per cent).

Canada's second-least popular premier, according to this, was Manitoba's Brian Pallister (51 per cent/37 per cent).

And then came Kenney, in a distant last place with an approval rating of 44 per cent, and a disapproval rating of 48 per cent, the only leader on the list with a higher disapproval rating than approval rating.

Have I read too much into this? Almost certainly.

But who cares? It's just nice to be able to say … Jason Kenney is Canada's least popular premier.

David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions at The Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. This post also appears on his blog, AlbertaPolitics.ca.

Image: Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta/Flickr

Now that Premier Jason Kenney has declared it "un-Canadian" to say oil is dead, I wonder if it's OK to admit Alberta's fossil fuel industry is on the ropes?

Probably. Kenney said as much himself in a remarkable rant yesterday directed at the parliamentary leader of the Bloc Québécois and the former leader of the Green Party of Canada.

But if you don't want to be accused of un-Canadian activities, you'd better make it clear none of these troubles are the fault of anything that's ever been done by any Alberta government, except perhaps the NDP's, and especially not by the United Conservative Party Kenney leads.

There is acceptable speech in Alberta, you see, and it doesn't include saying that oil is done like dinner, which is probably not true just yet, but is nevertheless a position that can be argued in respectable company almost anywhere else in the world, including a number of countries known for producing what Kenney rather sophomorically calls "dictator oil."

As has become his practice lately, Kenney took over Chief Medical Officer of Health Deena Hinshaw's daily COVID-19 briefing in Edmonton yesterday afternoon for the sustained blast of gaslighting he directed at Yves-François Blanchet and Elizabeth May.

Blanchet had dared to suggest at a news conference Wednesday that oil "is never coming back" (uttered en francais, bien sûr) and that Ottawa's bailout package should really be directed at "something which is more green." May, for her part, opined at the same event that "oil is dead."

Specifically, the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands told the media: "My heart bleeds for people who believe the sector is going to come back. It's not. Oil is dead and for people in the sector, it's very important there be just transition funds." This may be wrong, but outside Alberta I doubt it sounds like a stab in the back or a curb-stomping.

Nevertheless, that is what sent Kenney over the edge, in a calculated sort of way, responding to a set-up question provided by Calgary Sun political columnist Rick Bell, who can be counted on to get the first question at one of Hinshaw's frequently hijacked news conferences.

"I just think it's deeply regrettable that we would see national political leaders piling on Albertans and energy workers at a time of great trial for us," Kenney said piously, opening what appeared to be a carefully rehearsed answer. "This is the opposite of leadership. Leaders should be seeking to bring us together, not to divide us."

This is a bit of an irony, of course, coming from a premier who has been ginning up an Alberta separatist threat for months while denying the oil industry had anywhere to go but up, but let's just take it as a lesson in gaslighting 101.

In his remarks, Kenney trotted out benefits he said have been conferred on Quebec by Alberta's oil industry, noted the province's equalization complaints, blamed "predatory actions" by OPEC countries that "want to dominate the world with dictator oil," reminded Quebeckers they like to drive cars and go on airplane trips, and totted up the medical equipment recently sent by Alberta to other provinces.

Having said it in English, he said it over again in French.

Tsk-tsking and shaking his head, Kenney declared, "I would say to Mr. Blanchet and Madam May: Please stop kickin' us while we're down!"

"These attacks on our natural resource industries are unwarranted, they are divisive, they're, I believe, in a way, un-Canadian at a time like this. It's like blaming the victim!" (Italics added for emphasis. And, yes, Kenney really said that.)

Premier Kenney also took particular umbrage at Blanchet's remark that Quebec receives a string of insults from Alberta -- although anyone who has paid attention to political discourse in this province for the last half century would have trouble refuting the claim.

After the news conference, backup was provided in columns filed by Bell and his Postmedia colleague Don Braid.

Bell pronounced Blanchet and May to be "the Bobbsey Twins of B.S." and the "deluded duo," and accused them of choosing "to kick Alberta when we're down" and indulging "in a little curb-stomping."

Braid, the Dinger's bookend of acceptable oilpatch opinion, charged them with "the foulest kind of cheap shot," to wit, saying "Alberta's oil and gas industry should be left prostrate in the dust with no help from the federal government."

Well, there you have it: the debased state of political discourse in Alberta in the plague year 2020. It's not reassuring.

David Climenhaga, author of the Alberta Diary blog, is a journalist, author, journalism teacher, poet and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions at The Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. This post also appears on his blog, AlbertaPolitics.ca.

Image: Screenshot of Government of Alberta video/YouTube