A roast pig, resplendent from hoof to snout, is being paraded for auction by a phalanx of young men. Beer glasses overflow and dancers in traditional white dress twirl for several hundred guests. The church hall, alive with the clatter of plates and Slavic speech, evokes a corner of old Skopje.
It's Saturday night and there are converts to be won. For Jason Kenney, the Conservative point-man on ethnic politics, every step on his itinerary is a journey into another world, one where communities normally obscured by the swirl of cosmopolitan life gather as a cohesive group.
Tonight it's the Macedonians of Mississauga.
Mr. Kenney delivers his remarks and looks momentarily puzzled as he steps away from the podium. His name has been misspelled on the commemorative plaque. His smile holds steady, though. It's a small indignity to suffer for the sake of the Conservative Party.
Ten minutes earlier, the gregarious Immigration Minister paused before stepping out of his car, lost in the haze of his own grand plan. “Where are we?” he asked the aide responsible for his dizzying schedule.
Already today he's talked work permits with Portuguese pastry chefs. Still to come are an address to Coptic Christians, songs of praise with a swaying evangelical congregation and then plates of samosas at a Hindu temple. A light weekend by his standards, just one of the 150-odd such expeditions over the last four years.
Mr. Kenney is tending the seeds of a strategy born in Alberta more than 15 years ago, a plan to make the right-wing movement in Canada viable for the next century.
You observe how these new Canadians live their lives. They are the personification of Margaret Thatcher's aspirational class. They're all about a massive work ethic.— Jason Kenny, Immigration Minister
His immediate mission is that still-elusive dream: majority government. And his program has already paid dividends. In the last election, Mr. Kenney was given credit for swinging more than half a dozen seats with large concentrations of ethnic votes to the Tories. A further dozen ridings in the suburbs encircling the three big cities are close enough to fall to the Conservatives next time around, which would put them at the 155-seat majority threshold.
“Smiling Buddha,” as he's known to some Chinese groups, is changing both the Conservative Party and the nature of Canadian politics. But it didn't happen overnight.
Back in 1996, Stephen Harper was a Reform MP and his friend Mr. Kenney an aspiring Alberta candidate eager to push his ideas. They had long debates about the future of conservatism. Mr. Kenney argued the right had a huge demographic challenge to address. Canada's population growth is owed almost entirely to immigrant communities, and conservatives – both Reform and PCs in those days – posed no threat to the Liberal dominance of those constituencies. The Reform Party, in fact, was often perceived as hostile to immigration.
“I strongly argued that the future of Canadian conservatism had to go through the increasingly diverse immigrant communities,” Mr. Kenney said in an interview.
His contention was that new Canadians are overwhelmingly conservative in their values. They've been in thrall to the Liberal Party of the Trudeau era largely because the Liberals introduced large-scale non-white immigration to Canada.
“You observe how these new Canadians live their lives. They are the personification of Margaret Thatcher's aspirational class,” he said. “They're all about a massive work ethic … striving to get their small business going, strong family values, respect for tradition.”
Fast forward to 2006 and the days after the Conservative election victory. Mr. Kenney was hoping to be named to cabinet. Instead, Mr. Harper called him to a meeting at an Ottawa hotel and offered him a job that few in his caucus were inclined to tackle.
