Want To Know Who Leaked Jason Kenney's "Asshole" Email?

Camouflage won't help this man.

Let's work through the list of suspects, shall we?

Here's a copy of the email in question:

.Part II

So the suspects are obviously all Alberta Conservative caucus members. Let's trim that down using the evidence in question. There were 27 Conservatives from Alberta elected in 2011. Easily excluded are Jason Kenney, Stephen Harper (who isn't on the list apparently) as well as Peter Goldring who didn't get the email since he's sitting as an independent due to his DUI charge. Lee Richardson quit federal politics and didn't get the email either.

So we're down to 23.

Let's assume that Blaine Calkins has got a modicum of common sense and doesn't go around pissing off members of the Alberta Regional Cause for whom he is the Chair.

That's 22.

These are all safe assumptions. Here's where we get creative: motivation. Two possible motivations explain how this email got leaked: you think Jason Kenney was out of line with his douchy comments or you want to crap on his goal of succeeding Stephen Harper as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Or both.

Next is the fact that it was leaked to the Edmonton Journal. Not the Calgary Herald or Calgary Sun. Why is this relevant? Well you don't send something you want leaked to a reporter you don't know. Journalists, even those based in Alberta, ask questions. They usually don't publish leaks unless they know what's behind it. They probably know that there's ideological differences between the individual that leaked the email and Jason Kenney. If you send a leaked email to a Calgary Sun journalist that has a good rapport with Jason Kenney, the whole thing could get spinned as this being a careless action and total lack of solidarity.

So the odds are, this individual was comfortable sending the leak to the Edmonton Journal so we infer that his riding is in Edmonton.

This narrows the list of suspects quite a bit! Now we have 6 individuals:

Mike Lake
Tim Uppal
James Rajotte
Rona Ambrose
Brent Rathgeber
Laurie Hawn

Now it would be interesting to have Rona Ambrose slam Jason Kenney but that's really not her style. Regardless of her politics, she exhibits professionalism in her duties as MP. She and Laurie Hawn entertain good relations with the Alberta PCs but my guess is that this is from someone with a lot less clout than those two and Tim Uppal. Laurie Hawn had come out and supported Kenney when his office was found to have misappropriated government resources for electoral campaigning. You can see Tim Uppal partying with Jason Kenney on St. Patrick's Day so I'll exclude him as well.


That leaves us with 3 suspects:

Mike Lake is a small fish. However, he'll never revolutionize the Canadian political landscape and is resolved to help the living conditions of those afflicted with autism. I'm pretty sure he doesn't give two shits about what Jason Kenney thinks or doesn't think about Thomas Lukaszuk.

James Rajotte is in the same boat more but he's more prolific than Lake. He's concerned about identity theft, Alzheimer's Disease and helping improve financial literacy in Canada. He could be a bigger player within the party but, for some reason, he's being cockblocked by Harper.

By contrast, Brent Rathgeber is all over the place in terms of "interests" but his accomplishments are few and far between. He, unlike his other Edmonton Tory colleagues, has opinions on everything. He is a professed defender of free speech however, and maybe the George Galloway issue of a few years back was a source of conflict between Kenney and himself after all.

Also, he commented on the Alberta election on his blog entry entitled "Free Speech but Political Liability".

In it, he points out that the bozos probably cost the Wildrose Party the election and suggests that this is how it should be. Furthermore, his riding of Edmonton St. Albert and the riding of Thomas Lukaszuk's Edmonton Castle Downs overlap quite a bit. In fact, Rathgeber went door-knocking with Lukaszuk in the past.

So if you want to know someone who thought highly of Thomas Lukaszuk and would be offended by Jason Kenney's remarks, Brent Rathgeber certainly fits the profile.

But don't take my word for it, take his:

Similarly, when candidates for political office utter comments that are politically incorrect and even offensive, they need not be censored (at least not by the state).  Again these matters are self-regulating, as the voting public will determine the appropriateness of the individual to hold public office.

Brent Rathgeber is the prime suspect.