Kenney: “If the subject of your story or their lawyer is refusing to provide you with a privacy waiver . . . you may want to ask them and yourself why they are refusing to do so.” FRED CHARTRAND/THE CANADIAN PRESS

Canada’s immigration minister, Jason Kenney, shouts for a living
Published On Fri, 15 Jun 2012

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney could learn from the prime minister, who is canny and private in his yelling, says Star columnist Heather Mallick. (June 15 , 2012)
FRED CHARTRAND/THE CANADIAN PRESS
By Heather Mallick
Star Columnist

Surrounded by speech writers skilled in the toadying arts, politicians can be as sonorous or affectionate, even slightly scolding, as they wish. Or they can just be themselves, which is never advisable.

If your public communications reveal you as greasy or possibly unwell, you have caring staff on hand to save you. But you don’t have to listen!

A federal minister of the Crown sent out a press release last week that I downloaded and read with great joy. Aimed at every journalist in the country, it throbbed with large rage, it bellowed and blew. The statement had a red swollen face. Its jaws were so clenched it had temporal mandibular syndrome.

I had an image in my mind of the man who sent it, a gnarly sodbuster in moth-eaten long johns shooting varmints with a trigger made of twine.

You’re right. It was Jason Kenney. The guy’s a yeller. Kenney had bust a gasket over the veracity of a La Presse story on a Colombian refugee claimant.