Kory Teneycke, the young Conservative operative now leading the charge to shake up Canadian cable television by creating a national conservative network, recently had a sad trip home to Saskatchewan.
The farm kid from Young, Sask., flew home from Ottawa to attend the funeral of an uncle killed in a farm accident.
It was a sharp reminder of his prairie and farm roots, even though the past 15 years have taken him far from the family grain farm to the centre of national Conservative politics and now to the head of the audacious plan by Quebecor media conglomerate to go national.
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Teneycke, once a key figure in the biofuels lobby group, Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, and more recently chief media relations officer for prime minister Stephen Harper, is now Quebecor’s vice-president of development charged with getting a proposed cable news network off the ground.
He plans to have a network on the air by 2011 that will carry news but also commentary from rural, regional and conservative voices. He thinks these voices are being ignored by existing CBC and CTV cable news networks that he considers too urban-centric, liberal and lame.
“I think conservative and rural and regional voices are often marginalized but it’s less because of ideology than ignorance,” Teneycke said.
Too many national journalists live in large urban areas and focus on stories that their neighbours are interested in, he said.
“I think there is a huge appetite in this country for an alternate voice. Most of the people who listen to talk radio do it because they hear their issues being discussed but do not watch news TV because their issues are not there.”
Quebecor still has to receive approval from the Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission.
But Teneycke is certain it will happen someday.
“Right now with the Sun TV licence we have in Ontario, we reach about 40 percent of the potential audience but it is concentrated in one province,” he said.
“It would be a shame if people outside Ontario are denied access but one way or the other, we’ll keep working on it.”
It is a flash of tenacity and optimism he may well have learned on the farm, first homesteaded by Charles Teneycke southeast of Saskatoon around 1905.
His father, Myron, still farms the 2,800-acre family holding in cooperation with two neighbours, creating a three farm, 10,000 acre operation.
They have also purchased and operate the former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator at Young.
Early on, Kory decided he did not have the skills needed to farm.
“It is an incredible range of skills you need to farm successfully,” he said.
“I didn’t think I had the breadth of skills needed. Besides, I don’t have the risk tolerance for farming so I went into politics.”
First, he headed east to study at Université Laval in Quebec City and then the University of Ottawa, although conservative politics got into his blood before he ever finished a degree.
Teneycke remembers it as a time when he committed two sins in the eyes of his grandfather, Herb.
“I went east and became a Conservative. Most of my family were diehard CCFers.”
T.C. Douglas had brought electricity to the farm. “But I think if you look at values issues, the CCF and Social Credit ideas had a lot of conservatism in them.”
His first election campaign was in 1993 when he worked for Swift Current Progressive Conservative MP Geoff Wilson and watched the upstart Reform Party displace the PCs across the West.
But he made important contacts, including Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, who was then a young assistant to the MP.
He soon joined the new party, ran unsuccessfully for a Saskatoon riding nomination in 2000 and quickly discovered that the backrooms were his forte.
He worked for several Progressive Conservative senators, then Reform leader Preston Manning and Ontario Conservative premier Mike Harris before trying his hand at lobbying.
Several years ago, Teneycke returned to Ottawa to work for Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, eventually ending up as his main media manager.
He calls his time in the PMO as “one of the worst jobs. You are caught between the hammer and the anvil on a daily basis.”
