Episode 427   Brian Jean
Channel: Cross Border Interviews
Date: 2022-08-23

Brian is a father, a grandfather, and a husband. He is a proud Albertan and a huge defender of our energy industry and his home town of Fort McMurray.

Brian Jean has lived in Alberta almost his entire life, moving here from BC as a small child. He is the youngest of eleven. Brian grew up doing the sorts of things that boys do in rural Alberta and he became an accomplished outdoorsman, hunter, and athlete.

If you ask Brian about education he will tell you that the most important things in life are learned through work and from your family and he will tell you that his father and mother were his best role models and educators. Young Brian didn’t take school all that seriously, at Prairie Bible Highschool  playing hockey excited him more than classes. That said, as a young man Brian got a Bachelor of Science degree in the US and came back to Fort McMurray to work in several of the family businesses. He worked in a variety of businesses and he is proud of how much he remembers from the sales lessons he learned from Xerox in the 80's.

Brian then decided to improve himself and he went to Australia's Bond University where he was student president while getting a law degree and an MBA. Brian returned to Canada and got his Canadian law equivalency at the University of Calgary and went on to practice law for a decade as one of the busiest litigators in northern Alberta.

During this time he became ever more active in his community and participated in a number of leadership positions in the chamber of commerce and other charitable work. In 2004, Brian ran for office for the first time and became the Member of Parliament for Fort McMurray Athabasca. In 2006 he became the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Transportation which is the most complicated and technical department in the federal government. Brian served a variety of Transportation ministers in that capacity. 

In 2014 Brian retired from federal politics to spend more time with his family. It was his son's illness and death at the hands of our broken health system that motivated Brian to get back into politics. Brian became the leader of the Wildrose Party. Wildrose was supposed to be dead, but with only about a week to prepare between becoming leader and Premier Prentice calling the early election, Brian led Wildrose to its best result ever. He entered the election with 3 incumbent MLAs and come out with 21 MLAs.

In 2017 he and Jason Kenney signed the deal that created the United Conservative Party.  And you likely know the rest. 

***************************************************
Follow the Brian Jean 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianjeanab 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brianjeanab 
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/BrianJeanAB/ 
Website: https://www.brianjean.ca/ 
***************************************************
Follow the Cross Border Interview Podcast: 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crossborderpodcast/ 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrossBorderPod 
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/CrossBorderInterviews 
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI2i25ZVKTO84oUsLyO4jig 
Website: https://www.crossborderinterviews.ca/ 

Back the Show: 
https://www.patreon.com/CrossBoderInterviewPodcast 

The Cross Border Interview Podcast was Produced and Edited by Miranda, Brown & Associates Inc