Medicine Hat News

Andrew Scheer sets out to make Tory case

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OTTAWA Before Canada’s new Conservati­ve leader arrived at a news conference this week to opine on the spring session of Parliament, an aide affixed a sign to the podium: “Andrew Scheer, leader of the Official Opposition.”

The jokes came quickly: if the parliament­ary media needed a sign to know who he was, what hope does he have among Canadians?

The goal for Scheer this summer as he sets out on a cross-Canada tour following last month’s narrow victory in the party’s leadership race is a simple one: introduce himself — and his vision for the party — to the nation.

“Conservati­ves need to show Canadians our positive vision and why Conservati­ves believe what we believe,” he said from the podium bearing his name.

“We’re almost at the halfway mark for this Liberal mandate and it’s pretty obvious that the sunny skies have clouded over.”

At present, there appears to be a sliver of daylight between the governing Liberals and the Conservati­ves is tight, though the election is still two years away, a new Canadian Press/Ekos Politics poll suggests.

Of 5,568 people surveyed earlier this month, 33 per cent said they’d vote Conservati­ve if an election was held that day, compared with 35.3 per cent who’d vote Liberal. The poll has a margin of error of 1.3 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

It will be months before it becomes clear what a Scheer government would look like from a policy standpoint. Scheer’s Opposition, however, will crystalliz­e in the next few weeks, including which MPs will sit in the shadow cabinet.

Political watchers will be looking to see how Scheer continues efforts by his predecesso­r Rona Ambrose to promote new faces in the party, all the while giving prominent roles to his former leadership rivals in hopes of keeping them onside.

Several appeared in front-row Commons seats after the race, including Ontario MP Kellie Leitch. But there were calls for her ouster this week when she posted a link to a newspaper story about a Syrian convicted on domestic violence charges.

“A battered wife and a bloodied hockey stick. That’s the legacy of Trudeau’s Syrian refugee program,” read the tweet, also the last line of the Toronto Sun column. The absence of quotation marks muddied the waters.

“She retweeted something without quotes ... I’m not sure that is her view,” Scheer said when asked about it. “I don’t know that she said that.”

An early test for Scheer’s leadership will be whether the party can hold the seat in Quebec being vacated by Denis Lebel, the current deputy leader. Scheer will head to that province first before heading out to Atlantic Canada, then Vancouver and the party’s Stampede barbecue in Calgary.

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