Will other leaders be asked about ‘sins’?

Ithink it’s clear to any moderately neutral mind that Andrew Scheer has taken more than his fair share of a mauling since election night. Former party big shots have dumped on him, there have been endless complaints in a compliant press from nameless “sources high in the party” about his performance, and the same press on its own has been very busy on the “can Scheer survive?” meme. The question has been plant- food for the political panels and fertilizer for mischievous politicos.

For what it’s worth (very little) I think his campaign was weak, unaggressive to a fault, gave the Liberals a pass on some very serious issues, was not nearly hard enough on the Trudeau blackface theatricals, and, most significantly, did not make what it needed to make: a national case for Canada’s oil and gas industry.

Nonetheless, with all that said, the novice leader increased Conservative seats ( by 26 — a wholesome gain); took the Liberals down from their majority (20 lost, a notable loss); post- vote owns a whole block of the country; and has a very powerful presence in the House of Commons. No A++ for the leader, but certainly not the string of Ds and Es he’s getting from the Ottawa sages and some of his anonymous “friends.”

Jagmeet Singh by contrast is being toasted, not roasted, for his campaign. Objectively this is strange. Under his leadership the NDP were obliterated in Quebec, lost a massive chunk of seats (went from 39 to 24), and were seen at one point in the campaign as threatened by the Greens. The latter should be seen as a shameful blot on any leader’s record — the Green party really being a toy car, a Tesla-tot, rather than a genuine eight-cylinder political vehicle. Mr. Singh impressed mainly because his performance in the year and a half before the election was almost brilliantly dismal. Any change was necessarily for the better.

Then, there’s Justin Trudeau. He took a sledgehammer to his “woke is me,” “I am the guardian angel of Canada’s diversity and tolerance” image via a triplet of revelations that in his pre- PM days he danced and yodelled in blackface. The prior expulsions of Jody Wilson- Raybould and Jane Philpott left his male- feminist banner limp on the flag post, and his refusal to allow any accounting of the Snc-lavalin interference — his resistance to accountability — put paid to any idea that his was a “new” politics. In the matter of shutting down inconvenient questions, he out- Chrétiened Chrétien.

Who lost the most? A fair argument can be made that it was the Trudeau Liberals. From government to minority, from fresh new leader to just another pol — and let us not neglect that the Bloc is back in force and half of Western Canada is dangerously angry with how it is being treated.

So the question is, why all the drear post- mortems on Scheer, and so few on the leader who birthed the phrase “sunny days.” The Scheer autopsies reached something of a peak moment this week, when after his first post-election caucus, one reporter thought it necessary to inquire into his theological beliefs. She asked if he thought homosexuality was a “sin.” ( Scheer is a Catholic, though he does not posit that as an essential element of his candidacy.)

A very odd, and even artful question. I half- expected a followup along the lines of Name the 12 Gifts of the Holy Ghost? What are your views on the Transubstantiation? Now were Mr. Scheer a candidate for Pope (unlikely), or leaving politics for the priesthood ( dubious), such questions might even have a point.

The point the sin question did have was to continue the line egregiously put out by his Liberal opponents that Scheer was going to “smuggle” his religious views on same- sex marriage and abortion into law should he win the election. It was oppo- politics chaff, and a really cheap brand of that reliably cheap stuff. He rebutted the inane suggestions multiple times on the campaign trail but various supine reporters kept tossing it up, and this post- election catechism was just the most tasteless and ostentatious version of the same sly charge.

To be clear, even the dogs in the street, the very mutts of the alleyways, knew and know that Andrew Scheer was not running for PM to establish a new Catholic Dominion, that he was not some version of a Christian ayatollah plotting to bring Margaret Atwood’s grim fantasy upon Canadian politics.

So why bait him with that faux- concerned question? For good or ill we have for a long time now left the religion of our politicians out of their public performance. We question them on their ethics and integrity without reference to their moments in the Confessional or their private meditations and prayers.

When Justin Trudeau was rightly being tested by the press on his conduct during the SNC- Lavalin affair, did any in the press gallery ask: Mr. Trudeau, as a Catholic do you think your interference with the Justice Department is a sin? As a Catholic do you think your treatment of Vice- Admiral Mark Norman violates the commandment about “bearing false witness?” Even more to the point — As a Catholic how do you justify barring all MPS who oppose abortion (which in your faith really is a sin) from your caucus?

Well, if we’re going to have religious questions put to one leader, let’s put them to them all. What are Mr. Singhs’ private religious views on homosexuality and abortion? This latter is highly unlikely though. For as unspeakable as it may be to mention the obvious here, to question the religion of a person who is not Christian is, under the current progressive ethos, beyond the courage or depravity ( take your pick) of any journalist who wishes to remain a journalist.

And further, when any leader gives a vague non- religious reply, let those who trill from the highest branches of the blasted Twitter tree, as they have with Mr. Scheer, “retweet” ( that is the deplorable verb) their evasive replies.

So yes, Scheer is bearing more than his fair share of post-mortem scrutiny. This is not to say — I repeat — he performed well. It is just to ask that if the press wants him to have a stay in the grinder, should it then be preparing for Trudeau’s turn, and Singh’s as well?