Ex-speaker concerned by Conservative division
Scheer says he’s not sure libertarian Bernier can represent all conservatives
OTTAWA— Andrew Scheer says the next leader of the federal Conservative Party will need to work to keep Canada’s right-wing coalition together — and he’s skeptical about front-runner Maxime Bernier’s ability to do that.
In an interview with the Star last week, Scheer said the next leader must be able to knit together the different elements of the Conservative movement — social conservatives, fiscal hawks and the myriad other activist groups within the Conservative tent.
“I’m the person who can best keep the coalition together and continue to implement our agenda in the most practical way possible,” Scheer said in a telephone interview Friday.
“It’s not a theoretical concern, when you look at the conservative movement in Canada. We’re constantly breaking apart, losing elections, coming back together, winning elections, losing and breaking up again . . . I’d like to skip over the breaking apart phase.”
After almost a decade of unified Conservative rule, it’s easy to forget the federal conservatives spent years in exile — the movement splintered between Progressive Conservatives and Reform, later the Canadian Alliance. Stephen Harper unified the movement under one banner in 2003, absorbing Peter MacKay’s Progressive Conservatives, and ending up with uninterrupted Conservative rule between 2006 and 2015.
Scheer is making a push as the continuity candidate to replace Harper, as the Conservatives end a marathon leadership contest.
Scheer, the 38-year old former Speaker of the House of Commons, has not set the race on fire with dramatic policy proposals. Instead, he’s billing himself as the guy that can keep the conservative family together as they prepare to take on Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2019.
Throughout the race, Scheer has been fundraising and polling well — and now looks to be one of the few candidates that has a chance of stopping Quebec MP Maxime Bernier from walking away with the race.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Scheer has some concerns about what a Bernier-led party would mean for the Conservatives’ electability.
“I think he’s going to have some issues based on his policy positions and his philosophical approach to policy in general,” Scheer said of the libertarian-leaning front-runner.
“If you’re not a pure libertarian in a Maxime Bernier-led party, then is the leader of the party representing you? I think that’s what it comes down to . . . if you did a Venn diagram on all the things a bunch of different conservatives believe in, there’s a lot of overlap. And my approach is to concentrate on those things, and say ‘look, these are the 20 or 30 things basically every kind of conservative can get behind.’ ”
Scheer has consistently polled in the middle of the 14-person leadership pack, behind clear front-runners such as Kevin O’Leary, the television personality who quit the race last month, and Bernier, who is currently the perceived front-runner. The Saskatchewan MP has been billed the establishment candidate, a MP who has long held the party’s banner and worked to establish the united Conservatives.
While Scheer is working to secure last-minute votes before the party selects its next leader Saturday, he said he’ll continue to work for the Conservatives in the House of Commons no matter who members se- lect to lead them.
Scheer isn’t the first to raise concerns about party unity. In an interview with CBCJason Kenney said that the “biggest threat” to the party is “division.”
“We’ve gone through, in the not too distant past, a decade of division in the conservative movement in Canada, and there are some people trying to call us back to that division to create two separate conservative parties,” Kenney told the public broadcaster.
Maclean’s columnist Scott Gilmore has recently led a cross-country dinner tour to garner support for a new Conservative party, partly in response to the populist rhetoric of Conservative leadership candidates such as Kellie Leitch.
Aside from Gilmore’s drinks and dissent events, however, some within the Conservative party have told the Star that Bernier’s devotion to libertarian ideals could cause trouble not just for caucus, but for the party’s pitch to the general electorate.
According the most recent Mainstreet Research/iPolitics poll of Conservative members, Bernier enjoys the support of 28.4 per cent of members. Scheer is a distant second, at 19.2 per cent, while Erin O’Toole is third with 15.2 per cent.
Conservatives will gather in Etobicoke this weekend to select their new leader, although a significant number of mail-in votes have already been cast.