Scheer’s pitch for unity in keynote speech
HALIFAX — Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer took to the podium Friday to rally the party faithful in Halifax and to demonstrate he has his sights set squarely on Justin Trudeau — not Maxime Bernier.
In prepared remarks, Scheer took direct aim at the prime minister, saying he’s the perfect foil to Trudeau’s virtue-signalling, carbon-taxing ways as he issues a call to arms to begin the march toward the 2019 election.
The version distributed to journalists also made no mention of Bernier, the former Conservative MP who quit the party Thursday with a bitter stream of anti-Tory invective.
Scheer did, however, make a thinly veiled reference to the controversy when he thanked former Tory leader Peter MacKay, widely credited with helping to foster the merger between right-wing factions that spawned the current-day Conservative party in 2003.
“Thank you for your years of selfless service to our unified Conservative party,” Scheer told MacKay.
“Peter is someone who set his personal interests aside for the good of our party, who decided to build up and not to tear down — and our party is a living testament to his hard work.”
The closely watched keynote speech lingered on Scheer’s personal life, part of the party’s ongoing effort to allow Canadians across the country a closer look at a leader who for many has remained an enigma since taking the helm 15 months ago.
Scheer spoke of his own family’s history and upbringing in Ontario, where he grew up in a small townhouse in Ottawa with little income and few luxuries — evidence, he suggested, that he has more in common with ordinary Canadians than his Liberal rival.
He promised to get rid of the carbon tax scheme once and for all as his first act as prime minister, and chastised the Trudeau government for deficit spending and “virtue-signalling.”
He made mention of recent controversies involving edifices of Sir John A. Macdonald, calling attempts to remove statues and images of Canada’s first prime minister a “disgrace,” noting many other historic figures have ties to dark moments in Canadian history.
“I’m proud to say that we are the party of Canada’s first prime minister, the father of our federation, and the visionary who made this land possible,” he said.
“I think it’s a disgrace that we’re allowing extreme voices in this country to erase our proud heritage.”
Scheer also asked his party faithful to begin the long, hard task of building support for the October 2019 election.
And he called on them to stick together. “If we stay united, if we continue to work hard, if we remain true to our principles — in a few months, the path of Conservative victories will cross the whole country.”