SCHEER STEPS DOWN
Conservative members of Parliament applaud party leader Andrew Scheer in the House of Commons after he announced Thursday he will resign as leader.
After weeks of speculation about his future, Andrew Scheer announced Thursday he was putting his family first and stepping down as Conservative leader.
“Serving as the leader of the party that I love so much has been the opportunity and the challenge of a lifetime,” Scheer told the House of Commons. “This party, this movement, needs someone who can give 100 per cent. This was not a decision I came to lightly, this is a decision I came to after many long, hard conversations with friends and family.”
Scheer’s wife, Jill, was in the gallery watching as he gave his resignation speech.
Scheer announced his decision at a surprise caucus meeting before heading into the Commons to deliver a seven-minute speech ending his quest to one day become prime minister. The Conservative benches were unusually full for what had been expected to be routine debate on the government’s throne speech, before Scheer rose on a point of personal privilege.
“Our party needs someone who can give everything they have,” he said. “I have always been honest with my colleagues, I have always been honest with everybody, and I know that the road ahead and the stress that would put on my family would mean I could not give them that 100-per-cent assurance,” Scheer said in the House.
Scheer said he would ask the national council of the Conservative Party to begin a leadership contest. He said he plans to remain as leader until his successor is chosen, rather than giving way to an interim leader.
He also plans to stay on as the MP for Regina-qu’appelle, the Saskatchewan riding he has represented since he was first elected in 2004.
Garry Keller, former chief of staff to Rona Ambrose, the interim leader before Scheer, said he would have faced a tough battle to keep his job.
“He either had to decide to fight to the end through a leadership race, or he could leave on his own volition. If he had stayed on, it would have been a bloody fight,” Keller told Reuters.
Scheer has faced pressure from within his party to step down since the election. There were campaigns called “Sackscheer,” “Scheer Must Go,” and “Conservative Victory” launched expressly to drive public opinion against him. The Conservatives failed to win government, even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was carrying the baggage of the Snc-lavalin scandal and revelations he wore blackface multiple times.
In recent weeks, Scheer has been sitting down with Conservative members and its more senior figures on a “listening tour” and former Tory cabinet minister John Baird has been tasked with doing an external review of the campaign.
But Scheer began to seriously doubt his future midway through last week when he was talking to his son Thomas and had no idea what was going on in his child’s life.
The conversation made him realize the time had come to make a choice about whether he wanted to stay, he told his MPS, according to people who were in the room but, under caucus rules, not authorized to speak publicly about what happened.
“The final decision was taken over the last number of days,” his longtime supporter Chris Warkentin, an Alberta MP, said Thursday.
A few days after that chat with his son, Scheer took his annual trip with friends to watch an NFL game, aiming to cross another stadium off their bucket list. This time they went to Tampa Bay, Fla., to see the Buccaneers defeat the Indianapolis Colts, with the trip coming days after his wife Jill’s 40th birthday.
Jill, his wife of over 15 years, had been shouldering much of the burden of looking after their five kids, including driving them daily to and from their private Catholic school in Ottawa.
Friends in Ottawa encouraged Scheer to take some time in the sun, at the game, to think about whether he had the energy to persevere.
He gathered his inner circle on Tuesday and broke the resignation news to them.
Scheer said he was proud of his time as leader, noting there are more Conservative MPS than there were before the Oct. 21 election.
“We kept our party united and strong,” he told the House. “We knocked the Liberals down to a minority. We increased seats all over this country.”
Scheer urged his fellow Conservatives to focus on defeating the Liberals.
“Our Conservative team is always stronger when we are united. When fiscal conservatives, red Tories, social conservatives, libertarians, Quebec nationalists and conservatives in rural and urban Canada in the east and west come together, great things happen,” he said.
Sources told the National Post that the resignation was also pushed forward by the revelation Scheer was using money from the Conservative Party to pay for his children’s private school tuition.
The Conservative Party pushed back on the allegation shortly after Scheer spoke in the House, saying it was “normal practice” for parties to cover costs associated with relocating the national leader to Ottawa.
“This includes a differential in schooling costs between Regina and Ottawa. All proper procedures were followed and signed off on by the appropriate people,” said Dustin van Vugt, the executive director of the Conservative Party of Canada.
Scheer’s team also denied the private school costs pushed him to resign.
However, the potential fight over those costs did not appear to be one the Scheers were willing to wage.
Sen. Jean-guy Dagenais, who was appointed as a Conservative but now sits with one of the independent groups in the Senate, said Scheer should give the money back.
“He must refund the money to the party,” said Dagenais. “It’s just my opinion, but normally when I give my money to support the party, it’s not for supporting the members of their family, it’s for supporting a candidate, support the party for the convention, for the election.”
Trudeau was not in the House when Scheer began his remarks, but was among the many MPS who rushed in to hear the breaking news.
He thanked Scheer for his career in public service and said despite their many political differences, they shared the perspective of parents.
“We are in this House, not in spite of having kids, but because we have kids, and are dedicated to building a better world for them with everything we have. I respect that deeply of him and thank him for that focus on a better future for his kids.”
IF HE HAD STAYED ON, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A BLOODY FIGHT.