TURBULENT WATERS FOR TORIES
But Scheer’s speech offers hope
EJOHN IVISON
mbargoed copies of Andrew Scheer’s keynote speech at the Conservative convention in Halifax were late arriving in reporters’ inboxes. The reason, it appears, is that there was some furious last-minute rewriting in the aftermath of Maxime Bernier’s decision that he didn’t want to belong to any party that would have him as a member.
The speech Scheer gave was somewhat different from the one advertised by people close to him.
That speech was designed to portray the Scheer Conservatives as a party of the centre-right seeking to appeal to disaffected former Liberal voters.
There were moments of moderation, notably when he met a woman selling soaps in Moncton’s farmer’s market who had voted Liberal and now had voter’s remorse.
“Justin Trudeau has failed this woman by failing to deliver what he promised. … (He) has no idea what she or any middle-class Canadian family is going through because of him,” he said.
But Bernier’s departure forced Scheer to spend time addressing a problem he might have thought he had solved — pacifying the base.
One MP said earlier this week that the message coming out of the weekend was aimed at those who are not committed Conservatives. “Our base can’t vote for us twice,” he said. But that was then. Bernier’s departure created the need for some raw meat to be tossed to the partisans.
Scheer was in damagelimitation mode, recounting how the Conservatives had won the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord in a recent byelection.
“We didn’t win by compromising. We didn’t win by trying to impress people who will never like us,” he said.
Yet the road to victory will be built on a bedrock of compromises and outreach to people who didn’t like Stephen Harper.
Research by Abacus Data suggests 89 per cent of Canadians think the country works best “by finding the middle ground and compromise.” Fully three-quarters of Canadians would like to see the Conservatives be more progressive on social issues — and those numbers rise among those people who say they would like a different government in 2019.
Scheer promised repeatedly to kill Trudeau’s carbon tax but offered no alternative to fighting climate change. The only mention was in French, where he said the Liberal environmental plan might seem good “but they do not do anything to reduce emissions and they punish our industry. On the environment, the Conservatives will maintain low emissions and continue to improve our environmental performance, but we will not destroy the economic engine of our country.” He provided no detail on how emissions would be lowered.
Scheer is as cautious as a diamond cutter, which some have mistaken for weakness. The comparison with Joe Clark has been often made — and there is a parallel, none more so than Clark’s admission that he wasn’t the greatest, just the best available.
Scheer was chosen as leader over Bernier because many Conservatives were nervous the Quebecer was impulsive, erratic and made bad decisions — a verdict he validated this week. The man’s head is full of bees and he’s so self-centred he’d have the butter off your bread.
Scheer might often sound like he’s saying grace at the Regina Kiwanis Club, but he has quietly guided the Conservatives to a position where they are out-fundraising the Liberals two to one; are tied in the polls; and are recruiting excellent candidates to run for them next year.
Prior to Bernier’s bombshell, this was not a party in extremis. That has changed with the prospect that enough Conservatives might embrace the new project to swing what could be a tight race in Trudeau’s favour.
There was much to like in the keynote speech. It launched with a curious passage about Scheer’s maternal grandfather, William Enright, who built a two-bedroom bungalow on a dirt road in what is now downtown Mississauga, Ont. Previous generations of leaders claimed their character bona fides by being the descendants of pioneers who hacked down the forest to build log cabins. By comparison, the Enright family, with their vegetable patch and hand-me-downs, lived in comparative luxury. But, one supposes, it offers a contrast to the wealthy Trudeaus of Outremont.
Scheer meandered through a recital of his greatest talking points, while many in the audience appeared to be lamenting that his warm-up act, Peter MacKay, won’t be on the ballot in 2019.
There were moments of insight — the suggestion that the “forces of political correctness” were converging on contrary ideas “and even on legitimate criticism” touched a nerve. “Justin Trudeau wants this. He wants to impose his personal views on the country and demonize those who don’t accept them,” Scheer said.
But it was the finale, where the Conservative leader gave voice to what he called his “positive Conservative vision,” that offered a sense that this could conceivably be the man to reduce Trudeau to the status of a one-term wonder.
“What if we had a government that believed there was enough space in our public debate for values and viewpoints it didn’t agree with?” he asked. “What if we had a government that didn’t look back into our history looking for reasons to be ashamed, but instead for reasons to be proud?
“What if we had a government that the best way to fight against protectionism is to make Canada the most attractive place in the world to invest?
“And what if we had a government that actually understood the everyday problems Canadians face and governed with a clear plan to help?
“This is what the Conservative party will offer.”
If Scheer and his team can pair those concepts with smart, bold policy, they will have gone a long way to offering Canadians a viable alternative to the Trudeau Liberals — and in doing so, made Bernier’s project a redundant sideshow.