Scheer’s leadership in the hands of grassroots members
Conservative MPs have voted against giving themselves the power to kick Andrew Scheer out as leader of the party, The Canadian Press has learned.
That means the question of Scheer’s leadership will now be in the hands of the party’s grassroots members, who will gather for their biannual convention in April in Toronto.
Scheer, meanwhile, plans to embark on a cross-Canada “listening tour,” while former Conservative cabinet minister John Baird has been tapped to lead an external review of what went wrong and what went right during the latest election campaign, said one MP who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The party’s 121 members of Parliament were meeting Wednesday in Ottawa for their first formal caucus meeting since the Oct. 21 vote.
Among their first orders of business was to decide whether to adopt a rule that would allow 20 per cent of their group to trigger a leadership review.
Many MPs said they wanted the question of Scheer’s future to be decided by the entire party. But others had suggested that while they supported Scheer, they’d vote in favour of the rules on the principle that MPs ought to have the power to oust a leader.
Scheer spoke to the gathering before caucus members voted on whether to adopt a number of measures designed to give them more power. Reporters gathered outside the room late Wednesday in anticipation of the leader’s news conference.
“I do not support caucus overruling the members on those kinds of issues,” Garnett Genuis, who represents an Alberta riding, said before the meeting began. “There will be a leadership review at the next convention that will respect members of the party that aren’t in the caucus.”
On Oct. 21, the Conservatives earned the largest number of votes since their inception in 2004, and successfully elected 26 more MPs than they had in 2015.