Scheer’s faith cost him at the polls, study says
Comments come as leadership questions mount
OTTAWA • Former Conservative MP Lisa Raitt, who has been a defender of federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer after his party failed to win last month’s election, acknowledged Wednesday that there is a growing consensus among the party’s members that Scheer “wasn’t strong enough” as a party leader.
However Raitt, who had said before that Scheer “deserves another shot” to win an election, said she still does not agree with the growing criticism of his leadership.
The comments add to the rising number of voices questioning Scheer’s political future after he failed in October’s election to defeat a Liberal party badly tarnished by scandal. The Conservatives failed to win more seats than the Liberals but nonetheless added 22 new seats and won the popular vote.
“The theme is the same regardless of whether you are an economic conservative, a social conservative or a libertarian, and this is it: that he wasn’t strong enough,” Raitt told an audience at a University of Toronto event on Wednesday, referencing her conversations with party members in recent weeks.
Raitt said she did not personally agree with other members’ characterization of Scheer, saying he was a “consensus builder,” and that claims that he is weak are “not a fair assessment of him.” She said “everyone has an axe to grind” within the party membership following the election result. “He’s a nice guy, he’s a kind man, he’s a gentleman,” she said. “He’s soft-spoken. And he tries to do what’s right in his world. And as a result of not being the ‘strong man’, he’s being punished.”
Raitt, who lost her seat in the Ontario riding of Milton, was a veteran Conservative MP respected by members on both sides of the aisle. The loss was viewed by some as a symbol of the Conservative party’s worse-than-expected performance in the crucial Greater Toronto Area (GTA), where they failed to win the vast majority of contested seats.
Her comments come as many Tory members, including everyone from former campaign managers to failed Conservative candidates, openly question Scheer’s leadership capabilities after failing to unseat Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
"I think it’s very clear he doesn’t have the support levels necessary to maintain the unity of the party,” said Kory Teneycke, who worked in Stephen Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office and ran Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s successful election campaign last year.
In an interview with the National Post, Teneycke also criticized Scheer’s recent firing of two senior advisers, chief of staff Marc-Andre Leclerc and communications director Brock Harrison, saying it leaves Scheer with few political levers as he seeks to shore up support for his leadership. He said few qualified others might be willing to step in given the doubts about Scheer’s future
Conservatives had wanted to see change in Scheer’s staff that represented a “broadening of the leadership group,” Teneycke said.
“But to replace one team with a stack of empty chairs is an indication of the much larger leadership problem,” Teneycke said.
Scheer is due to face a leadership review at the party’s convention in April, and has launched a cross-country “listening tour” in the wake of the election loss.
Andrew MacDougall, another former Harper aide, wrote a column for Maclean’s that characterized Scheer’s campaign platform as “thin gruel served up by a man who wouldn’t stand out in a crowd if he showed up to a Pride parade dressed as a Catholic priest.”
MacDougall suggested that some of the support enjoyed by Scheer in his narrow 2017 leadership win will now be in question, after he failed to impress the many disparate factions of the party. Since his defeat, members including social conservatives, Quebecers and others have spoken out against Scheer’s continued leadership.
“Any Conservative leader that has lost the evangelical, French, and progressive conservative wings of the party doesn’t have much of a coalition left,” he wrote.
Those sentiments were repeated by Raitt on Wednesday, who said that Scheer was unable to balance the differing interests within the party. “Social conservatives want a strong leader, and they want a strong leader to carry their social conservative views to Ottawa and have the strength to bring forward motions that are sympathetic and move forward the agenda of the social conservatives,” she said. “Andrew wasn’t going to do that.”
Still others have criticized Scheer for failing to adequately address questions about his social conservative values, particularly on the issue of LGBTQ rights.
One Conservative source interviewed by the National Post doubts whether Scheer has properly reckoned with the loss, particularly after he delivered a concession speech that framed the election result as a Conservative win that had “put Justin Trudeau on notice.” Scheer has declined to address any of the policies or messaging tactics used through the campaign, instead doubling down on some positions like his refusal to march in Pride parades.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has declined to address any of the policies or tactics used through the campaign, instead doubling down on some positions.
“I don’t think he knows why he lost,” said one person who has worked in several Conservative campaign war rooms, but would only speak on condition of anonymity. “Everything that he did during the campaign alone certainly wasn’t successful, but everything that he did after the campaign suggests that he’s not the guy to bring us forward.”
The person said there has been no signalling from Scheer since the election that he was aware of the areas he fell short. “There was no change in strategy. There was no clarification of any of the positions that seem to have dogged him
since the day after the election.”
Scheer did tell Global News in an interview there was “no one more disappointed than me” with the election result, while attempting to clarify his position on gay rights, which he had been more ambiguous about during the campaign.
“I won’t march in parades, but I will ensure that our party is as inclusive and open and that we fight for equality rights of all Canadians,” he had said.
In August, before the campaign started, the Liberals publicized a clip from 2005 of Scheer speaking out against same-sex marriage, rocking
the Conservative campaign and causing Scheer to go silent on the issue for a week.
Many called the attack by Liberal MP Ralph Goodale hypocritical, as he had voted in favour of a motion just a few years earlier that explicitly categorized marriage as “the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.”
Scheer announced on Wednesday that he would be announcing his new leadership team Thursday morning at 10 a.m., Eastern Time.