Andrew Scheer MP
Immediately following the Oct. 21 election, there was criticism of Andrew Scheer’s leadership from the usual suspects – the Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal media, opposition parties, and elite in the parasitic industries of government relations, public relations, and political strategy. The criticism was as predictable in its specifics as it was in its sources: the Conservative Party needed a leader who would worship at the altar of Diversity and Inclusion, which meant, mostly, embracing the LGBQT+ agenda.
Peter MacKay, a former Progressive Conservative Party leader and Stephen Harper-era cabinet minister, a darling among the Red Tory crowd, was first out of the gate criticizing Scheer’s inability to satisfactorily answer questions about his pro-life and pro-family record. Scheer had a solid voting record as an MP but as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, he originally vowed that if he formed government, he would not reopen the abortion debate. Scheer later went so far as to say he would “ensure” any legislation brought forward on the issue would be defeated and promised to maintain Justin Trudeau’s exuberant foreign funding of abortion. Scheer would not participate in pride parades, but was photographed with LGBQT+ activists and talked up diversity and inclusion.
Still, MacKay compared Scheer’s inability to win the federal election despite Justin Trudeau’s scandals and deep regional divisions, to “having a breakaway on an open net and missing the net.” MacKay explained that the Liberals successfully used Scheer’s past positions on social issues against the Tories, and because Canadians, he maintained, do not want to reopen divisive moral issues, it “hung around Andrew Scheer’s neck like a stinking albatross.”
That Scheer’s long ago positions on abortion and same-sex “marriage” cost the Conservatives an election they were supposedly destined to win is now conventional wisdom. Every newspaper story about the election results seems to mention Scheer’s supposedly scary social conservatism. There is no shortage of pundits who help maintain this narrative.
Kory Teneycke, an advisor to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s election campaign and the former PMO staffer who helped launch Sun News TV, said too many voters were uncomfortable with the fact that Scheer refused to march in gay pride parades. Teneycke’s girlfriend, long-time Conservative Party communications advisor Sara MacIntyre, tweeted, “I am (peeved) off that the leader of my party will not walk in a pride parade. I am sick of this, disgusted and ashamed. I believe in and support LBGTQ rights, gay marriage and being equal. I no longer support the CPC while a leader like that is at the helm.”
Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais quit the Conservative caucus, claiming that Scheer’s position on social issues cost the Tories seats in Quebec. In a statement, Dagenais said: “Scheer’s beliefs about abortion and same-sex marriages led to a mass exodus of the Quebec vote that the party hoped to win with the excellent candidates who had been recruited.”
TVO’s Steve Paikin wrote: “too many people (especially central Canadians) question his views on diversity and LGBTQ rights.”
Jaime Watt, a self-identified gay conservative who worked at Queen’s Park during the Mike Harris era, wrote in the Toronto Starin his weekly column, that Scheer’s refusal to walk in pride parades “sends a different message to not only each and every LGTBQ Canadian, but their family and friends as well: his religious beliefs are so deeply held they outweigh even his desire as a career politician, to win the most important race of his life.” To “many Canadians,” Watt maintains, “this decision reads not as pious adherence to devout religious belief, but an irrational prejudice.”
Newly elected Conservative MP Eric Duncan, who also identifies as homosexual, won the rural Ontario riding of Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry. He said he would work to convince his party to rethink its position on social issues.
Former Chretien advisor Warren Kinsella told the Conservative Leadership Forum’s election post-mortem in downtown Toronto that the Tories have to drop any vestige of social conservatism because those issues, he insisted, “are settled.”
Finally, two Conservative insiders, Melissa Lantsman and Jamie Ellerton, “life-long Conservative Party members” and a self-identified lesbian and homosexual respectively, advised in the Globe and Mailon Nov. 20, that “for the Conservative Party to be electorally relevant to the majority of Canadians, it should consider breaking from the past and look at a more contemporary conservatism that resonates more broadly across the country.” They wrote, “nowhere is this more clear than on the question of LGBTQ rights, which ought not to be a question at all.” What they call “begrudging tolerance” will no longer suffice for Conservatives, they must actively work to fight discrimination against LGBTQ, not only abroad as Scheer vowed, but whatever “obstacles” they face at home. Failure to embrace this agenda, the two authors argued, would mean permanent relegation to the opposition benches.
It is conventional wisdom that Scheer’s views on life and marriage cost him seats in suburban Ontario and Quebec, places the Conservatives had to win in order to form government.
Scheer is not helping himself with his response to questions about his personal position on these issues. To pro-lifers, Scheer’s “personally pro-life” but won’t-do-a-darn-thing-about-it stance is a disappointment that might well have convinced many to stay home. To people who hold no strong views on abortion, his stance might seem insincere or hypocritical.
On the issue of same-sex “marriage” – which seems to be what the media and his critics within the party are focusing on for the time being – Scheer says that he respects the rights of all Canadians while steadfastly refusing to articulate his own view on same-sex “marriage.” And while it is nauseating to watch journalists ask him whether he considers homosexuality a sin – the very question seems to create a litmus test that adherence to particular religious views is inherently disqualifying for those seeking the job of prime minister – Scheer has been evasive. It is reasonable to believe that these evasions turn off as many voters as his moral views might.
Which brings me to my main point. As Vancouver-based gay conservative J.J. McCollough and the MacDonald-Laurier Institute’s Joseph Quesnel have both pointed out, blaming Scheer’s social conservatism for the Conservatives’ under-performing is a narrative that is not based on any data. There is no polling that indicates large numbers of urban and suburban voters, especially in the Greater Toronto Area, or Quebeckers, eschewed the Tories because of the successful Liberal attacks on the Conservative leader’s old views on life and family issues. It might very well be true, but due to a paucity of exit polling or other survey data, we simply do not know if this is the case.
Senator Dagenais’ talk about the “exodus” of voters his erstwhile party “hoped to win” is based on nothing more than speculation and wishes. There was no guarantee that Conservatives were making major inroads in Quebec. Neither is there any data to support the assertion that these voters did not support the Tories was because of the leader’s views on any particular issue. Maybe it was Scheer’s position on climate change. Maybe it was his substandard French. Maybe the Bloc Quebecois was viewed as the better representative of Quebec’s interests or way to express displeasure with the Trudeau government.
We simply do not know (the complex) reasons that motivate hundreds of thousands of people to vote the way they do. Journalists and strategists – myself included – can construct narratives to explain what happened, but the public should take them with a grain of salt and recognize that these explanations might represent the storytellers’ biases more than anything else. And we should recognize that many journalists and the opposition parties who insist the Conservatives “get with the times” do not necessarily have the party’s electoral interests in mind as much as the desire to watch progressivism march on.
None of this means that Andrew Scheer necessarily deserves another chance to lead the Conservatives into the next election. This paper editorialized last month that Scheer should resign and if he won’t, then the party membership should vote against him in a leadership review. There will be no shortage of socially liberal contenders for Scheer’s job. It might be difficult to find a principled pro-lifer to run for leader. But those are questions to be figured out later.
The great irony in his fight to stay on as leader of the Conservatives is that Andrew Scheer could be opposed by both pro-abortion Red Tories and pro-life party members upset with Scheer’s abandonment of his principles and his base. Politics can make strange bedfellows.
