THE WEST BLOCK
Episode 38, Season 6
Sunday, May 28, 2017
Host: Vassy Kapelos
Guest Interviews: Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer,
Minister Shannon Stubbs, Minister Gérard Deltell, Tim Powers, David Atkin
Location: Toronto
It’s Sunday, May 28th. I’m Vassy Kapelos. And this is The West Block on the road. We’re here in Toronto at the federal Conservative leadership convention. The race is finally over and the party has a new leader. His name is Andrew Scheer and the man of the hour joins us now. Thanks a lot for being here.
Andrew Scheer: It’s my pleasure to be on with you.
Vassy Kapelos: Congratulations.
Andrew Scheer: Thank you.
Vassy Kapelos: Were you expecting this? I know that sounds kind of cheesy but it was so close.
Andrew Scheer: Well you know all of the internal numbers I saw and the kind of external polling showed that the race was coming down to Maxime and me. We knew it was going to be close, so in a way I wasn’t really surprised. I knew it could have gone either way. It took all the ballots to get there, but I think it was fundamentally a great process. Our party has grown so much. We’ve got renewed interest. We grew by over 170,000 members. There were a lot of reasons to be optimistic to be part of this Conservative team.
Vassy Kapelos: What’s the first thing you thought of when you heard your name announced?
Andrew Scheer: I just thought, you know, I felt so honoured and I felt great for my team. I’ve had members, volunteers have been working their tails off for eight months and put their faith in me and I’m glad I didn’t let them down. And then I thought about my wife and my kids and like oh my goodness, we’ve got some things to talk about in the next 24, 48 hours.
Vassy Kapelos: Yeah, you have five kids under the age of 12, correct?
Andrew Scheer: That’s right, yeah, 12 and under.
Vassy Kapelos: What’s that going to be like because I feel like we would ask a woman that question, how are you going to balance it? How are you going to balance it?
Andrew Scheer: Well, you know when I was Speaker of the House of Commons we had four and we made it work. And my wife, Jill, is so supportive and we’ve always been able to find that balance and I’m sure we will be able to. We put a plan in place in case this happened and I’m very optimistic about that. My kids are interested in it. They’re excited to be part of it, and they’re also what motivate me. You know I talked a lot about the fact that my generation is still paying off the record debts that Pierre Trudeau left people my age. I don’t want to do that to my kids, it’s just not fair. It’s intergenerational theft to continually borrow money for people who’ll have to work the rest of their lives to pay it back but don’t benefit from the spending. And that’s what Liberals are doing, so I’m going to do everything I can to put a stop to it for my kids.
Vassy Kapelos: You ran a campaign on message of unity. You won with 51 per cent of the vote. What’s the first thing you say to caucus when you address them Monday morning?
Andrew Scheer: We all have to come together. And my commitment to them will be to make sure there’s a place for every kind of Conservative. There are a lot of MPs who supported other candidates. I was honoured to have significant amount of caucus support, but my job is to bring us all together and say look, these are the things we can agree on. These are the issues that bring us all together that creates that caucus unity, let’s focus on those. Let’s allow conversations on other issues, whether supply management or others, but let’s make sure that Canadians know that our party support supply management. We will defend that. We’ll focus on those issues that bring us together and not divide our own caucus.
Vassy Kapelos: So because you are now the leader of the official Opposition, I want to ask you a bit about the ideas you presented. The one I noticed that got the biggest round of applause here was to withdraw federal funding from universities that limit free speech. Can you explain how do you define limiting free speech?
Andrew Scheer: Well I think we see a disturbing trend. I hope we would all agree that it’s not right that students or campus clubs get shut down because they dare to challenge established orthodoxy on certain issues. And there are a lot of students who face discrimination on campus because they’re not allowed to express their view. Visiting former prime ministers from Israel have had their events cancelled because universities refuse to allow them to have a platform. Student newspapers refuse to print letters to the editor with different points of view of certain issues. That’s not right. I think Canadians can all agree that freedom of speech has to be protected and outside of the Parliament of Canada, and perhaps the media, there’s no more of an important place to have that freedom of speech protected than universities which were established to have that debate of ideas and to find the truth through rigorous debate. So, the Liberals have acknowledged that it’s possible to withhold federal funding from universities that don’t agree with certain topics. They’ve chosen to choose diversity as their goal. I’ve chosen to protect free speech on campus with my plan, and I think it’s essential. We’ll put forward a detailed plan on how we will achieve that, but I think the principal is sound. You saw the reaction to night and I think it’s something that even people who disagree with Conservatives on issues, agree with the right to have the debate or to have the conversation.
Vassy Kapelos: So I’ve definitely heard a lot of stories of that in the United States, but is there a lot of evidence that it’s happening here in Canada?
Andrew Scheer: Oh sure, I can find you a lot of examples. I think it was a university in Quebec where a former prime minister from Israel had their event cancelled. I know of students who have talked to me throughout this race and have said, you know, they tried to start up a campus club and it wouldn’t be recognized. So yeah, it is happening. And we have had guest speakers had their events cancelled in universities. We know it’s happening with Jordan Peterson and the threats that he’s faced from his university because he holds a different perspective on certain issues. So it’s happening here. It’s important that we don’t allow it to escalate. And it’s that intolerance of the left on so many of these subjects that lead to that political correctness gone so far that you can’t even have a conversation about things, and I think that’s where we see the backlash happening in the United States. So if we want to avoid some of the difficulties that we see in the United States, it has to start with having a tolerant society and having the ability to talk about these issues.
Vassy Kapelos: Speaking of tolerance, I know you’re probably getting a lot of questions about this, but you have certain I guess “socially Conservative” personal views. And I know in the past when I’ve interviewed you, you’ve said you’re a very pragmatic guy. You’re not going to reopen a lot of things that are already locked for example, but let me ask you I guess about abortion because a lot of pro-life groups have written tonight saying that they’re excited about your win. Would you ever reopen that debate in the House of Commons?
Andrew Scheer: I made it very clear that as prime minister I will not reopen this debate. It’s in our party platform. I respect the grassroots process that this party has. Tonight matters, the members choose our leader, but they also choose the party policies that that leader runs on and promotes. And one of them is that a Conservative government will not open up certain issues, the one you mentioned being one of them. My job is to find the common ground between all the different kinds of Conservatives. Yes, social conservatives had a role to play tonight, but so did libertarians. You might have seen Maxime Bernier did pretty well tonight. And we got a lot of support from the libertarian conservatives. The democratic reform conservatives, you know Michael Chong had a great message about not just democratizing our party, but also our Parliament that resonated with a lot of people. So the leaders job is to say look, there are certain issues that if we open up will create divisions within our own party, let’s focus on the things we can agree on. That’s how we’ll win in 2019.
Vassy Kapelos: Your predecessor, Rona Ambrose, made a point of really doing things to make the party appear to be more inclusive or to be more inclusive really, and one of them was marching in the Pride parade and she did that pretty proudly herself. Would you ever do something like that?
Andrew Scheer: I’ve heard reports of what’s coming out of the Pride parades about not even letting police officers march and it’s become a very politicized type of event, and a lot of people in the LGBT community that question what’s going on with that event itself. Our party will be inclusive. There’s a home for every kind of Conservative. We accept a diversity of opinion on issues. I made the commitment not to open up these issues. I will maintain that.
Vassy Kapelos: But would you stay away from something like a Pride parade?
Andrew Scheer: You tell me. I mean what’s going on with Pride today? You know they’re not even allowing police officers. People put their lives on the line for hard working Canadians, law-abiding Canadians aren’t allowed to march. I mean it’s become a politicized event that I think what was once maybe fighting for a policy objective to obtain recognition has now become something that’s gone way beyond that. Many members of that community don’t support the type of event it’s turned into.
Vassy Kapelos: Okay, well thanks a lot for your time. Best of luck and congratulations, I really appreciate it.
Andrew Scheer: My pleasure, Vassy.
Vassy Kapelos: And coming up after the break. Where does the party go from here? We’ll talk to two Conservative MPs. That’s next.
Vassy Kapelos: Welcome back. Well it was a close race, but it’s a new day for the Conservative Party. Here to talk a bit about where the party goes from here are two of the party’s MPs, Shannon Stubbs from Alberta and Gérard Deltell from Quebec. Thank you so much for being with us.
Gérard Deltell: My pleasure.
Shannon Stubbs: Thank you.
Vassy Kapelos: I appreciate it, nice to see you. Shannon, you supported Mr. Scheer.
Shannon Stubbs: Yes.
Vassy Kapelos: It was a close race though. Did you foresee this outcome? Did you think it would be this close, and did you think Mr. Scheer would win?
Shannon Stubbs: Well we didn’t count our chickens before they hatched, so we waited until the final choice of the members was revealed. But we’re so proud of Andrew Scheer and look forward to the party coming together. You know he ran a positive campaign based on Conservative principles and policies, and now we’ll unite as a team and prepare to take on Prime Minister Trudeau in 2019.
Vassy Kapelos: Will uniting be difficult, Mr. Deltell Gérard because you supported Erin O’Toole. Fifty one per cent win, very, very close. Will the unification—I know you guys are—you know you say that it’s going to be good because you’re in the party, but will it be a difficult process?
Gérard Deltell: Well you know we actually approved without a shadow of a doubt in the last year and a half that we work as a team. We work as a team in the House of Commons even if we were not on the same ballot for the leadership race, we work together very strong. And the leadership candidate proved without a shadow of a doubt that yes you can fights of ideas but getting united after that. And I’m very pleased to the speech made by Mr. Scheer.
Vassy Kapelos: What about it did you like?
Gérard Deltell: Well it was a united speech, a very positive speech, and let me tell you this. He spent a lot of time in Quebec and he spoke a lot of Quebec during the speech. I was very attracted by that.
Vassy Kapelos: What about you? What is the message that he had that attracted you to his campaign and was it early that you were attracted to the campaign? Was it right off the bat?
Shannon Stubbs: Yes, yes I was proud to stand with him in his first press conference when he announced that he was going to seek the leadership. I’ve gotten to know Andrew very well over the last year and a half and he is committed to Conservative principles and policies. He without a shadow of a doubt reflects the priorities and the values of the vast majority of the people that I represent, which obviously resonated with Conservative member’s right across Canada. And I think he represents the next generation of Conservative leaders, so we were proud to get behind him. But you know I think the strong results of the election on all the campaigns speak well to our party and the shape we’re in. I think that we’re the strongest that we’ve ever been and so now we’ll look forward.
Vassy Kapelos: You talk about those Conservative values and principles. What does that party look like under Andrew Scheer? Does it change at all from a couple of days ago when it comes to those values and principles?
Gérard Deltell: Well I think he made a lot of emphasis on the Conservative values and all share those values.
Vassy Kapelos: What are those values for our audience though, explicitly?
Gérard Deltell: Well you have a real realistic government. You know we spend not too much money. We live with the money that we have, not the money that we borrowed from our children and grandchildren. And this is totally unacceptable. That’s what we talk about Conservative values, our first concern for the millions for the young people who will have to pay in their future years because the actual government cannot control the spending. This is really a Conservative value, and Andrew is there to fight for that.
Vassy Kapelos: Do you think he will be able though to transform the party to a degree that might be necessary given what happened in the last election? I mean there’s lots of talk about renewing the party, putting a different face on the party after 10 years of Stephen Harper, but then he’s also kind of being characterized as Harper light or a different type of Harper. Do you agree with that assessment? Do you think he has what it takes to really bring the party in 2019?
Shannon Stubbs: Well I think first of all, you know our party is in the strongest position it’s been ever before. We have fundraised three times the Liberals in the last couple of quarters.
Vassy Kapelos: You were in the leadership race though.
Shannon Stubbs: Yeah, certainly.
Vassy Kapelos: It helps.
Shannon Stubbs: Yeah, which speaks to the strength and the attraction of our party, and I think we’re well-positioned to take on Prime Minister Trudeau. And we’ll continue to stand for those things that have made us a very effective Opposition. So we’ll stand for freedom, we will stand for individual rights and responsibilities and limited government and fiscal responsibility and having a strong future for young Canadians who are looking for work and carrying for the most vulnerable Canadians and ensuring that they have a quality of opportunity and prosperity for Canadians right across the country. I think what’s really important to us is to continue to stand strong for our Conservative principles and values and make the case to Canadians that we’re ready to govern in 2019.
Vassy Kapelos: Let me ask you about something. The Liberals are here, a few of them watching. And the first thing they brought up was some of the socially Conservative values that Mr. Scheer espouses. So specifically he’s pro-life, he’s against assisted suicide. To be fair, I’ve interviewed him and he says that he’s a pragmatic guy. He doesn’t want to reopen the laws, that kind of thing. But I think that you know already lots of pro-life groups are saying great he won, that’s exciting. We got some press releases already, do you think that will be a challenge for your party? Do you think that the government and the NDP will kind of leap on that?
Gérard Deltell: Well because they say that you know they are in deep problem. When we talk about social value, Mr. Scheer said he will follow the guide of Mr. Harper. We were in office for about 10 years and we never addressed this issue with bills. Mr. Scheer was very clear during the campaign he will follow the example of Mr. Harper. But if we talk about Conservative and social issues, let’s talk about family life. This guy is a clear representation that yes we are a family party. The five children, magnificent children too, well that’s great. So I understand the opponent to be afraid of Mr. Scheer and the Conservative Party of Canada.
Vassy Kapelos: That said the woman he’s replacing, Rona Ambrose, really did make a concerted effort to reach out to other groups. She marched, for example, in the Pride parade and she reached out to lots of women and people of different sexual orientations, different races, that kind of thing. I think she really made a point of doing that. Do you think that Andrew Scheer’s going to do the same thing?
Shannon Stubbs: Well our party is diverse, and so I think that’s actually the strength of our party. We have social conservatives and libertarians and classical Liberals and populists and democratic reformers, and all of those people have a home in our party. And I think that’s actually the example that Rona Ambrose set and that’s the approach that Andrew will continue to take.
Vassy Kapelos: Even if he won’t because of his own values, you know, march in a gay pride parade or things along those lines?
Shannon Stubbs: Well we believe in freedom of expression and belief and faith, and so those are issues that should be animated by individual members and what they believe in. And our task, I think, is to focus on those issues which unite us, which is a belief in the individual and a belief in low taxes and fiscal responsibility and on prosperity and opportunity and caring for the vulnerable among us.
Vassy Kapelos: Okay.
Gérard Deltell: And you know, also a year ago, we had a convention in Vancouver. Four thousand members voted for the respect of the gay rights and the gay marriage and all that stuff, so we respect that. You know it’s more important to adopt a bill, to adopt a motion that supports gay rights instead of walking in the parade or something like that. I prefer to have the emphasis on that.
Vassy Kapelos: Okay, thank you very much both of you for being here.
Gérard Deltell: My pleasure.
Shannon Stubbs: Thank you.
Vassy Kapelos: Nice to see you. And coming up after the break, we’ll unpack the politics of this race. That’s next.
Vassy Kapelos: Welcome back. It’s time to unpack the politics of this exciting evening. And joining me now to do just that is Tim Powers, former Conservative strategist with Summa Strategies now and of course, our chief political correspondent, David Atkin. Guys, it’s great to see you. Thanks for being here.
Tim Powers: Good to be here.
Vassy Kapelos: Tim, was this a surprise to you?
Tim Powers: What about this whole contest from day one hasn’t been a surprise? The big candidates don’t enter. Kevin O’Leary comes in then he comes out. The debates are boring, but the data and the dollars that come in are good. Leading into this weekend people are predicting a Maxime Bernier victory, and low and behold, Andrew Scheer is the leader. So in a strange way, Conservatives got excitement out of all of this. I think when the analysis is all said and done, Vassy, that we’ll find that Andrew Scheer won by focusing on getting points and not focusing on signing vast swaths of members. The quick anecdote about that is I think he won the riding of Labrador which had a whopping 11 members at the start of this. Went to 23, he made outreach early. A hundred points for 23 members is as good as 100 points for 2,300.
Vassy Kapelos: Interesting. His main message basically was one about unity. David, he won this with 51 per cent of the vote. How difficult is unifying the party on Monday from your perspective?
David Atkin: I don’t think it’s that difficult. First of all, on Monday, he’s going to be meeting with his caucus first thing and he had significant caucus support, only Erin O’Toole had more. So I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, and around the convention for the whole weekend I haven’t heard a lot of grumbling, if Scheer wins that’s it, I’m ripping up my membership card. I don’t think party unity’s going to be the problem. I think what is going to be the problem first off for the party is, and we’re already seeing it from Liberal and New Democrats, is that Andrew Scheer won because the social Conservative wing of this party flexed significant electoral muscle. As we watched ballot after ballot come in, the so called candidates, the one issue guys, Pierre Lemieux and Brad Trost finished very well. And as soon as Trost disappeared off the ballot, that was the bump that sent Scheer within points of Bernier and he would eventually win. So if you’re a Liberal this Andrew Scheer guy stands for rolling back reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights. We’re going to talk again about physician assisted suicide. Scheer has told you on this program he’s not doing anything like that. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to get it on that front.
Vassy Kapelos: So what do you think because he has said, you know he takes a very pragmatic approach. He’s not about to reopen any laws, but he does have socially Conservative values. I received, I think, three press releases from pro-life groups already this evening saying we’re celebrating this victory. Do you think it’s a problem for the party going forward?
Tim Powers: He’s going to have to do the same tap dance that Stephen Harper did, but I think what Scheer projects more than anything else is comfort. While there may be social conservatives who are pleased to see him there and he gives them comfort, he was arguably the least polarizing figure. That’s also new for Conservatives. And the bigger thing that I think is happening and we’ll see if this is born out with the election of the NDP leader, where we had very strident sort of political leaders with Mr. Mulcair and Mr. Harper and Mr. Ignatieff, we’re now moving perhaps to an era where the polarizing isn’t seen as effective as the comforting. And I think Scheer’s a bit of the comfort candidate. Can he be comfortable enough for more Canadians to put the Conservatives in front? Only time will tell that.
Vassy Kapelos: What do you think?
David Atkin: And one other surprising thing, Kellie Leitch, gotta talk about her. She did abysmally. She did poorly. She finished, I think, seven before she went. And that’s important for this party because I take it as a repudiation of the race tinged Canadian values things she was selling. She was on the covers of national news magazines. She was leading in the polls at one point. It did bring some interest, but this party said no Kellie, we don’t want to do what you were selling. I think that’s good for the Conservative Party.
Tim Powers: What’s also interesting, Vassy because you interviewed all the candidates so you’ve heard a lot of this: millennials, millennials, millennials, millennials. Well the Conservatives didn’t elect a millennial but they elected somebody who is close in age to millennials, projects the youthfulness. One would hope has more of a youthful view. There’s no proof yet that this leadership race enhanced Conservative status among the millennials, but arguably they may have a better chance of doing that with someone who looks like them, faces the same challenges they’re facing and can speak to them like them. That doesn’t mean there’s a mass conversion coming, but this could be a hidden asset for Conservatives as they go forward.
Vassy Kapelos: Do you think this party picked the right guy to challenge Justin Trudeau? When you look at the crop of 13, was this the right choice, the best person to challenge Trudeau in 2019?
Tim Powers: Only time will tell that. I’m not trying to equivocate on that because the other truth of this leadership race is Andrew Scheer, as Maxime Bernier would have been, is more likely to be everybody’s second or third choice. So he has to understand that going forward and understand why he is that second or third choice. He’s been given the opportunity to build and grow, and I think the expectation is that he will build and grow, is the expectation that he will beat Justin Trudeau. People may say that directly to your face, but I don’t know if they believe that.
Vassy Kapelos: What do David? What do you think match up Trudeau-Scheer?
David Atkin: I don’t think it matters who they picked on that match up because I’ve been saying all weekend the more important leadership race for the gang in this room is the NDP leadership race that’s just getting going. The NDP needs to peel off votes from Trudeau Liberals. So whoever they pick, they need a strong leader, say Conservatives. Andrew Scheer does match up really well I think against Trudeau. Probably better than Bernier, but more importantly for Conservative success in 2019; New Democrats gotta get a stronger game on.
Vassy Kapelos: So what happens now to Maxime Bernier? What happens to Kellie Leitch, Chris Alexander, people like that? Is this sort of–?
Tim Powers: They need to be hugged and loved by Andrew Scheer. And then they’ll want to decide—
Vassy Kapelos: Do you think they will be?
Tim Powers: I think he’ll again, get the message that he wasn’t the overwhelming first choice and he should do that. If you’re the leader, you want to get on the phones tonight, tomorrow, all through the next week and talk to every one of them. You are going to need all of these people because the other opportunity, the Liberals and the NDP will say social conservatives as David said, propel the Conservatives forward. The Conservatives can argue look, we’re open and big enough. We can handle a lot of views. Andrew Scheer has to demonstrate that in the way he deals with these people.
Vassy Kapelos: What about you David? What do you think happens to Maxime Bernier?
David Atkin: Yeah, I think Tim’s advice is great. And you know for Maxime of course he’s going to be upset about this or disappointed with this. I’ve known Maxime Bernier for about a decade and I would say for eight of those years he’s been planning to be the leader of the party and working hard to do it. He worked very hard. He’s been campaigning for a year and organizing. And I would say to Scheer, yes Maxime’s a definite asset. I mean he’s liked in a lot of the parts of the country. Find a way to use him and give him a prominent role.
Vassy Kapelos: What do you think went wrong? I mean you spent the past two days talking to people on the floor. I sensed there was a bit of a nervousness about how ideas focused he was and the content of some of those ideas. What was your sense?
David Atkin: Well a lot of people would say whenever I brought that up would say hold on David, there’s a policy convention in a year’s time. So whatever leader won and whatever controversial idea they might have had, the grassroots was going to have a chance to weigh in on it and probably moderate whatever views were maybe a little bit out of the ordinary. So that was a lot of Bernier people were telling me that: don’t worry, we’re going to get this thing. I don’t know that Scheer’s really associated with the particular policy that got a lot of people upset.
Tim Powers: He was the Speaker. He doesn’t have a record that one can criticize. Erin O’Toole—
David Atkin: The first Speaker ever to become a party leader in our system.
Vassy Kapelos: And we’ll leave it on that point. I’ve got go to, but thanks very much for joining me today guys, appreciate it.
And that is our show for today. Hope to see you back here next week. Thanks so much for joining us.
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