Juno News - Andrew Scheer has resigned. Now what？

00:00:00.000 Andrew Scheer has resigned as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and will complete

00:00:10.200 his stepping down once a new leader has been chosen by a leadership convention. Now for the

00:00:15.880 people that have been jumping up and down calling for his head on a platter this is no doubt good

00:00:20.520 news but anyone who thinks that Andrew Scheer's resignation will solve the Conservative Party's

00:00:25.740 problems is sorely mistaken. I want to spend a moment on where the Conservatives go from here

00:00:31.780 because one of the greatest accusations that was put to Andrew Scheer by people in the

00:00:36.220 red Tory faction of the party was that he was too Conservative. Well he was also fending off

00:00:41.520 criticism from a lot of the social Conservatives for being too mushy on some issues and this right

00:00:47.200 there proves the problem. No matter what you are going to have warring factions within the Conservative

00:00:52.760 Party you need someone who is committed to and will have success at uniting them. Now Andrew Scheer

00:00:59.280 said in his farewell address that he had a united Conservative Party. I think that's a very difficult

00:01:04.960 sell but I also think it's important to note that Andrew Scheer had a tremendous task ahead of him

00:01:11.160 which was to defeat Justin Trudeau and while he didn't do that and it's easy for people to say it

00:01:16.620 was a complete failure the campaign he does deserve credit for reducing Justin Trudeau to a minority.

00:01:22.760 I had many criticisms about Andrew Scheer's leadership. I shared them privately with Conservatives

00:01:28.080 and I shared them publicly through my work here at True North but I don't doubt for a moment that he's a

00:01:33.560 decent man that genuinely believed that he was doing the right thing for the party and for the country

00:01:38.860 and for his service to party and country he deserves our thanks. No one benefits from people spiking

00:01:45.300 the football such as it is or trying to jump on a man's political grave. Andrew Scheer deserves our

00:01:51.360 gratitude and he certainly has my gratitude but the Conservative Party has a task ahead of it right

00:01:57.020 now that is not going to be solved solely by choosing a leader. It needs introspection. The

00:02:02.920 Conservatives right now are a party that doesn't really stand for anything and that shows. When a

00:02:08.280 platform comes up that doesn't really have any memorable or substantive policies that's relevant.

00:02:14.640 The Conservatives are a big tent party. It's not fair to say that it's exclusively a socially

00:02:19.180 Conservative Party but it's also not fair to draft a version of the party that excludes

00:02:24.520 Social Conservatives that make up a very sizable chunk and you can just look at leadership results

00:02:30.020 from 2017 to see how significant Social Conservatives are in the membership of the Conservative Party of

00:02:36.420 Canada. So what is going to happen next will transform the political generation ahead if the

00:02:43.960 Conservatives do it well. This means selecting a leader but also selecting a vision for who the

00:02:50.800 party is going to be and who the party is going to stand for and that's a lot more difficult than

00:02:56.460 just finding a new figurehead to stand at top. There are forces right now that will not be happy until

00:03:01.940 the Conservative Party is merely a Liberal Party with blue colours. There are going to be others that have

00:03:07.340 an ideologically pure vision of the party that may not resonate with voters directly. Now ideological

00:03:13.640 purity is important. Principles are important. No matter what the party must have philosophical grounding

00:03:19.900 moving forward and that's something that we need to see and to be honest that's something that a leader

00:03:24.980 or a prospective leader needs to present if they want to have my support as someone who should be the

00:03:31.100 Prime Minister of Canada. Decide what you want to be then be it. Don't decide where the people are going

00:03:37.240 and try to beat them there. It's never going to work. For True North, I'm Andrew Lutton.

Juno News - December 13, 2019