Juno News - New Conservative deputy leader was Liberal until last September

00:00:00.000 just over four years ago leona alice love was elected as a liberal member of parliament in

00:00:10.720 the house of commons and now she finds herself unveiled as the deputy leader of the conservative

00:00:16.560 party of canada beyond showing what a difference four years can make this appointment also shows

00:00:22.640 that andrew sheer is apparently adopting the idea that he needs to be more engaging with the center

00:00:29.600 and with the left to stay on as conservative leader and to win another election andrew sheer unveiled

00:00:36.000 his leadership team which featured no surprises apart from the big one that leona alice love who

00:00:41.520 only joined the conservative party of canada in september of 2018 is now the deputy leader of the

00:00:48.000 conservatives when asked about the why andrew sheer said that she represents the type of voter that the

00:00:54.400 conservatives need to be engaging of liberal or former liberal from the greater toronto area

00:01:00.160 except the problem with this rationale is that her predecessor lisa rate was a moderate conservative

00:01:05.920 from a greater toronto area riding herself and that didn't even allow lisa rate to hold on to her seat

00:01:11.680 let alone deliver a conservative victory in the gta now i don't know leona alice love personally so i

00:01:17.680 don't have any skin in the game as far as whether she should have a position of leadership or not

00:01:22.160 in the conservative party but i do know that the evidence is clear she was a liberal up until

00:01:26.880 september 2018 and despite her credentials and her on paper qualifications she's someone who identified

00:01:34.080 with justin trudeau and the liberal vision and only parted ways because of specific disagreements

00:01:39.920 about how the liberals were handling some key files now andrew sheer said that she crossed the

00:01:45.120 floor because she bought into and supported andrew sheer's conservative vision and that may be the case

00:01:51.040 but i've never heard anything one way or another to suggest that she is philosophically or ideologically

00:01:56.800 conservative and that's important because even if the conservative party needs to win an election

00:02:02.400 it also needs to exist as a small c conservative party especially if it wants to hold on to the

00:02:08.560 conservative base the problem right now i think is that there are a lot of people saying that the

00:02:13.360 conservatives are never going to win unless they move more to the center or beyond that and move to

00:02:18.400 the left this is one of the commonalities of the various movements and campaigns that are starting

00:02:23.840 accusing andrew sheer's loss of being the responsibility of him being too conservative

00:02:29.680 now this is also coming about at the same time that andrew sheer is being hit from parts of the

00:02:34.400 conservative wing of the conservative party by people who said he was too far left or too far to the

00:02:39.840 center now this tells us that you are in politics damned if you do and damned if you don't but the

00:02:45.840 solution to this is not to try to appease both sides but to pick a side dig your heels in and stand

00:02:52.560 firm stand your ground my advice to andrew sheer would be that these people on the red tory groups

00:02:58.320 that are saying you're too far to the right are never going to love you they're never going to

00:03:03.200 support you and even appointing leona alislev for the reasons that she represents the red tory wing of

00:03:09.280 the party that is not going to win over the support of these critics and the conservative base is often

00:03:16.080 called the base because people believe it's always going to be there but i'm of the mindset that it

00:03:20.880 can't be taken for granted if these people see a party that they don't identify with they will just

00:03:27.040 stay home as the conservatives head into a leadership review and potentially a leadership race

00:03:33.200 this is an important dynamic to watch for true north i'm andrew lutton

Juno News - November 29, 2019