Juno News - Social conservatism didn’t cost Scheer the election： MP

00:00:00.000 We've heard a lot of discussion in the last few days about whether the Conservative Party of

00:00:10.320 Canada can have a leader who's socially conservative, whether Canada can have a

00:00:14.160 Prime Minister who is, and the big question tends to be what does that term even mean?

00:00:19.920 A lot of misconceptions about social conservatism. This was something that was brought to light

00:00:24.480 most recently in a really good Twitter thread by Conservative MP, recently re-elected Conservative

00:00:30.480 MP Garnet Genis. Garnet joins me now. Good to talk to you. Thanks very much for coming on and congrats

00:00:35.680 on re-election. Well thank you Andrew. It's great to be on with you today. So let's start right here

00:00:41.200 with where you went in your Twitter thread because you said that a lot of these issues that are trying

00:00:46.800 to be presented by the media and by the Liberals as being divisive really aren't even on the table

00:00:52.160 for the socially conservative MPs, candidates and certainly Canadian voters. Well I think the

00:00:58.800 point is that there's this phrase out there, social conservative, and maybe at one time people heard

00:01:06.720 that term and had a clear sense of what it meant. But I think there's sort of a real lack of clarity

00:01:12.240 around that now. But there are people within our party who care a lot about religious freedom,

00:01:19.920 who believe in the centrality of family, who believe in the importance of protecting the

00:01:26.640 vulnerable of human rights. And what makes these people perhaps distinct within our party is that

00:01:32.000 they prioritize those issues over economic issues. They're more interested in talking about fundamental

00:01:37.440 freedom and protection of conscience than they are in talking about the economy. Although they might

00:01:41.280 share a lot of the same views about the economy as others within our party do. And the point I wanted to

00:01:47.120 make on the Twitter thread was I think most conservatives agree that people who have those kinds of issue

00:01:56.240 prioritization should be able to feel welcome in our party. But I think more than that we should

00:02:01.760 recognize that people who are thinking about religious freedom, freedom of speech, the important role

00:02:07.920 that family plays in society, the role of faith institutions, that these people have good ideas that are making a

00:02:14.640 substantive positive contribution to our conservative movement. And we benefit from being a big tent party,

00:02:22.720 not just electorally, not just because we need a larger number of people to get to government,

00:02:28.800 but because the people with these different philosophies and different experiences are substantively

00:02:34.000 adding to the direction of our party. And I mean, in terms of issues, right, one issue that I think people

00:02:39.200 who care about life and family were particularly excited about during the election was a conservative

00:02:45.200 proposal around expanding access to adoption. That's not a hot button issue in the sense that nobody

00:02:51.280 out there is against adoption. But it's a positive contribution that is really prioritized by people

00:02:58.720 who come from this wing of the party, whatever you want to call it.

00:03:02.240 Yeah, I think that's an important point. And it was one that was raised by a conservative MP I spoke

00:03:08.240 to a few years ago. When talking about social policy, everyone focuses on the ones that are

00:03:13.840 basically enshrined in church dogma somewhere. But people forget that even economic policy that's

00:03:19.120 focused on family is really targeting that socially conservative view that you need to protect the

00:03:25.120 family. But there is still that broadness. And inside that banner, you have, you know,

00:03:30.720 adoption policy, you also have people in Canada that are supportive of a traditional definition

00:03:36.720 of marriage, people in Canada who are pro-life, and not just Christians, not just Catholics,

00:03:42.160 people of all faith groups in this country, and even people of no faith at all, that believe in

00:03:46.800 these things. Why do you think there has been this success at reframing the narrative as being those

00:03:53.440 views are not compatible with politics and political leaders seeking office in 2019?

00:04:00.720 Well, so, I mean, I think we're talking about even in that kind of preamble, a few different

00:04:07.680 issues, different kinds of issues. So on the issue of, for instance, the definition of marriage,

00:04:13.920 people are going to have different private convictions about, you know, what kind of a marriage they would

00:04:20.160 enter into, let's say. And I mean, there are people who, from a Catholic tradition, don't believe in

00:04:25.200 divorce even as part of marriage, you know, for them. And so there are, but the issue of whether

00:04:31.440 or not the state would recognize same-sex unions as marriage, that is not an issue on the political

00:04:38.080 agenda in terms of anybody from any part of our party wanting to change. And I think people know

00:04:44.240 and understand that. There are a range of different points of view on the issue of abortion. And I think

00:04:53.520 what people that are pro-life, that believe that life before the point of birth is human life and

00:05:02.160 should be valued, are looking for, I guess, constructive ways. And adoption is, promoting

00:05:08.640 adoption is maybe one of those ways to recognize and, let's say, protect some of those lives. But

00:05:18.720 but it's not, it's not, our party is not proposing to ever have government legislation brought forward

00:05:27.840 on these issues. But there's a range of different points of view within our party. And that's, and

00:05:32.640 that's okay. I mean, it reflects the fact that there are different points of view among Canadians

00:05:36.800 on these issues as well. And I think is the key point that's lacking in this. And we saw this a few

00:05:42.640 months back, or I guess a couple of years back with the Canada Summer Jobs Program. And you were a leader

00:05:47.520 on that, where you had the Prime Minister trying to say that, you know what, these values that you may

00:05:53.200 have privately impact your ability to have a day camp at your church or impact your ability to run any

00:05:59.200 number of programs. And then you have Jagmeet Singh saying just last week that if you're a social

00:06:04.560 conservative, you can't be Prime Minister. How do you, and I know we've already talked about the

00:06:09.520 the different things that fall under that umbrella and that term, which in your tweets you say you don't

00:06:14.640 quite like for that reason. But how do you think people can push back against this and say, look,

00:06:19.280 we have a range of viewpoints in Canada, you cannot have this exclusionary policy that tries to say,

00:06:25.200 if you believe that, sorry, you can't run for office?

00:06:28.880 Well, so I think it depends on, I guess, who's doing the pushback and where they're situated. I mean,

00:06:35.120 clearly, it's important for people that are outside of politics and involved in the activism

00:06:42.080 world personally convicted about some of these issues to make the argument about the reasonableness

00:06:47.360 of their position, right? And that's, of course, what they are doing and will do. You know, for us

00:06:53.200 in politics, though, I think it's a dangerous trend when people want to close the space for discourse.

00:07:00.880 We see efforts, you mentioned the Canada Summer Jobs Program, there's plenty of cases of

00:07:05.120 pro-life student activism being shut down on university campuses and other restrictions on

00:07:11.840 freedom of speech on campus. These issues of freedom of speech on campus, they impact a broad

00:07:18.880 range of students from, I think, a broad range of different perspectives. And I think, you know,

00:07:25.680 going in a bit of a different vein, there's growing concern about how foreign governments may try and

00:07:31.280 influence discourse on campus around issues of human rights that may go against what that nation

00:07:37.600 wants to see discussed. So there's a lot of these rights and freedoms issues that are bubbling to

00:07:43.600 the surface in Canada. And I think, you know, recognizing that what has made us what we are as

00:07:51.360 a free society is the fact that we recognize that our own deeply held points of view might actually be

00:07:56.720 wrong. And so we need to take the time to listen to other people who have different points of view,

00:08:01.040 and we need to understand why they hold those points of view. You know, people who are pro-life

00:08:07.840 or pro-choice, generally they have a different point of view about when human life begins.

00:08:11.760 None of them hate each other. It's simply a matter of a different point of view about when human life

00:08:18.080 begins and the kind of the balance of rights that has worked out in those cases. And, you know,

00:08:24.240 at the political level, none of the major parties are proposing to bring forward legislation on that.

00:08:30.960 But we can respect the fact that individuals have different points of view that are sincerely held,

00:08:35.360 that are rooted in serious thought about the issues. And we are more likely to make good decisions

00:08:40.640 as a society, as a parliament, if people are not made to feel small because they happen to have a

00:08:48.800 sincerely held view on an issue. One of the prevailing narratives of these little activist

00:08:54.720 groups that are trying to basically campaign against Andrew Scheer remaining on as leader is that,

00:09:00.400 you know, regardless of what you may think about these types of social issues, it was his beliefs

00:09:05.600 that cost the Conservatives the election. What do you say to that narrative?

00:09:10.320 Well, I think we need to be very clear, Andrew. We've talked about kind of this whole issue of,

00:09:18.000 you know, this wing of the Conservative Party and their role in the party. But I think a lot of the

00:09:22.480 criticism of Andrew's leadership is coming from a different place. It's coming from the place of,

00:09:29.920 you know, there's folks out there who themselves would like to be leader. And if you want to be the

00:09:35.280 leader of the party and someone else's leader, obviously, you're going to be dissatisfied with the

00:09:38.800 fact that that person is the leader. So that's, I mean, that's coming from some of the critics,

00:09:43.600 or maybe people that were very involved in and very close to other leadership campaigns in the past,

00:09:49.600 or prospective leadership campaigns for the future. I think there's also the case of people who

00:09:56.480 were involved in a local campaign or themselves were local candidates, and they lost. And it's hard

00:10:02.400 to run and lose. I ran provincially and lost before getting into federal politics. So I know what that's

00:10:07.440 like. And you kind of immediately want to jump to an explanation. And I think, you know, it's totally

00:10:18.480 legitimate and fair for people to have worked hard for our party, our cause, and feel that sense of

00:10:24.640 disappointment. But my advice to those folks that want to immediately kind of go out and publicly talk

00:10:32.880 about about what happened is to, you know, take a pause, we're going to our leadership review is in

00:10:38.320 April, there's time for people to think through these issues. There's going to be a data driven

00:10:43.840 election review process. And look, did we run a perfect campaign? No. Are there points of feedback

00:10:51.520 that I might have that other MPs who are supportive of the leader will have? Absolutely, we're going to

00:10:56.240 have those points of feedback. But I think if you look objectively at the facts about the leadership,

00:11:03.760 you know, Stephen Harper was the leader of the Conservative Party during the 2004 election.

00:11:09.920 That was during the sponsorship scandal. Now, in terms of impact on public opinion across the country,

00:11:15.840 the sponsorship scandal had a much bigger impact in terms of public opinion

00:11:21.760 than the SNC-Lavalin scandal. And Paul Martin did not have the same brand as Justin Trudeau does.

00:11:32.000 And that had been over 10 years of Liberal government. It had only been four years of

00:11:35.760 Liberal government in this case. So principally, the task Stephen Harper had in front of him should

00:11:41.120 have been easier. And yet he didn't succeed in 2004. From 2004 to 2006, we stayed united, we continued to

00:11:47.440 grow, we moved forward, and Stephen Harper became a very successful Prime Minister. Now, we didn't run a

00:11:52.960 perfect campaign in 2004. We had to learn the lessons of 2004. And we grew from there to 2006. But the

00:12:01.040 point is, we didn't descend on each other in fighting and division. We continued to grow and build Stephen

00:12:09.120 Harper's brand, helped him get to know more and more Canadians over the course of the intervening years.

00:12:13.280 And we used that minority parliament to chip away and expose, we're going to have opportunities in

00:12:20.160 this parliament that we didn't have before. The fact that the opposition has a majority, the kinds of

00:12:24.880 investigations that can happen into the scandals of the Liberal government, there's more opportunities

00:12:30.400 to drill into these issues and to push our policy agenda forward. Let's really show Canadians what we

00:12:36.960 have. And let's focus on Canadians and their success, not on internal division. I mean, it would

00:12:43.840 be such a mistake to give into this kind of grass is always greener mentality and undermine our confidence

00:12:52.240 in the leader right when we're kind of just moving in the right direction and on the cusp of progress.

00:12:56.880 Look, we've got work to do, obviously, but let's move forward and do that work.

00:13:00.960 So just to confirm then, Garnett, you don't believe that Andrew Scheer's personal religious

00:13:06.960 convictions, social policy beliefs are really a factor in him only getting to official opposition

00:13:13.840 status, but with a larger caucus size this time. You don't think that was what prevented him from

00:13:18.080 crossing the finish line? I think, you know, first of all, we'll wait for a detailed data analysis to

00:13:25.120 be done. And I think that's important. But my perception, and I mean, I campaigned in my own riding,

00:13:29.920 of course, but I also did a lengthy tour in the GTA. I spent a lot of time in a lot of other riding.

00:13:35.520 And I think that Andrew Scheer, who he is in his entirety, his convictions, his commitment

00:13:44.320 to family, his sincerity and openness about his faith and how that desires him to try and do good

00:13:50.960 for the country. And he's spoken about how his faith informs his conviction that all human beings

00:13:58.240 are created equal and his desire to defend the rights and uphold the immutable dignity of the

00:14:03.680 person, regardless of any identifiable characteristic. He's talked about that very clearly.

00:14:10.720 I think Andrew Scheer, who he is, his character, his convictions are a strength for our party.

00:14:19.120 And the more people get to know him, as they will continue to over the next however long this

00:14:23.680 parliament goes, those things are a strength and they will be a strength. And in the next campaign,

00:14:30.000 we have to confidently showcase that all the more. And I think Canadians will respond.

00:14:35.600 Freshly reelected member of parliament for Sherwood Park, Fort Saskatchewan, Garnet Genis.

00:14:40.160 Garnet, thanks very much for your time. Good to talk to you as always.

00:14:42.560 Thank you very much. Great to chat.

Juno News - November 06, 2019

Social conservatism didn’t cost Scheer the election： MP

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