Juno News - December 13, 2019


The Candice Malcolm Show： Andrew Scheer resigns as Conservative leader

Topics
Andrew Scheer resignation Andrew Scheer resignation
Guests
True North
Mentioned
Andrew Scheer Sanders Scheer John Breeding Maxime Bernier Ronna Ambrose Peter McKay Candace Malcolm Stephen Harper Brian Lilly Robert Fyfe Periscope
The Candice Malcolm Show： Trudeau still has no idea what to do about China Trudeau directs cabinet to regulate internet “hate speech”

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

170.65

Word count

1,620

Sentence count

116


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Andrew Scheer has resigned as Conservative Party Leader, according to the Globe and Mail, Global News, and the Toronto Sun are all reporting the news. This comes after a report from former Conservative Cabinet Minister John Baird was critical of the party's election campaign.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 We're live, Candice Malcolm here with True North and we've got breaking news. Andrew Scheer,
00:00:10.680 leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, has resigned. He is no longer going to be leader once
00:00:17.640 they select a new leader. This is coming out of a meeting that Andrew Scheer had with the
00:00:22.560 Conservative Caucus this morning in Ottawa. So lots to break down, decided to go live. I just
00:00:29.080 finished actually recording my podcast for the day. So that's going to come out a little later.
00:00:33.840 It's going to be a little dated because of this huge bombshell news. And honestly, I'm surprised.
00:00:40.160 I'm surprised because it seemed like Andrew Scheer was just starting to fight back. He had a little
00:00:46.380 bit of sign of life, like he actually wanted to lead the Conservative Party. I guess not. I guess
00:00:52.680 he's had enough. He doesn't want to fight back. And so that's that. Let's go through what we know
00:01:00.380 so far. So Brian Lilly over at the Toronto Sun tweeted about half an hour, breaking from a top
00:01:08.900 Conservative source. Andrew Scheer will resign as leader once a new leader is selected by the party.
00:01:14.060 Details to come. That came at 11.37 Eastern time this morning. And then shortly thereafter,
00:01:19.940 the Globe and Mail, Robert Fyfe over at the Globe and Mail posted that Andrew Scheer resigns as
00:01:26.640 Conservative leader. The Globe and Mail says, Andrew Scheer has decided to resign as Conservative
00:01:30.900 leader after a disappointing election loss facing internal party divisions over his ability to lead
00:01:37.080 the party's sources say. Mr. Scheer called a special caucus meeting Thursday morning where he announced
00:01:42.140 he was stepping down. The decision comes after former Conservative Cabinet Minister John Baird tabled a
00:01:47.720 highly critical report of the party's election campaign to Mr. Scheer's office on Wednesday.
00:01:52.960 So Globe and Mail is saying that it is because of a disappointing election loss. John Baird, who was a
00:01:58.720 former foreign minister under Stephen Harper, tabled a report that was critical of Scheer. And so the
00:02:07.140 Globe and Mail is reporting that it is over Scheer's election results, which to be honest, I wouldn't say
00:02:14.020 that it was, you know, the desired outcome of most Conservatives in this country, but it wasn't that
00:02:19.500 bad. It wasn't that bad. So that's what the Globe and Mail is reporting. Now, Global News, Mercedes
00:02:24.540 Stevenson and Amanda Connolly over at Global News are pointing to something totally different,
00:02:31.540 something totally different, which is that Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer to resign imminently
00:02:37.340 over a scandal. His resignation comes as a direct result of new revelations that he was using
00:02:43.300 Conservative Party money to pay for his children's private schooling. Private school. So he was paying
00:02:50.240 for his children to go to private school using party funds, according to Global. Senior Conservatives
00:02:57.520 say the expenditures were made without knowledge or approval of the Conservative Fund board, including
00:03:03.620 the chair of the board. So that is a pretty serious allegation over there at Global, if true, that Andrew Scheer
00:03:11.960 was using party resources improperly. And if that is the case, wow, he absolutely needs to go. He probably needs to
00:03:19.840 step down as MP as well. So pretty, pretty huge news out of Ottawa today. Still putting pieces together. This is
00:03:30.060 breaking news. So we don't have anything confirmed. Just a bunch of news stories, Global News, Globe and Mail
00:03:37.400 and the Toronto Sun are all reporting that Andrew Scheer has stepped down. And so, you know, it's kind of
00:03:44.460 too bad. I've sort of been one of the people who's been defending Scheer lately, because I think that the
00:03:50.840 Conservatives are better united. I think he ran a decent campaign. It wasn't amazing, but it wasn't as bad
00:03:56.220 as it could have been. And I think he had potential to grow. But there was really a seeming, it was
00:04:01.620 apparent that Andrew Scheer didn't really want the job. He was not really fighting back, you know,
00:04:07.620 throughout the campaign, there was a lot of media criticism against him. And he didn't really fight
00:04:13.780 back. He didn't really fight back. He didn't punch back in the way that a lot of Conservatives would
00:04:18.160 have wanted to. He didn't answer the questions as clearly, you know, the media were obsessed with the
00:04:22.600 issue of his personal, social, conservative Catholic values. And he didn't really stand up
00:04:28.360 and articulate those values and how they would differentiate, you know, from his personal life
00:04:33.100 to his role as a, you know, someone governing the country. And then when there appeared to be
00:04:39.240 fractions within the party, you know, there was a couple of different movements from Conservative
00:04:42.680 factions saying, you know, Scheer's got to resign. It's time for Scheer to go. We didn't really see him
00:04:47.040 stand up and punch back. And I think that really showed that, to me, it showed that Andrew Scheer just
00:04:52.460 didn't want the job. He didn't want the job. He wasn't willing to, you know, make those speeches
00:04:58.620 to unite Conservatives together under one tent. He wasn't, you know, willing to take a stand and stand
00:05:07.200 up to people who were criticizing him. And I spoke to an MP. We, you know, off the record, but I spoke
00:05:15.380 to an MP who told me that Andrew Scheer hadn't even made phone calls to all of caucus. So typically,
00:05:21.380 you know, after something like big, like an election, the leader of the party will pick up
00:05:25.020 the phone and call every MP that got elected and, you know, have a call to bring them all together.
00:05:30.540 Apparently, Andrew Scheer hadn't even done that. He hadn't even phoned his entire caucus after the
00:05:34.520 election, you know, to welcome new MPs and to talk to existing MPs about what his strategy was. So
00:05:39.700 again, it kind of seemed like he didn't really want the job. And if these spending allegations are
00:05:44.560 true, that is a big, big scandal. And, you know, that's totally unacceptable, totally unacceptable to
00:05:52.680 be using party funds, obviously, to pay for a personal expenditure like your children's private
00:05:57.740 school. So don't have much more, you know, information at the time. I'm not exactly sure
00:06:04.200 what will happen. It seems like Scheer will stay on until a new leader is selected. Conservatives will
00:06:10.220 have to, again, basically start from scratch with a leadership selection. It puts them in a pretty
00:06:15.640 vulnerable situation, given that there is a minority parliament. If I were the Liberals,
00:06:21.400 now wouldn't be a terrible time to call another snap election because the Conservative Party is in
00:06:27.400 disarray. Voters are going to see that. And they're going to, you know, wonder how could you
00:06:35.680 possibly put your vote behind a Conservative. So it could potentially give the Liberals an
00:06:40.800 opportunity to get a majority, you know, starting a leadership race. It's a, it's a, it's a, you know,
00:06:48.920 a big undertaking. And it's not like there's really a leader in waiting. It's not like there is a person
00:06:56.700 who, you know, is obvious to people in conservative circles, you know, that person should be the leader.
00:07:01.180 That was part of my concern as well with all the criticism of Scheer and people calling for Scheer
00:07:05.720 to step down. It's hard to imagine who, who would really step in. Someone on Periscope is saying
00:07:12.080 only Maxime. Well, Maxime Bernier is a very polarizing individual within the Conservative
00:07:17.520 Party. I mean, his electoral outcome, you know, wasn't exactly strong. And I think that was because
00:07:25.120 a lot of Conservatives just didn't want the party to be split. They didn't want to lend their vote to
00:07:29.880 another party. And so yeah, Maxime Bernier did the strongest after the last leadership, especially
00:07:37.160 on the first ballot. But, you know, I can't imagine him, him coming, being welcomed back into the party
00:07:43.340 and taking it over. And, you know, I don't, I have no idea. I don't know if it's going to be the same
00:07:49.140 crop of individuals who ran last time against Sanders Scheer are going to run again. Someone else
00:07:54.460 on Periscope is saying, how about Ronna Ambrose? I like Ronna. She's a strong Alberta voice.
00:08:02.020 Although I will say on election night, it was kind of painful to watch her basically apologizing
00:08:08.220 for being a Conservative and bashing other Conservatives. Oops, looks like we lost our feed
00:08:14.620 over on Facebook. But I'll continue for Periscope. Again, yeah, I can't, I can't imagine. I don't know
00:08:22.180 who it's going to be. And I, and I worry that whoever it is will be polarizing in a different
00:08:26.580 way. You know, if it's someone from, you know, people talk about perhaps Peter McKay. Peter McKay
00:08:33.300 is not exactly well liked in the Western part of the country. And I worry about, again, the party
00:08:40.020 splitting up. So again, to recap, Andrew Scheer has resigned. The Globe and Mail is reporting that it's
00:08:46.140 over his election loss and a report that John Baird tabled to his office on Wednesday that talked
00:08:52.060 about how bad the election was. The Global News is reporting that it's over a scandal involving
00:08:58.060 Andrew Scheer using party funds to pay for his children's private school. You know, my own reporting
00:09:05.180 shows that Andrew Scheer just really didn't want the job. He wasn't willing to fight back. He hadn't even
00:09:10.140 bothered to phone all of caucus after he was elected. And yeah, he just wasn't, didn't, didn't have the
00:09:17.020 fire, didn't have what it takes to fight and win. So I'm going to leave it at that. We will continue
00:09:22.540 to update you with more as it comes. Check on, check out tnc.news for the latest.