Holly Cow Batman

[Guest]

Another leader for the Federal Conservatives from a Prairie Province.

Who is Andrew Scheer?

By Monique Scotti National Online Journalist, Politics  Global News

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WATCH: Andrew Scheer announced as the new leader of the federal Conservative party

 

The Conservative Party of Canada has selected its new leader. Andrew Scheer pulled off a stunning upset of the heavily favoured Maxime Bernier on Saturday night in Toronto.

Scheer will be familiar to anyone who has followed Canadian politics closely over the last decade. The upstart winner was first elected to federal office as MP for Regina—Qu’Appelle in 2004, and became Speaker of the House of Commons on June 2, 2011.

READ MORE: Andrew Scheer elected Conservative Party leader in major upset

Scheer remains the youngest House Speaker in Canadian history.

So what does he stand for?

The 38-year-old campaigned on balanced budgets within two years of forming government, supporting supply management in the dairy sector, scrapping the Liberal plan to price carbon, making employment insurance for parental and maternity benefits tax-free and offering a tax credit to families who send their children to independent schools or home-school them. 

Scheer, himself a father of five children, has also promised that universities or colleges “that do not foster a culture of free speech and inquiry on campus” will not receive federal funding under his government.

On immigration, Scheer has said Canada should be prioritizing the most vulnerable refugees, namely religious minorities like Christians in the Middle East who face death for conversion away from Islam.

All of these policy proposals will need to be tested in front of the party’s membership and caucus before the next election, and then Canadian voters will have their say as well.

WATCH: Conservative Party unity cannot be taken for granted, says Scheer

While he is considered socially conservative, Scheer says he won’t repeal the current government’s assisted death law, but add more protections for the mentally ill, young people, and doctors or nurses who have conscientious objections to assisted death.

He has also confirmed he won’t roll back the Liberals’ new marijuana legislation once it passes.

Scheer French’s is passable, but he’s not fluently bilingual.

[Jaydee]

My vote counted...

[Guest]

Response to new Tory leader will test Liberals’ ‘sunny ways’

 

• Ottawa Citizen
• 27 May 2017
• Andrew MacDougall is a Londonbased communications consultant and was director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper. ANDREW MACDOUGALL

Attack ads have proven very valuable for the Conservative party, until they came up against Justin Trudeau. Painting Stéphane Dion, above, as an ineffective leader helped hasten his downfall. Trudeau, below, turned the attack ads to his advantage, saying the public rejected the cynical politics.

“Not a leader.” “He didn’t come back for you.” “He’s in way over his head.”

If any of these ancient political tag lines still register, it’s because the Conservative party spent significant sums searing them into your brain.

For those with impregnable (or apolitical) memories, every time the then-opposition Liberals would pick a new leader to oppose Stephen Harper, the Tory attack machine would spring to life and unleash an unrelenting ad campaign to tar and feather said leader.

Hence Stéphane Dion went from respected environment minister to a man who couldn’t organize a two-car parade; Michael Ignatieff morphed from Harvard intellectual to ivory-tower arriviste; and Justin Trudeau turned from too green to be prime minister to, um, prime minister.

Fine, the last one didn’t work, but as Mr. Dion and Mr. Ignatieff can attest, a well-timed (and placed) ad strike can neuter an opposition leadership. Those two never did get out from under their Tory monikers.

Why did the Tories play rough? Because you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the Conservatives knew they could use their superior financial resources to brand the new Liberal leader before those men could brand themselves.

Which brings us to this weekend’s Conservative leadership election, and what, if any, Liberal effort will be expended to return the favour. Maxime Bernier, or whoever pips him down ballot to fill the Ambroseshaped hole at the head of the Conservative party, should be alive to the possibility of a Liberal offensive.

A glance at the Twitter feed of Trudeau aide Gerry Butts hints the Liberals are at least thinking about war; Butts recently posted a Huffington Post profile of front-runner Bernier and added the following: “So Max Bernier voted to break up the country. Now he wants to lead it.”

The spear on Bernier’s 1995 referendum “oui” vote is weak beer, and probably nothing, other than a reminder there is no statute of limitations on source material for political attacks. If there exists a video of sevenyear-old Kellie Leitch asking a brown kid why their lunch smells funny from 40 years ago, it will be used in the event of a Leitch victory.

Ignore the tut-tutting of the press about such attacks being “gutter” politics. Exploring lines of attack isn’t mean, it’s good political hygiene. If the Internet has taught us anything, it’s that everything will eventually surface. You can bet the various Conservative leadership campaigns have tried their level best to dig up dirt on their colleagues.

The Liberals know better than most that no wound bleeds more than one inflicted by your own side. Just ask Team Chrétien about Team Martin. And it was Ignatieff who goaded Dion into his eventual Tory tag line by saying the Liberals “didn’t get it done” on the environment, to which Dion eventually whined “do you think it’s easy to make priorities?” In that moment, “not a leader” was born.

While there haven’t been any similarly devastating blue-onblue attacks in the contest to replace Stephen Harper (the now-departed Kevin O’Leary aside), Liberals will have been watching closely as Conservative candidates snipe at each other and bid up their base with increasingly arch policy proposals. There is more than enough material for a good attack campaign.

That’s why the Tories should count themselves lucky Justin Trudeau promised to do politics “differently.” Sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways.

Indeed, Trudeau was quick to denounce the Tories’ campaign against him in 2013.

“I think what I’m seeing across the country,” Trudeau said at the time, “is a shift in people’s willingness to be made cynical about politics and politicians. What I see is a lot of people responding to my message of hope and hard work.”

Attack ads certainly aren’t hope, even if they are hard work. So, no TV campaign then. Nor should we expect Trudeau to finesse his revulsion by avoiding television in favour of pounding the new Tory leader on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. An attack is an attack, no matter the medium on which it is messaged.

No, on the subject of attacks, Trudeau’s word is bond. Like it was on electoral reform. And modest deficits. And no omnibus bills. On second thought ... The Liberals certainly haven’t been mining Chinese businessmen for cash in private settings out of virtue. There are resources to be deployed should the decision be taken to spear the new leader of the opposition.

But don’t expect the Tories to take it lying down. They’ve a war chest of their own, and the experience that comes with having written the rules of attack.

Whoever it might be, the new leader will be ready to counter any blow, and make their own first impression, free of Liberal interference.

Their chances in 2019 might well depend on it.

[Fido]

2 hours ago, Malcolm said:

until they came up against Justin

Come on

The "Nice Hair"  has made the history books

[Jaydee]

7 Facts About Andrew Scheer 
 
1. At age 25, he defeated Parliament's longest-serving MP, in one of the NDP's strongest ridings.

2. At 32 years of age, he was elected the youngest Speaker of the House of Commons, defeating 7 other candidates, all older than him.

3. He grew up in Ottawa where he learned French. He's equally comfortable and unpretentious meeting with Heads of State as with prairie farmers.

4. He presented Her Majesty the Queen with a special Diamond Jubilee Saskatchewan Roughriders jersey at Buckingham Palace. Protocol people were not amused.

5. He and his wife, Jill, are amazing parents to five children.

6. Andrew has been a friend of mine for almost 20 years. In that time, I can't think of him saying a mean-spirited thing about a single person

7. He is truly one the nicest, most decent, & genuine people I know. As you can see from the photo, I truly look up to him! The Conservative Party of Canada is in good hands.

 

Jason Kenney 

[Jaydee]

Get ready for a wild two years leading up to the next election as American style Fake News reporting comes north. One of Scheers promises is to defund the CBC news division. Will be interesting to see how their coverage changes as Trudeau starts feeling the heat feels threatened. 

 

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/12/09/scheer-says-he-would-axe-cbc-news-division/

[Jaydee]

 

 

 

[Jaydee]

21 hours ago, Jaydee said:

Get ready for a wild two years leading up to the next election as American style Fake News reporting comes north. One of Scheers promises is to defund the CBC news division. Will be interesting to see how their coverage changes as Trudeau starts feeling the heat feels threatened. 

 

http://ipolitics.ca/2016/12/09/scheer-says-he-would-axe-cbc-news-division/

Liberals spring into attack mode. They must be really worried. Go Scheer Go!

 

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/liberals-waste-no-time-playing-the-anti-christian-card/article35143701/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&click=sf_globefb

[Fido]

1 hour ago, Jaydee said:

Liberals spring into attack mode. They must be really worried. Go Scheer Go!

 

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/liberals-waste-no-time-playing-the-anti-christian-card/article35143701/?ref=https://www.theglobeandmail.com&click=sf_globefb

The Lefties were 'scared' of the same thing when Harper took over.....and how did that work out?

[DEFCON]

It sounds like Scheer will be a potent Leader etc..

I expect the liberal party to decline substantially in popularity as people come to realize the leader is no leader at all; he's more like a pied piper who's strongly inclined towards taking Canada over the edge. Trudeau and his party represent the far left, looking for free stuff fringe crowd, which will force the balanced working person to move well right of center.

 

 

 

[deicer]

Maybe Scheer isn't leader.

Some serious allegations of impropriety, and why were the ballots ordered destroyed immediately after?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/maxime-bernier-andrew-scheer-conservative-leadership-race/article35187722/

 

[Jaydee]

1 hour ago, deicer said:

Maybe Scheer isn't leader.

Some serious allegations of impropriety, and why were the ballots ordered destroyed immediately after?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/maxime-bernier-andrew-scheer-conservative-leadership-race/article35187722/

 

Gotta love your positive outlook on the world in general....but...an annoying tidbit from the article .....PS.  Hillary Lost.....

 

" Conservative Party president Scott Lamb said the election was fair and the results stand.

"Elections are decided and verified and complete, and people can speculate about them all they want. But it was an audited, final result," he said in an interview. "

[deicer]

Much like the shenanigans in the U.S.  all that matters is that the western guy got in, screw the easterners, even if it wasn't above board.

P.S. The way 45 is going, Hillary is winning.

[DEFCON]

How are the 'easterners' being screwed?

 

[Guest]

On 2017-6-3 at 8:08 AM, deicer said:

Much like the shenanigans in the U.S.  all that matters is that the western guy got in, screw the easterners, even if it wasn't above board.

P.S. The way 45 is going, Hillary is winning.

deicer, time to take off your "it's a conspiracy hat" 

Campaigns, leadership and Conservative Party officials call ‘bull—t’ on complaints about vote counting

 

‎Today, ‎June ‎5, ‎2017, ‏‎2 hours ago | Marie-Danielle Smith

OTTAWA — Conservative party leadership campaigns staff and party insiders say apparent vote counting discrepancies are much ado about nothing, with no one publicly questioning the close victory of Andrew Scheer.

The vote-counting process that took place just over a week ago in Toronto, under close watch by Deloitte auditors and dozens of campaign scrutineers, was aboveboard, with no complaints registered by any campaigns or individual scrutineers on election day, say multiple sources.

The party confirms no significant complaints were levied against it, and more than a week after Scheer’s win, some are questioning why off-the-record claims by several in the Maxime Bernier camp — after their candidate lost by less than two per cent of the final tally — are being given serious credence.

Cole Burston/Bloomberg Andrew Scheer, leader of Canada's Conservative Party, right, greets his family after being named the party's next leader during the Conservative Party Of Canada Leadership Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, May 27, 2017.

Members of the Bernier team didn’t respond to inquiries Monday but several senior members of other losing campaigns, speaking on background, described complaints as “bull—t.”

They centre around a discrepancy between the number of voters listed in a database held by the party and the final vote tally released on election night, May 27. The database contained 133,896 entries while the party announced 141,362 party members voted in the process.

Party spokesman Cory Hann said the database was a list to help campaigns with their “get-out-the-vote efforts,” and was “not an official count by any means.” Campaign sources confirmed they were offered daily updates from the list, which helped them assess turnout.

Of 14 locations where partisans could cast their votes on election day, 12 did not use the database, accounting for about 3,000 names not on the list. The rest come from “human error,” Hann said.

About 350 volunteers were busy opening envelopes, checking identification and scanning barcodes on signed declaration forms to verify ballots. The barcode scanning is how names were entered into the database.

Here’s how “human error” came into play, as Hann explained it: If a form was scanned incorrectly, an error dialogue would pop up on an associated computer screen. It would have to be closed before the system could register more names into the database.

Cole Burston/Bloomberg Andrew Scheer, new leader of Canada's Conservative Party, speaks following his victory at the Conservative Party Of Canada Leadership Conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Saturday, May 27.

But it was like an “assembly line” in there, Hann said, and sometimes volunteers didn’t notice the error right away. Barcode scanners would still beep with each scan, but the names wouldn’t register until someone closed the error message.

The important thing, however, was that the ballots themselves, the ones that would be counted, were verified — by real people, and in view of campaign scrutineers, party staffers, Deloitte auditors and a live-streaming webcam, Hann explained.

Dan Nowlan, chair of the Leadership Election Organizing Committee, helped set up the rules governing the leadership race. He confirmed the database wasn’t part of the formal ballot-validating or vote-counting process — it was a tool to help campaigns, and auditors never reviewed its contents.

“What was critical was making sure the ballots were valid, the ballots were secure and the ballots were counted. We did that,” Nowlan said, adding that Dominion Voting, which provided the system used for counting, ran about 200 “logic tests” to ensure each ballot electronically scanned into the system was valid.

Cole Burston/BloombergAndrew Scheer and his wife Jill Scheer second right, sit as ballot results during are announced during the Conservative Party Of Canada Leadership Conference.

“We went through a rigorous, rigorous process to make sure that the race was honest and aboveboard for everybody,” he added. Ballots were even transported by armoured car — with scrutineers and Deloitte representatives inside the car — from the auditor’s office to the congress centre where the leadership event was held.

“We haven’t actually received an official complaint from anyone,” Nowlan said. “I find it hard to believe that anybody would have a problem with the process or think that (the result) wasn’t a proper representation of what the members wanted.”

Another member of the organizing committee, who preferred not to be named, said “this is much ado about nothing,” and there were “zero complaints” on the day of.

I’ve never seen whining like this in politics before. It’s deplorable. Andrew won fair and square.

The committee member said “it’s kind of nonsense” for unnamed sources from a campaign to be speaking up now, when their own scrutineers were present and able to complain during the actual counting process. Instead, campaigns “thanked us for the process and that it ran smoothly.”

In a statement Monday, Erin O’Toole, who finished in third place, said, “based on my team’s experience with the leadership election, I am very confident that the process was run fairly.”

Michael Diamond, who was Kellie Leitch’s director of communications, said stories emerging about the vote count are “ridiculous.”

“I’ve never seen whining like this in politics before,” he said. “It’s deplorable. Andrew won fair and square. It’s not the result I wanted, but we and no other candidate lost because of interference from the party.”

Steve Outhouse, Pierre Lemieux’s campaign manager, said he was personally in the counting room for much of the process. “I got to see them working there. It was online. It was transparent. I think the party did as good a job as possible, especially with a large number of members.”

Members of four additional campaigns, who wanted to remain anonymous, indicated their teams were not aware of any complaints about the party’s process, nor had they heard anything about the result being challenged. 

“At the end of the day in all this, we’re confident in the process because the chief returning officer and Deloitte both verified the results,” Hann said. “We couldn’t be more confident.”

Email: mdsmith@postmedia.com | Twitter: mariedanielles

[Guest]

On 2017-6-3 at 6:05 AM, deicer said:

Maybe Scheer isn't leader.

Some serious allegations of impropriety, and why were the ballots ordered destroyed immediately after?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/maxime-bernier-andrew-scheer-conservative-leadership-race/article35187722/

 

Apparently the sky was and did not fall except in the land of OZ:

Bernier affirms support for Scheer, despite questions around vote

Andrew Scheer, right, is

Published Tuesday, June 6, 2017 7:34PM EDT

OTTAWA -- Former Conservative leadership candidate Maxime Bernier is offering his full support to the party's new leader, despite complaints by his supporters about the voting process.

"As I stated on election night: I support our new leader Andrew Scheer. Unconditionally," Bernier wrote on Twitter Tuesday evening.

While nobody has formally complained to the party or on the record in the media, some of Bernier's supporters say the numbers don't add up. While the party says 141,633 ballots were cast in choosing Scheer as the new leader, its Constituent Information Management System (CIMS) database lists only 133,896 members as having voted.

The party says about 4,000 member IDs weren't recorded in the system because they voted in-person the day of the announcement, and were struck off a paper list instead. That leaves about 3,400 more ballots cast than member IDs recorded, which the party says is likely due to human error.

The dispute has left the party fighting publicly over Scheer's win, although those who dismiss the concerns point out nobody has made a complaint on the record, whether formally with the party or in the media.

Scheer said Tuesday he had reviewed the voting process and accepted the results as accurate.

“I’m satisfied that the integrity of the ballots were always maintained, and I’m sure every leadership candidate and their team who gets walked through the process will arrive at the same conclusion,” he told CTV Atlantic.

Earlier Tuesday, celebrity businessman and former candidate Kevin O'Leary said he will advocate as a party member for a recount.

"I would prefer to shine the light of transparency on this issue because it taints the new mandate, it taints the party, it taints the candidates," O'Leary said in an interview with CTVNews.ca.

"It would be far easier given how few votes there actually are to count, to simply recount them. It is not unusual in close political contests," he said.

Ontario MP Erin O'Toole was the first leadership candidate to publicly address the controversy, says he's confident the process was run fairly.

"Based on my team's experience with the leadership election, I am very confident that the process was run fairly," O'Toole said in a statement.

"I stand 100 [per cent] behind our leader Andrew Scheer and want to keep our members focused on the battle that lies ahead; defeating the Liberals in 2019 before they do more damage to our economy, our social fabric and the prosperity and wellbeing of future generations."

O'Leary agreed with O'Toole that he'd rather be talking about defeating the Liberals in 2019, but remains committed to the need for a recount.

"I don't think it's healthy for us not to be able to have total transparency on any process," he said.

The party says its rules don't allow for a recount once the result has been certified by the chief electoral officer and Deloitte, which oversaw the voting process.

"Those results are final and they're not subject to appeal," Dan Nowlan, the chair of the Conservative Party's Leadership election organizing committee, said in an interview with CTV Power Play host Don Martin.

"So there's no recount possible and there's no nothing possible. That's it."