Harris Mocks Scheer

Michael Harris deserves some sort of prize for this line: 

Unless Doug Ford campaigns for him in a thong, things couldn’t get worse for Andrew Scheer in the 2019 federal election.

Writing in The Tyee, Harris makes short work of Scheer and his hapless campaign.

Polling poorly in Quebec, British Columbia and Atlantic Canada, this is a man without a vision leading a party without a narrative. 

After a year and a half in office, people can be forgiven if they think Scheer is still Speaker of the House of Commons. Leaders lead, and by doing that, gain recognition. 

Scheer merely lurks with that silly smile on his face, a political non-entity who acts like he’s gunning for the doorman’s job at Walmart.

Who doesn't have that same sense of Andrew Scheer. Okay, his wife, sure and probably one of his kids, maybe.  Then there's the First Nations:

First Nations had a big beef with Scheer’s former boss, and for good reason. The only thing Harper didn’t do to Indigenous peoples was bring back Indian Agents. He humiliated leaders like Chief Theresa Spence of Attawapiskat First Nation, cut national funding, ignored problems and tried to run a federal bulldozer over native constitutional rights. 

Scheer’s answer? The one thing you can’t say to people who have been waiting for decades for social justice — you’ll have to be patient.

Tawdry Tony Clement.

While Clement was busily cyber-sharing his private parts hither and yon, eventually ensnaring himself in a web of extortion, Scheer acted like a coach whose player had missed practice.

...Scheer actually thought he could keep the former cabinet minister in caucus as the MP for Parry Sound-Muskoka. So much for Conservative party family values. And this from a man who refuses to march in Pride parades. 

But the facts swiftly exposed Scheer’s awful judgment. 

Soon it became clear that Clement’s adventure in cyber-flashing was no one-off. Several women came forward to say that they too had received creepy communications from the man who sprinkled his riding with gazebos during the G8 and G20 meetings in Toronto and Huntsville. 

Using the pathetic fig leaf that Clement had lied to him to explain his initial under-reaction, Scheer was finally forced to kick Clement out of caucus.

The Trump Thing Flops.

An inkling of how completely Scheer is devoid of executive acumen is provided by his poor man’s imitation of the drooling baboon who temporarily runs the United States. Donald Trump has famously called the press the “enemy of the people,” a fallen profession who make their living by flogging “fake news.” 

Scheer and his crowd were quick to embrace the attack line. Not only did the Conservative leader revamp his communications operations, the better to attack news stories and journalists they didn’t like, but Scheer himself said Canadians needed a PM who would stand up to the “media” and the “elite.”

Trudeau's policies on climate change may be lousy but Scheer has no policies at all.

Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shone like Venus on the global stage in Paris, he lost resolve in the heat of action back home. The PM conflated rhetoric with reality, the time-honoured ploy of most politicians. 

As David Suzuki has observed, Trudeau ignored all the “low-hanging fruit.” He failed to do away with subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, failed to champion electrification for all sectors, and continued to approve new exploration and drilling for yesterday’s energy source. 

And if Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux has it right, at $4.4 billion Trudeau vastly overpaid when he made the dubious decision to buy the Trans Mountain pipeline from Kinder Morgan. 

Despite the huge political opening created by the government’s own record, Scheer remains mum on his own climate plan. 

All that Canadians know is what Scheer told his own party at the Conservative policy convention last August: dismantling the Trudeau government’s carbon tax would be his first act as prime minister. Meanwhile, Scheer wants Canadians to wait for the details of how he would bring down Earth’s fever. Patience from the patient, if you please.

Harris is right. It's hard to imagine what Trudeau could do at this point to screw up badly enough that Scheer might win.