After a fractious federal election campaign focused on perceived Liberal failures, the Conservative House leader is now signalling the caucus may be willing to support some of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s legislative agenda when the House of Commons returns later this month.
In an interview with CBC News, Andrew Scheer, who is considered by party sources to be the front-runner to serve as the Tories’ interim parliamentary leader, said the Conservatives could back Carney if he needs legislative support to take on U.S. President Donald Trump and the ongoing trade war, which has already caused some economic dislocation, including automotive job losses at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont.
“We’re going to support measures that protect the Canadian economy and that help to ultimately get a deal. We wish Mr. Carney well and we’re rooting for a good deal for Canada,” Scheer said. “And when we’re dealing with such a major threat to our economy, it’s important that comes first and foremost, regardless of partisan differences.”
After picking up more seats in Ontario’s industrial heartland after a breakthrough with blue-collar workers, Scheer said the Tories are seized with protecting manufacturing jobs and the party will do what it can to back up Carney as he tries to shield them from American aggression.
The party has high expectations for Carney’s first meeting with Trump in Washington on Tuesday, Scheer said.
The Conservatives either want to see the U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods lifted altogether or a concrete plan that spells out how they will be dismantled in the coming months. Carney has set expectations low for this first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders.
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Scheer said the party is also willing to play ball with Carney if he delivers on some of his other election commitments that were quite similar to what the Conservatives themselves were pitching on the campaign trail — namely a tougher stance on crime and new policies to get homes built faster.
“Mr. Carney ran a significant portion of his campaign basically campaigning against Liberal policies themselves. So we’ll take him at his word. If he’s willing to undo some of those terrible Liberal policies, we’d be open to working with them on that,” Scheer said. “We would look at supporting them.
“It’s not so much, especially in the early days after an election, about partisan differences. It’s about delivering real change for Canadians,” he said.
In the last Parliament, the Conservatives tried to stymie the Liberal agenda and voted against virtually everything former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government proposed in the Commons.
Scheer said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre forced Carney to backtrack on the consumer carbon tax and he might be able to get this new Liberal government to roll over on some other measures, including Bill C-5, which expanded the availability of conditional sentences, allowing some convicted criminals to serve time under house arrest; and Bill C-75, which required judges to release some people charged with a crime on bail at the “earliest reasonable opportunity” and with the “least onerous conditions.”
Those bills were targeted by Poilievre during the election as he made a tough-on-crime agenda the centrepiece of his pitch to voters, especially in the closing days of the campaign.
Those bills helped “flood our communities with dangerous and repeat offenders,” Scheer said, and a good faith move by Carney to make changes to those bills could garner Conservative support.
At his first news conference as prime minister last week, Carney said he will tackle the surge in violent crime. The Liberals dropped seats in suburban Toronto, where the Conservatives say the issue resonated with voters.
Carney said his government will “strengthen Canadian law enforcement,” by hiring at least 1,000 more RCMP officers and giving police “more tools to fight crime.”
“We will toughen the Criminal Code and bail laws for those threatening the safety of Canadians, including making bail harder to get,” he told reporters Friday.
The Conservative caucus will meet Tuesday on Parliament Hill to discuss last week’s election results and chart a path forward now that the party finds itself back on the Opposition benches.
“Of course we’re disappointed,” Scheer said of the election result. “We need to get together and find out what we need to do to win going forward and finish the journey that we started.”
Scheer is seen as a leading contender to serve as the party’s interim parliamentary leader after Poilievre lost his own seat in last Monday’s vote. By law, the leader of the Official Opposition must be a sitting MP.
Scheer downplayed the interim role, saying Poilievre will be back in Parliament soon given a Alberta Conservative MP, Damien Kurek, has agreed to step aside to let the leader run in a byelection. Carney has promised to call one there at the earliest possible opportunity.
“The short-term absence in the House will be resolved, and it will basically be no time at all. So that’s very encouraging. I think that’ll help lift everyone’s spirits on Tuesday,” he said.
The Saskatchewan MP and former party leader said there is no movement afoot to get rid of Poilievre, even after he failed to unseat the Liberals.
Poilievre has the loyalty of the party’s base and caucus because he didn’t “flip-flop” on the Conservative policies during the election, Scheer said.
“He kept his word to the Conservative movement. That’s who Pierre is. He’s a fighter. He’s going to learn from this experience, where we’re going to get together as a team and identify what … we need to improve on for the next time,” he said.
As for what the party might need to do differently in the next election to depose the Liberals, Scheer said the collapse of the NDP has changed the political dynamic in this country and the Conservatives may have to adjust their campaign strategy as a result.
“Are we moving close to two-party competition in the next election? That’s one of the things we’ve got to figure out very quickly,” he said.
