After two years, Scheer plans to tell us who he really is

by Campbell Clark

He’s leading in the polls, and now Andrew Scheer is about to embark on an effort to give Canadians an idea of what kind of leader he would be.

The Conservative Leader remains an undefined entity six months from an election. He’s been called Stephen Harper with a smile, but most of what Canadians have seen of his own, personal brand of politics has come from his criticisms of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

So, over the next five or six weeks, Mr. Scheer will attempt to put some meat on the bones of his political identity in a series of five major policy speeches.

It will start Tuesday in Montreal with a speech on foreign policy. And then Mr. Scheer will travel to a different part of the country more or less each week to deliver speeches on the economy, immigration, Confederation and federal-provincial relations, and the environment.

That last one will come after Mr. Scheer’s Conservatives lay out their long-promised climate-change plan – after months when Mr. Trudeau’s Liberals have taunted the Tory Leader by charging his climate plan is a non-existent.

These won’t be campaign-style stump speeches designed to rev up and win over supporters. Large blocks of voters probably won’t be swayed by an exposition of wonkish topics to luncheon crowds. They won’t lay out all the details of the party’s platform, either, according to Mr. Scheer’s communications director, Brock Harrison, but offer a general vision in each area.

But they are Mr. Scheer’s chance to show that there’s a there there, and that he is a leader with ideas about where to take the country. Or not: there’s an obvious risk when a leader starts an explicit attempt to lay out his basic policy vision that analysts, critics and opponents can then poke holes in it, or attack it as weak or misguided.

full story at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-after-two-years-scheer-plans-to-tell-us-who-he-really-is/

Categorised in: Canadian News