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After what seemed like an eternity of dispirited, phantom leadership, Andrew Scheer and his insipid reign of mediocrity are no more.

At the Conservative leadership convention in August, Scheer made his final public appearance as leader, delivering his farewell speech just hours before his successor, Erin O'Toole, secured control of the party in a stunning electoral upset.

As the outgoing head of the party, Scheer's speech was arguably his last chance to leave a positive stamp on his legacy as Opposition leader.  It was also his last opportunity to do the Conservative Party any last-minute favours before he stepped off center stage and disappeared into obscurity, becoming just another nobody MP as Pierre Trudeau would have said.

If written well, and delivered with palpable enthusiasm and excitement, Scheer's speech could have energized his party and strengthened Conservative unity.  If successful, it could have also helped encourage apathetic or non-partisan Canadians to take a second look at the party, come the next election.

For that to happen though, Scheer would have had to have been gracious and courteous.  He would have also had to have been eloquent, articulate and inspiring.

Scheer, however, was none of these things.

In his final address as party leader, Scheer delivered a speech that was both vengeful and vindictive, hyperbolic and hyper partisan, and chock full of analogies that might have been laughable if they had not been so preposterous.

Throughout his oration, Scheer made many absurd claims.  At one point, he declared that "Conservatives are the only party fighting for hard working Canadians."  At another, he stated that "ever increasing intervention in the marketplace rewards big corporations who can afford expensive government relations experts."  Cue the eye-rolls.

He also whined incessantly about everyone from the "establishment elites" to the "mainstream media" to the unions, who he charged with conspiring behind-the-scenes to defeat him and his party.  For a political organization that really loves to hammer on about the importance of self-reliance, they really revel in self-pity.

Apparently, they also revel in cliché illusions, which Scheer weaved throughout his speech on more than one occasion.  In one instance, Scheer boasted that Conservatives provide voters a "balanced meal" in comparison to the Liberals "who are all candy before supper."  I do not know if Scheer aimed this portion of his speech at elementary students, but even they would not have been impressed by such a lame performance.

Finally, and most egregiously, Scheer took a trip back in time to the Cold War of the 1980s, ominously comparing the rhetoric and policies of the Soviet Union with that of the Canadian "Left" (a.k.a. all the other major federal political parties).  He even went as far to conjure up dire images of the "bread lines in east Berlin" all in an unsuccessful attempt at fearmongering against his political adversaries.

It was all kind of sad really.

Faced with the collapse of his political ambitions, lacking in policy prescriptions, and unable to consider a path forward in this new deficit-spending era, Scheer could do nothing but revert to the scare-tactic language of his Cold War heroes, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.  I almost felt bad for the guy.

By that point, though, Scheer was wrapping up his speech and preparing to exit offstage.  With COVID restrictions in place, the convention centre did not have much of an audience present, leaving the whole room oddly silent for his closing act.  Once again, I almost felt bad for the guy.

Before I could, though, I came to realize that nothing other than silence would have been appropriate for a speech as uninspiring and low calibre as Scheer's.  While I do not wish ignominy on anyone, his exit, free of any applause or curtain-calls, was probably for the best.

Hopefully as he returns to his previous life as an MP, Scheer can take some comfort in his achievements, particularly that he increased the party's seat count and helped consign the Liberals to a minority government.  That in itself is an accomplishment no one can take away from him.  Not even his largely imaginary enemies in the establishment elite and mainstream media.

For a party in the midst of an identity crisis, struggling to reach consensus on a whole host of issues (prioritizing climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, etc.) the Conservatives require a far competent and thoughtful leader; one with the capacity to leave their rigid, intellectual predispositions behind and project a new vision for the country.  Not one that looks back (at the 1980s of all times) in the hopes of finding solutions for the unprecedented challenges of the future.

I do not know if O'Toole is the leader Conservatives need in this moment.  But after listening to Scheer's farewell speech, it is clear they could be doing a lot worse.

Photo Credit: CBC News

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


In another October, in another democratic contest, a man's disability a man's health almost changed everything.

October 1995: Quebec is voting in a second referendum on independence.  The federalist side had been winning until Quebec's separatist Premier passed control of the campaign to the younger and more popular leader of the Bloc Québécois, Lucien Bouchard.  When that happened, the separatist option the option that would see Quebec leave Canada started to acquire momentum.

The arguments, pro and con, had all been heard before.  Many of the key players in the "oui" or "non" fight were well-known, too.

What was different, and what nearly broke up Canada, was Lucien Bouchard.  The Bloc leader had lost a leg to a fast-moving and potentially deadly bacteria just months earlier.  Many had thought he would die.

He didn't.  He came back from the dead, and he rewrote history.

Bouchard did that by embracing the illness that had almost killed him.  At rally after rally that October, the lights would be dimmed, and a single light would be directed at a podium.

The halls would grow silent.  Leaning on a cane, Bouchard would move towards the podium, apparently in pain, with every eye watching him.  He'd reach the podium, then hand the cane to an assistant, just beyond the rim of light.  And then he would start a fist clenched, his voice ranging from a shout to a whisper.  He was extraordinary.

He would hold his audience spellbound, as he plead for Quebeckers to become, once and for all, masters in their own house.  The atmosphere was electric, incredible, profound.

As one Jean Chretien-era cabinet member later said to this writer: "It was like he was Jesus Christ."  Bouchard embraced his burden, and made himself a martyr for the separatist cause.

The federalist aide started to lose.  The separatist side started to win.  On the night of the referendum, Canada avoided disaster by just 50,000 votes.  The final vote was 50.58 per cent to 49.42 per cent.  It was a shock, to many, that Canada had  come that close to destruction.

All that saved Canada, many feel, was US President Bill Clinton's statement at the dedication of the new American embassy Ottawa that same month where he called for "a strong and united Canada."  That turned the tide.

Many Octobers later, another US President is (like Bill Clinton) trying to find a way to avoid defeat.  And (like Lucien Bouchard), he is perhaps wondering whether a potentially fatal microbe could become his best political ally.

For Donald Trump, now in the grip of a virus that he once dismissed a "hoax," he called it, conjured up by Democrats and the media it is the ultimate paradox: the very thing that has destroyed America's economy, and shredded his electoral prospects, may well be the thing that re-elects him.

Trump's Covid-19 diagnosis doesn't improve his chances simply because of sympathy.  It improves his chances because the entire Democratic Party strategy to make the election a referendum on Donald Trump now lays on the floor, discarded.

Attack ads, stopped.  Tough speeches, rewritten.  War rooms, told to stand down.  Everything that Joe Biden and his party had planned to do to go after Trump, relentlessly they cannot now do.

Lucien Bouchard is unlikely to be known to Donald Trump.  But, as he reflects in his room at a military hospital in Washington, he might be well-advised to consider the separatist leader's strategy.

Picture Trump at the window in his hospital room, light streaming in, as he waves to the throngs on the street below.  Picture him recording emotional fireside-style talks about the need to come together, and to support each other, and defeat a common enemy.

Picture him leaving the hospital, walking to a perfectly-lit podium waving off help or a wheelchair and giving the speech of his lifetime, one to call the nation together, one to rally the American people.  And to defeat the virus, as he had. 

The coronavirus could kill Donald Trump, it is true.

But, this fateful October, it could also give him and his campaign renewed life.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.