Andrew Scheer

Andrew James Scheer (born May 20, 1979) is a Canadian politician who has served as the member of Parliament (MP) for Regina—Qu'Appelle since 2004. Scheer served as the 35th speaker of the House of Commons from 2011 to 2015, and was the leader of the Conservative Party and leader of the Official Opposition from 2017 to 2020.

Scheer earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in criminology, political science, and history. Elected to represent the Saskatchewan riding of Regina—Qu'Appelle at the age of 25, Scheer was re-elected in 2006, 2008, and 2011 before becoming House speaker at age 32, making him the youngest speaker in the chamber's history. He held the speaker role for the entirety of the 41st Canadian Parliament. Following the Conservatives' defeat in 2015, Scheer launched his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party, running under the slogan of "Real conservative. Real leader." On May 27, 2017, he was elected leader of the Conservative Party in an upset, narrowly defeating former cabinet minister Maxime Bernier.

Scheer has described himself as focused on economic development, fiscal restraint, and reducing inefficiencies in government. He is a staunch opponent of the federal carbon tax and favours the construction of several pipelines. In the 2019 federal election, the Conservatives under Scheer received a plurality of the popular vote and gained 26 seats, but remained the Official Opposition. On December 12, 2019, following weeks of criticism within the party for the unsuccessful campaign he ran, Scheer abruptly announced he would be resigning as party leader effective upon the election of a new one. He was succeeded as leader on August 24, 2020 by former cabinet minister Erin O'Toole.

Early life and career

Scheer was born on May 20, 1979, at the Riverside Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario and was raised in Ottawa. He is the son of Mary Gerarda Therese (née Enright), a nurse, and James D. Scheer, a librarian, proofreader with the ''Ottawa Citizen'', and Catholic deacon. James was born in the United States, making his son Andrew a U.S. citizen at birth despite being born in Canada. According to a 2019 Maclean's article, Scheer's family earned considerably more than the median income for most Canadian families. Scheer has two sisters. Part of Scheer's family is from Romania. Scheer spent summers during his youth with his maternal grandparents in Mississauga. Scheer graduated from Immaculata High School and received the school's "Distinguished Catholic Alumni Award" in 2012.

Post-secondary education

In 1998, Scheer began his studies in criminology, political science, and history at the University of Ottawa, from which he would ultimately graduate in 2008, receiving his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree four years after he was first elected to Parliament. During his earlier university years, Scheer worked on several political campaigns, including the Unite the Right campaign to merge the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties and Preston Manning's campaign to lead the Canadian Alliance. He also worked in the correspondence department of the Office of the leader of the Opposition under Stockwell Day. Scheer also worked on Ottawa city councillor Karin Howard's youth advisory committee. In his third year of university, Scheer ran as a school trustee for the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board in the 2000 Ottawa municipal elections but lost to incumbent Kathy Ablett. After meeting his future wife Jill Ryan at the University of Ottawa, Scheer moved to his hometown of Regina, Saskatchewan, and continued his studies at the University of Regina, taking some courses for his BA there.

Pre-MP work

In Regina, Scheer worked as an insurance clerk, a waiter, and an assistant in the constituency office of Canadian Alliance MP Larry Spencer. In 2005, Scheer's blog as an MP listed that he was an accredited insurance broker, and in 2007 the biography section on Scheer's MP website stated that he passed the Canadian Accredited Insurance Broker program in Saskatchewan and started his insurance industry career at Shenher Insurance in Regina. During the 2019 election, when Scheer was Conservative leader, his biography on the party website stated that he had worked as an insurance broker. Upon investigation ''The Globe and Mail'' found no evidence that he was ever accredited as an insurance broker. Scheer responded to these claims by maintaining that he received accreditation for general insurance after leaving Shenher Insurance in Regina. As of September 2019, the provincial regulator, Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan, was reviewing the matter.

Political career

First years in the House of Commons

Scheer was elected at age 25 as a Conservative candidate in the federal election of 2004, in the riding of Regina—Qu'Appelle, beating New Democratic Party (NDP) MP Lorne Nystrom by 861 votes.Elections Canada, Official Voting Results
28 June 2004. Near the end of the race, Scheer accused Nystrom of being soft on child pornography. Scheer was re-elected in the federal election of 2006, again defeating Nystrom, this time by a margin of 2,740 votes.

In April 2006, during the 39th Canadian Parliament, Scheer was named as assistant deputy chairman of Committees of the Whole, one of three deputy speakers. He also sponsored a bill that would create minimum sentences for those convicted of motor vehicle theft called Bill C-343, ''An Act to amend the Criminal Code (motor vehicle theft)''.

On November 21, 2008, during the 40th Canadian Parliament, he was named deputy speaker of the House of Commons and chairman of Committees of the Whole, succeeding NDP MP Bill Blaikie.

Speaker of the House of Commons

When the Conservative Party won a majority at the federal election in 2011, Scheer's experience as deputy speaker led many to consider him the front-runner to be elected speaker of the House of Commons. On June 2, 2011, Scheer defeated Denise Savoie, the lone opposition and only woman candidate, in the sixth round of balloting. Scheer became the youngest House speaker in Canadian history. Liberal MPs, who opposed Scheer's candidacy, criticized the NDP for voting for their own party member instead of tipping the balance toward Conservative MP Lee Richardson based on the MPs' beliefs that Scheer was "Harper's Boy".

During his tenure, some individual opposition MPs were critical of some of his decisions. Liberal MP Irwin Cotler questioned his impartiality due to a decision over a robocall incident with Campaign Research (it was reported that Scheer was a client of the firm).

During the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression scandal, opposition politicians raised concerns over Scheer's interventions to block questions after ''The Globe and Mail'' revealed that his riding association loaned $3,000 to Marty Burke while Burke's campaign was under scrutiny by Elections Canada over the incident.

After 2015

Scheer was re-elected in the 2015 federal election in which the Conservative government was defeated. He was appointed opposition House leader by leader of the Official Opposition and interim Conservative party leader Rona Ambrose. He thought about running for the position of interim party leader but was dissuaded by fellow caucus MP Chris Warkentin, who pointed out that the interim leader cannot take the permanent position. On September 13, 2016, he announced his resignation as House leader outside a party caucus meeting in Halifax in order to explore a bid for the leadership of the federal Conservative Party.

In 2016, Scheer publicly voiced his support for the UK's decision to vote in favour of Brexit during the referendum. Later in 2018, Scheer tweeted, "I was pro-Brexit before it was cool."

2017 leadership election

On September 28, 2016, Scheer announced his bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party, saying that he had the support of 32 members of the Conservative caucus. On May 27, 2017, Scheer was elected as the second leader of the Conservative Party, beating runner up Maxime Bernier and more than 12 others with 50.95 per cent of the vote through 13 rounds. Bernier later attributed his failure to what he called the "fake conservatives" in the supply management dairy lobby and agricultural sector. Scheer garnered laughs at the annual Press Gallery dinner by joking:

Scheer's campaign for the Conservative leadership was run under the slogan "Real conservative. Real leader." He avoided advocating the social conservative issues that some of the candidates championed, saying that he wanted to "reach a broader audience of Canadians". Positions on which he took a strong stance included scrapping the carbon tax and being "tough on crime". During his political career, Scheer has been compared to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and has been called "Harper with a smile" or "Stephen Harper 2.0". Scheer is considered a Blue Tory and is critical of the policies of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, having also been critical of Trudeau's late father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. Scheer considered former prime minister John Diefenbaker and British member of the European Parliament (MEP) Daniel Hannan as political influences. Scheer described U.S. senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as "strong conservative voices" during the 2016 Manning Center Conference. Unlike other candidates, Scheer's leadership team was focused less on headlines or eye-grabbing policy and more on data and organizing.

During the Conservative leadership race, Scheer stated that he would balance the federal budget within two years of forming government, but his platform on specific reforms to accomplish this was not revealed at that time.

Scheer benefited from the unexpected support of Brad Trost during the leadership race. It was reported that some of Trost supporters contravened the '' Canada Elections Act'' and party membership rules by offering incentives to vote. Dimitri Soudas, a former Harper aide, pointed out that it violated election rules and it benefited Scheer's campaign but the ballots had been destroyed so the result stood.

Scheer was criticized by opposition politicians for removing his campaign platform after winning the Conservative leadership race. Conservative strategists suggested that the ideas proposed by Scheer during the race were not likely to be part of the party's 2019 election platform. It was later revealed in a Dairy Farmers of Canada briefing document after the 2018 Conservative Convention in Halifax that "The powers of the leader are far reaching in preventing policy from being in the party platform. DFC airy Farmers of Canadahas been told by the Leader’s office that he will exercise this power, and that this policy will not be in the Conservative election platform regardless of the outcome at convention".

The day after the election it was revealed that Hamish Marshall, Scheer's campaign manager, was listed as an IT specialist and one of the directors of the far right news outlet The Rebel Media. On October 16, 2017, ''The Globe and Mail'' asked Scheer if he knew that Marshall worked for the Rebel during the leadership campaign, he responded: "I didn't ask Hamish about every client he had" and then ended the interview. Later, a Conservative spokesperson clarified that Scheer was aware that the Rebel was one of Marshall's many clients, but did not know the specifics. The day after, Marshall was named Conservative campaign chair for the 43rd Canadian federal election. On March 21, 2018, in an interview with Macleans, Scheer stated that Marshall and his past relationship with the Rebel should not be conflated with his selection as campaign chair.

Leader of the Official Opposition

After the August 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally, Scheer denounced ''Rebel News'' due to its sympathetic coverage of the rally, and stated that he would stop doing interviews with The Rebel Media until its "editorial directions" changed. The following day, Scheer stated that he would not be granting interviews with Rebel going forward in an interview with the ''National Post''.

On January 4, 2018, Scheer expelled Senator Lynn Beyak