Best of 2019 "Letter from a Friend of mine"
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| https://www.facebook.com/vetsfortheCPC/ |
Well, folks, a lot has happened since the election.
The calls for Scheer to resign have continued primarily by a few former Harper staffers who were the key figures in the 2015 election campaign loss and had been cut out completely by Team Scheer. They were joined in the pile on by those who stayed with the CPC but were truly on Team Bernier and to a lesser extent some of the other former leadership candidates and finally after the election ended, they were joined by a lot of losing candidates in Quebec who suddenly discovered Mr. Scheer's French just wasn't good enough. The entire lot of them were then happily amplified by the media until it seemed like the overwhelming consensus was that Scheer must resign because he was unelectable even before the investigation led by Mr. Baird had been completed let alone written and digested, and even before, the dust had settled and emotions had caught up with the disappointment we all felt over not defeating Trudeau.
Despite increasing our seat count by 26, winning more votes than any other Conservative Party in history, despite raising more money than any previous Conservative leader and despite winning more seats in total than any Conservative opposition party in history, Mr. Scheer's failure to march in a gay pride parade or successfully convince the media that his personal religious beliefs couldn't be put aside (as had Mr. Chretien's, Martin's, Harper's and Trudeau's) when it came to gay rights or abortion rights was sufficient reason to terminate his leadership immediately.
I've been told that internal polls at the EDA level, suggested that Mr. Scheer had about 75% support which was higher than the so-called Clark requirement of 70% and within caucus he had about the same level of support. I've also been told that Baird will identify four key areas that resulted in the CPC failure to a breakthrough in the 905/416 area of Ontario and in Quebec (seat counts increased in Atlantic Canada, MB, SK, AB and BC).
The first issue was the unpopularity of the Ontario PC Party in this region and the fear that the federal party would double down on the cuts that the provincial party was seen to be making which led to strategic voting (NDP and Green supporters switching their votes to Liberal most in the final week of the campaign).
In Quebec, the collapse of the NDP didn't lead Quebec nationalists back to the CPC but instead pushed them into the BQ camp, so while the CPC held in Quebec it didn't grow by 3-5 seats as expected. Another key finding will be the inability of the communications department to articulate the big ideas the campaign was put forward and to fend off the inaccuracies the media and other parties were hurling at Scheer and the CPC in a timely way, the third key finding will be about the strategy of focusing the race on Scheer instead of on the CPC team. We've all seen how the Liberal brand rises and falls on Trudeau's popularity and how he, through sheer force of will can carry the party when he's on his game (2015 specifically) and Scheer is not that guy, so the idea was supposed to be to make the point of how lacking Trudeau and the Liberal team were and how ready the CPC team is. We're not one guy, we're an accomplished team ready to govern on day one was the message many of us expected to hear day after day. Lastly, it will go into detail about the various policies that were presented with a heavy focus on the environment.
Canadians in the vote-rich areas of Ontario and Quebec simply didn't buy the idea that extra taxes to save the planet was a bad thing...
Canadians in the vote-rich areas of Ontario and Quebec simply didn't buy the idea that extra taxes to save the planet was a bad thing or that you can reduce bad emissions without extra taxes on individuals. Putting aside the folly of that assertion, or the entire climate change argument about what increases or decreases emissions or whether or not Canada should be in the Paris Accord, or like the US withdrawal, the political reality in Quebec and in Southern Ontario is that our plan and the way it was presented failed badly. In fact, very few of the CPC presented policies got through to voters. The CPC had more money than any political party in Canadian history yet couldn't break through the media filter that was focused on Scheer's personal religious beliefs.
Regardless of all of the above, with party insiders ready to leak more damaging info about Scheer he called it a day. I'm told the leak about the deal that the party struck with Scheer to cover not just the usual moving expenses and additional travel costs but also the difference between the costs he was paying in Regina to have four of his five children enrolled in a private Catholic School and the costs he would pay in Ottawa at a similar but more expensive school was the proverbial straw. I've also been told the total cost per month was approximately $2,500 and I've also been told this was done because the party who would normally cover the cost of nannies to look after the children when the Scheer's were being asked to travel to events around the country were politically impossible because of the earlier criticism of first the Liberal party picking up the cost of three nannies for Trudeau and then the Canadian taxpayers picking up the cost of two nannies, so the Scheer's picked up the costs associated with family members looking after the kids (flying in and out) and the party picked up the difference in the school costs to balance out the overall cost to the Scheer family.
You as individuals can decide if this is a worthy expense but for me, I'm good with it knowing the cost (I don't mean money) leaders pay for being away from your kids. Lastly, I've been told, the members of the board of directors that oversee the party fund weren't told of the details of the expenditures to support the leader but saw that they were smaller or in line with past expenditures, so no effort was made to dig at the details.
Finally, on this subject, I'm told that the sources for the leak, lied to both the media and the board when they told them that the Conservative Fund was being used to fully fund the costs associated with the four Scheer children going to private schools which caused the initial outrage on social media as that would have added up to some $7,000 per month. I think many would be shocked and upset to see the costs associated with the clothing and stylist allowances along with salary tops up that the party paid for past leaders.
So why am I bringing all this up ?…
So why am I bringing all this up…well, folks, I have to say, I'm more than upset about what's been happening since the election campaign ended. We've seen in-fighting by the political operatives (former and current), we've seen former MP's disparaging the leader and the party in public, we watched the media continue to pile on and we've now seen the bureaucracy of the party help to tarnish the reputation of a good person by selectively leaking details of a routine deal that is far cheaper than many of the past deals that never saw the light of day.
I've watched as the party of tolerance failed to stand up to the media and protect the right of members of this party who have personal religious views, or to not to have them for that matter. I've watched as the party of inclusion, that respected an individual's rights to march or not march in pride parades so long as they respected the laws on equality of opportunity. I've watched fiscal conservatives suggest that we need to have a carbon tax to win. I've watched our political operatives of past and present destroy the leadership of the most successful first-time national campaign leader we've ever had and all in search of the so-called unicorn candidate. That perfect candidate who will be fluently bilingual, who will have just that right mix of fiscal conservatism with enough red Tory blood to attract those swing voters in Quebec and Southern Ontario, who will be respected by the media and who has zero flaws or past missteps than can be exploited by the Trudeau Liberals.
Lots of names have been floated, with some saying no immediately and some playing the wait and see game but I have to ask myself why anyone would want to lead this party at this point, especially after watching what so few did to Scheer when he failed (like Harper did in 2004) to beat a wounded Liberal his first time out. We have become the Liberal Party of the mid-2006 that Harper beat three times. They switched leaders after every loss and each time Harper exploited the newness and inexperience successfully. Trudeau will govern for much longer than he deserves to if we continue to rip ourselves apart in order to appease these purity voices.
Again, you're deep into this and asking what's the point.
Well folks, here's what I've done over the past few days and what I'm going to do over the next week. First off, I've cancelled my monthly donation to the CPC, not because a few pennies of my money is going to fund part of the cost of sending Scheer's kids to a private school but because I don't trust the people who are running the party and I'm not going to reward what they've done and are doing.
Second, I've reached out to several of the leading contenders and let them know that I'm not interested in helping them privately or publicly as I have in the past.
Third, I've let the party know that I won't be doing any radio or TV segments supporting the CPC going forward and I've let the media folks that frequently call me know I'll only do segments on veteran's issues in general, I won't slam the party on TV but I sure won't champion it either.
Fourth, and most importantly, I've let the admin team know that I'll no longer be involved with the page going forward. While I still believe the CPC still has the best platform to support our military and veterans, I don't trust them and don't want my name associated with them. The level of selfishness I've experienced in the past 8 weeks is beyond anything I ever imagined, and I won't be part of it.
After discussing my thoughts and feelings with the admin team we've decided that the page will cease to be active until we can all agree that this party deserves our support again. The one thing we all collectively value above all is our individual reputations and none of us want our names involved with the party as it stands today. We will keep the page active until 31 December so you can have your say!
I want to thank you all for your support and encouragement over the past four-plus years and I hope you'll stick around and check-in occasionally to see if we're back after the dust settles but until then, from the Admin team, we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and prosperous 2020.
Cheers,
Lee Humphrey
#longread
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