Scheer says next federal election will be about party, not celebrity

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This article was published 06/09/2017 (3119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In his first visit to Winnipeg since taking the helm of the federal Conservative party, Andrew Scheer vowed the next election will not be about “who’s the biggest celebrity.”

The Tory leader arrived in the Manitoba capital on Wednesday for a multi-day meeting of MPs, senators and staff to strategize for the upcoming fall session of Parliament.

Scheer’s sights are already trained on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose photo-bombing social media brand dwarfs that of the opposition leader — a relatively unknown 38-year-old who won party leadership in a slim victory in May.

“Let’s be clear. This is not going to be about who’s the biggest celebrity in the next election. This is going to be a choice between two parties. It won’t be about retweets or who gets the most likes on Instagram,” Scheer said.

Scheer told his shadow cabinet members they would be carrying a message to make a better future for the next generation.

“We will not allow Justin Trudeau to keep spending billions, wrecking our economy and then forcing local businesses — the very people who create jobs and opportunities — to pay the bills for all that spending,” he said.

“That lies at the heart of the Liberal approach. The people they claim to help are those hurt the most by (Liberal) policies.”

If this was a strategy session, then clearly the Tories will be focused on the Liberals’ controversial proposal to eliminate tax loopholes the government maintains give wealthy small-business owners an unfair advantage.

The Trudeau government said it just wants to ensure that families making $50,000 aren’t paying the same amount of tax as those making $250,000, with the latter using small-business writeoffs.

“I think if the Liberals want to make the case that this is a rampant problem in Canada, they should bring forward a plan that addresses that,” Scheer said.

“What they’ve brought forward goes way beyond anything like that.”

Not only will closing tax loopholes “severely impede” the country’s 1.4 million small businesses, he said, but potentially affect millions of people they employ.

“I’m very discouraged that the Liberals seem to wake up every morning thinking of new ways to raise taxes,” Scheer said.

“People are outraged… can’t believe they’re being called tax cheats. Farmers and ranchers told they’re living in gated communities. It’s insulting. The tone is very divisive. It’s the typical Liberal strategy of pitting one group of Canadians against another.

“They’re doing everything they can to impede economic growth,” he added.

“It seems like this is a self-imposed crisis, because they woke up one morning and said, ‘how do we get more revenue?’

“The government of Canada doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. And this is just another symptom of what happens when you have a government with out-of-control debt. They start working for ways to increase revenue.”

Scheer also criticized the Trudeau government’s handling of the immigration file, in particular the thousands of asylum-seekers that have flooded north from the United States in the past year, especially into Manitoba and Quebec.

“I certainly wouldn’t have taken eight months to take action,” the Tory leader said during the opening remarks.

“The Conservative party was warning the prime minister back in January and February — back when the crossings were in the order of a couple dozen a day — that this would only get worse as the weather improved and it was easier to cross. Sure enough, that’s what happened.

“Everything the Liberals have done to date has been about managing the situation, not stopping the flow of illegal crossings.”

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca