Apparently, Andrew Scheer is a feminist.

The new leader of the Conservative Party of Canada dropped this bombshell during an interview with Chatelaine — a women’s magazine that has been known to write glowing features about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family.

Doing a sit-down interview with Canada’s largest women’s lifestyle magazine is par for the course.

The problem is when you change your message to suit your audience.

“Are you a feminist?” asked senior writer Sarah Boesveld.

“Yeah, absolutely!” said Scheer.

His response even seemed to catch Boesveld by surprise. “What do you mean by that, though?”

Scheer went on to repeat the distorted definition of feminism often given by those pushing a political agenda, that feminism is about “the fundamental equality between men and women.”

There are many problems with this definition. For starters, most feminists aren’t fighting for “equality”.

When was the last time you heard a feminist talking about how boys are falling behind in Canadian schools, how men make up most workplace injuries and deaths, or how men in Canada, on average, die four years earlier than women?

If feminism was about promoting “equality,” there would be equal numbers of feminists advocating for more males in female dominated “pink-collar jobs” such as registered nurse, elementary school teacher or human resources manager.

Gender studies departments at universities would strive for gender parity in faculty, student enrollment and the focus of academic research.

But today’s feminists don’t care about men. And they don’t really care about women.

If feminists truly cared about the well-being of women, rather than just an obsession with equality of outcome, they’d support women in the choices they make.

They would celebrate stay-at-home moms as much as workaholics.

Instead, today’s feminists are on a radical mission. They rail against “the patriarchy” – the ill-defined forces within our society that supposedly promote “male privilege” — while striving for a world where men are obsolete.

Far from empowering women, feminists treat women as helpless victims, oppressed by the very people we love — our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons.

Even mild feminists promote a rigid set of expectations, and shun large portions of the population – women who choose family over career, people with religious convictions, anyone who believes that late-term abortions are immoral, and, of course, conservatives.

Thankfully, most Canadians reject this type of thinking. In survey after survey, Canadians oppose the feminist label.

A Chatelaine survey found that 68% of women do not call themselves a feminist.

AnEconomist survey found only 17% of women and 15% of men in Canada use the word feminist to describe themselves.

It’s therefore surprising for Scheer to jump and say he’s “absolutely” a feminist.

Most Canadians don’t like feminists.

Besides, the field for a male feminist leader in Canada is already crowded.

Trudeau loves to call himself a feminist.

He’s committed to many of the same pet causes as feminists — like forced equality between men and women in top positions, regardless of competence or experience.

Rather than following Trudeau down the feminist rabbit hole, Canadians would be better served with a leader who advocates for both sexes.

Conservatives should have the courage to articulate a different world view, a different set of priorities, and resist becoming watered-down versions of the Liberals.

As Sun columnist Lorrie Goldstein recently wrote, “Canadians will choose real Liberals over fake ones every time.”

The sooner Scheer learns this lesson, the better.