MacKay called Scheer’s social conservative values a 'stinking albatross' around his neck that cost the party the election

OTTAWA — Peter MacKay says it is “false” that he is organizing a Conservative leadership bid despite talk in some Tory quarters that he is a leader-in-waiting for the party.

Speculation about MacKay’s future rose this week after his public criticism of the election campaign run by Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

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Although sources have told the National Post that MacKay has supporters trying to mobilize support for him in the party, they also say he is unlikely to seek the job while it’s occupied by Scheer. Late Wednesday night, MacKay posted on Twitter that he has “repeatedly said I support Andrew Scheer.”

A spokesperson for Scheer said on Thursday that Scheer and MacKay have not spoken since the two campaigned together in Nova Scotia in the final days of the election.

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Some Conservatives are disgruntled over the Scheer campaign’s weak performance in Ontario and Quebec in an election they considered very winnable. Conservative Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais told Quebec newspaper Le Devoir this week that Scheer’s social conservatism badly hurt him in that province, to the extent that he might need to step down as leader.

But it was MacKay’s public criticism that particularly stood out, given his status as a potential leadership successor. MacKay, who held several senior cabinet positions in Stephen Harper’s government, stayed out of the 2017 Conservative leadership race that resulted in Scheer eking out a narrow victory over Maxime Bernier.

MacKay was a Nova Scotia MP for 18 years before declining to run in the 2015 election. He was the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party in 2003 before it merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the modern Conservative Party.

At a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., hosted by the Wilson Center on Wednesday, MacKay was asked why the Conservatives had failed to take down Justin Trudeau, despite the prime minister’s troubles ranging from the SNC-Lavalin scandal to the blackface photos.

“To use a good Canadian analogy, it was like having a breakaway on an open net and missing the net,” MacKay immediately responded.

He went on to say that no voters wanted to talk about issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, “yet that was thrust onto the agenda and hung around Andrew Scheer’s neck like a stinking albatross, quite frankly, and he wasn’t able to deftly deal with those issues when opportunities arose.”

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MacKay also said Scheer’s climate and energy policies had some good ideas, but weren’t sold well enough in the campaign.

Late Wednesday night, after his comments were widely reported, MacKay did some damage control on his Twitter account.

“I’ve repeatedly said I support Andrew Scheer (and) I worked (very) hard to help him in the campaign,” he wrote. “Reports of me organizing (are) false.” He said his comments were “about our Party’s shortcomings” and the need to improve its policies and communications.

MacKay’s remarks have already sparked some pushback from Conservatives. “Big words for someone who didn’t even suit up and get on the ice,” tweeted Alberta Conservative MP Chris Warkentin, referring to the fact MacKay left politics in 2015.

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Conservative MPs will be in Ottawa next week for their first caucus meeting after the election and it will be a test of Scheer’s level of support within the party. The caucus could vote to give itself the power to trigger a leadership review (part of the parliamentary reforms that Conservative MP Michael Chong got passed in 2015). If caucus adopts this power, 20 per cent of the caucus would then need to vote in favour of launching the review.

However, adopting this power would be a change of heart from the Conservatives, who chose not adopt it after the 2015 election. Many in the caucus prefer to leave leadership review power in the hands of the broader party membership.

The party’s constitution already mandates a leadership review to take place at the party’s next convention, scheduled for April in Toronto. Delegates to the convention will vote by secret ballot on whether Scheer should remain in charge.

Photo by Carlos Osorio/Reuters

Below are extended versions of MacKay’s remarks from Wednesday’s event.

Social conservative issues

I think there was a number of issues that became very prevalent in this election that nobody other than the politicos wanted to talk about. People did not want to talk about women’s reproductive rights. They didn’t want to talk about revisiting the issue of same-sex marriage. And yet that was thrust onto the agenda and hung around Andrew Scheer’s neck like a stinking albatross, quite frankly, and he wasn’t able to deftly deal with those issues when the opportunities arose. And I think among female voters in particular, and those who would have been impacted by any revisitation (of abortion), it created a nervousness or it took them out of their comfort zone if they were considering voting Conservative. Which, you know, frankly, having known Andrew Scheer…like Stephen Harper, who was Prime Minister for almost ten years, there was no intention and there is no intention to revisit those issues. But it created an aura, inaccurate, but impacted very much at that point when people enter the ballot box.

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Energy and climate issues

The closest in my view that we came to seeing a big issue was either climate or energy. And on energy, Andrew Scheer actually presented what I think was a compelling idea, but didn’t fill in the blanks of having — he called it an energy corridor, I call it a financial corridor — that would span the country for communications purposes, for the purposes, yes, of transporting bitumen from the oil sands in Fort McMurray, but in Saskatchewan as well, to bring Canadian energy to tidewater. But the issue really didn’t catch on and it didn’t really become a factor. Same with green technology. And while Andrew Scheer was pounded over the fact that he was late in producing a green plan for Canada, when he did, his idea, again, I felt had merit. It was going to be technology, not taxes, that will help us tackle climate change, which I personally believe in….But it’s difficult, you know, with the pace of information, and certainly now with social media, to get traction on some of these big issues. But that’s part of the analysis of, I think, what went wrong in terms of Andrew Scheer’s campaign.

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt