One out, but, as the Star’s Susan Delacourt notes, very much “on her own terms,” and another under increasing pressure to defend his right to take another run at ousting Team Trudeau from office: That’s where the post-election leadership tally stands following the abrupt, if not entirely unexpected announcement from Elizabeth May that she’s vacating her party’s top post, effective immediately, although she’ll continue to lead their three-person caucus in the House of Commons.

As noted in yesterday’s iPolitics AM, May had already made it clear that she would be stepping aside before the next election, although the decision to make it official so soon after the vote came as a surprise to many observers — and likely not a particularly welcome one as far as her now openly embattled Conservative counterpart is concerned.

Scheer set to face Conservative caucus tomorrow

“Since he lost the federal election last month, Andrew Scheer has tried but mostly failed to make the case that his maiden campaign as leader has resulted, if not in the hoped-for return to power, at least in a moral victory,” the Star’s Chantal Hebert points out.

But despite Scheer’s attempts to highlight his party’s “first place in the popular vote,” as well as the increased seat count and, perhaps most critically, “the loss by the Liberals of their majority,” she notes, “in almost every significant way, he is in a much weaker position than Harper was in the aftermath of the 2004 defeat.”

With the newly enlarged Conservative caucus set to hold its first post-vote caucus confab on Wednesday, it’s a good bet that Scheer and his team will spend the day reaching out to MPs ahead of the closed-door session to get a sense of what the overall mood is likely to be amongst both newly elected and returning members.

He and his team, as well as his supporters within the larger caucus, will likely also preparing to make the case against giving MPs the power to trigger a leadership review with the support of 20 per cent of the caucus, which is one of several optional parliamentary mechanisms brought in under Conservative MP Michael Chong’s Reform Act on which incoming caucuses are required to vote at their first post-election get-together.

New Senate caucus includes four now former Conservatives

Scheer may also have to field questions on what, if any, message he and his party should take away from the formation of a new Senate faction that includes two now former Conservative senators who have formally left the party’s parliamentary caucus to join Canadian Senators Group, as well as seven additional Upper House denizens who were previously aligned with the Independent Senators’ Group, which, with 49 members, remains the largest group in the Chamber.

The Conservatives are currently the only party with a caucus that includes both MPs and senators; the Senate Liberals have operated as a stand-alone unit since then newly elected Liberal leader Justin Trudeau ejected them from caucus en masse in 2013, and the New Democrats is fundamentally opposed to the very existence of the Senate.

While most of the erstwhile Conservative senators have made it clear that their departure had nothing to do with any lack of confidence in Scheer’s leadership, it’s hard not to see the move as an implicit endorsement of Trudeau’s efforts to end the party-dominated dynamics of the Senate.

Let the Team Trudeau 2.0 cabinet guessing game begin!

Finally, the Globe and Mail offers the first of what will almost certainly be a flurry of cabinet speculation pieces ahead of the planned November 20 reveal, which predicts — via intel provided by “Liberal and government insiders” — that the new ministerial lineup will include “an increased focus on the green economy and climate change,” which, given the minority setting, seems like an exceedingly safe bet.

It also suggests that Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland may be given the lead in what the Globe frames as “a bid to address Western grievances and the divide between rural and urban Canada” through a strengthened intergovernmental affairs portfolio, with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna tapped as a potential replacement for Freeland on the global front.

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Regular House and Senate committee meetings will resume after the election.

Committee highlights courtesy of our friends at iPoliticsINTEL.

Don’t miss today’s complete legislative brief in GovGuide.ca!