Former prime minister Kim Campbell and Paul Martin at the the 21st Annual Global Conference of the International Leadership Association. Photos courtesy of Cynthia Münster Photography and the International Leadership Association.

Former prime minister Kim Campbell says the problem with Andrew Scheer’s views on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage isn’t that he has the stance he does, but that Canadians don’t trust him to prevent the matters from being raised at a federal level.

In the time since the election, the Conservative Party leader told The Canadian Press that he believes a prime minister could have views like his — that of opposing abortion and, at least at one point, being opposed to same-sex marriage.

READ MORE: Plain-spoken approach is best in a minority government, Paul Martin says

Campbell (who was the last prime minister of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, which merged with Stephen Harper’s similarly right-wing Canadian Alliance to become the modern day Conservative Party of Canada) said she thinks Scheer’s views are besides the point, which is that he failed to convince Canadians that a government led by him wouldn’t raise what she thinks are settled issues in Canada.

“(Stephen Harper) also understood how divisive it was and how it could get in the way of accomplishing other things he wanted to do. And so the question is not whether somebody who has socially conservative views can be prime minister, it’s whether that person will commit to continuing to respect the law of the land as it is today,” Campbell said.

Campbell was in Ottawa on the weekend for the 21st Annual Global Conference for the International Leadership Association. On Saturday morning she moderated a discussion that included former Gov. General David Johnston about trust and its importance in leadership. She spoke to iPolitics for a wide-ranging interview afterwards.

“I think the problem with Andrew Scheer is that people don’t trust him, because they don’t trust him not to let the issue to come up again, when it becomes very, very divisive,” Campbell said in response to a question about Scheer’s post-election comments on his views.

Campbell is the only woman in Canada to ever serve as prime minister. She was appointed to the post when Brian Mulroney retired in 1993 and she won the Progressive Conservative leadership. She was prime minister for about four and a half months before losing the election and her seat in Vancouver Centre against Jean Chretien’s Liberals.

Before entering federal politics, Campbell — who has long presented herself as pro-choice — was an MLA in British Columbia with the Social Credit Party. Before leaving B.C.’s legislature to enter federal politics, Campbell notably criticized from her party’s leader, former premier Bill Vander Zalm, for his hardline stance against abortion.

Before she became prime minister, Campbell held just short of a handful of cabinet positions, including the post of Minister of Justice and Attorney General. Shortly after Canada’s abortion law was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada and while she was justice minister, Campbell introduced Bill C-43. The bill would have made abortion illegal unless a doctor determined pregnancy threatened a woman’s health. It was passed through the House of Commons by the Mulroney-led majority but ultimately failed to pass through the Senate when it was killed with a tie vote.

It wasn’t until midway through this past federal election campaign that Scheer directly addressed his own stance on abortion.

“My personal position has always been open and consistent. I am personally pro-life but I’ve also made the commitment that as leader of this party it is my responsibility to ensure that we do not reopen this debate, that we focus on issues that unite our party and unite Canadians,” Scheer said in an Oct. 3 press conference that followed a Conservative Party platform policy announcement.

The Conservative leader had struggled to get past questions about his personal opinion on social issues until that point, after they were brought into the political conversation after Liberal cabinet ministers resurfaced a video of him talking about his opposition to same-sex marriage in 2005 in the House of Commons, and of a candidate’s abortion stance, who he was campaigning with.

Scheer’s credibility also came under the microscope it was reported only within a few days of each other that he had not been a fully-licensed insurance broker, which is a claim he had used to bolster his pre-politics career, and that he was a U.S. citizen, which hadn’t been previously brought to light. The revelations turned the Conservatives’ oft-repeated “Not As Advertised” attacks against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on their head by lending the Liberal Party the same political ammunition to use against Scheer.

READ MORE: Scheer, pressed again on abortion, says Liberals pushing attacks as distraction tool

While Scheer frequently repeated during the campaign that a Conservative government would not reopen debates into social issues including abortion and same-sex marriage, Campbell says that, ultimately, Canadians weren’t sold.

“To repair (Canadians’ trust in him) he would have to come out and say, ‘I have these views, but I understand as a prime minister that my personal views are not the most important, that I’m not prime minister to impose my personal vision on the country,” Campbell said.

She also said she thinks he may not have kept the conversation around his personal views intentionally murky in an attempt to strike a balance between voters in traditionally Liberal-leaning Quebec and a bloc of voters who do want the federal government to reassess its policies on sensitive social issues.

“He’s hard to trust, and that’s really it,” Campbell said.

Advice for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Like Mulroney, who Trudeau tapped for an unofficial consultant-like role ahead of the renegotiation of the NAFTA, Campbell has also worked with the Liberal government as chair of an advisory board that was tasked with choosing the next Supreme Court Justice from Quebec. Though she said she hadn’t spoken to Trudeau (or any other federal political party leader for that matter) since last Monday’s election, Campbell would offer some advice to the prime minister about quelling regional divisions in the country that appear obvious with a quick glance at the red–blue divide on any election map.

The hashtag #Wexit — a response to the Liberals’ failure to win a single seat in Alberta or Saskatchewan — was one Twitter trend to emerge on election night. While Campbell, who happens to be Canada’s only prime minister to come from British Columbia, doesn’t think the Prairie provinces’ hatred for the prime minister is entirely warranted, she does think Trudeau needs to do a better job illustrating how the oil industry’s existing infrastructure could be repurposed for the future of the energy sector.

READ MORE: Government relations firms, lobbyists, to recalibrate strategies under minority government

“The prime minister needs to do something that he hasn’t done. He needs to articulate the broad narrative of where he’s going, that pipelines are part of the transition (to a greener economy),” Campbell said.

Follow @CharliePinkerto