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But Bernier’s departure forced Scheer to spend time addressing a problem he might have thought he had solved — pacifying the base.

One MP said earlier this week that the message coming out of the weekend was aimed at those who are not committed Conservatives. “Our base can’t vote for us twice,” he said. But that was then. Bernier’s departure created the need for some raw meat to be tossed to the partisans.

Scheer was in damage-limitation mode, recounting how the Conservatives had won the Quebec riding of Chicoutimi-Le Fjord in a recent byelection. “We didn’t win by compromising. We didn’t win by trying to impress people who will never like us,” he said.

Yet the road to victory will be built on a bedrock of compromises and outreach to people who didn’t like Stephen Harper. Research by Abacus Data suggests 89 per cent of Canadians think the country works best “by finding the middle ground and compromise.” Fully three-quarters of Canadians would like to see the Conservatives be more progressive on social issues — and those numbers rise among those people who say they would like a different government in 2019.

Scheer promised repeatedly to kill Trudeau’s carbon tax but offered no alternative to fighting climate change. The only mention was in French, where he said the Liberal environmental plan might seem good “but they do not do anything to reduce emissions and they punish our industry. On the environment, the Conservatives will maintain low emissions and continue to improve our environmental performance, but we will not destroy the economic engine of our country.” He provided no detail on how emissions would be lowered.