Andrew Scheer will have no one to blame but himself if the issue of his dual citizenship bites him at the ballot box on Oct. 21.

The problem is not that the federal Conservative leader turns out to be officially American as well as Canadian. It would be ridiculous to suggest he harbours divided loyalties, and more than one million Canadians can also claim citizenship in another country.

But there is a problem with this situation and it's because of how Scheer previously reacted to controversies about other national figures with dual citizenship. Sorry Mr. Scheer. The way you behaved then leaves you open to charges of hypocrisy now.

Canadians, of course, will be the judge. Go back to 2005 in the weeks before Michaëlle Jean became Canada's Governor General and it came out she was a citizen of both France and this country.

A sitting Conservative MP at the time, Scheer helped make Jean's joint citizenship an issue of public concern. Writing in a blog at that time, he asked his constituents how they felt about the matter.

"Does it bother you that she is a dual citizenship," Scheer asked. "Would it bother you if instead of French citizenship, she held U.S. citizenship?"

Of course Scheer never mentioned in his blog that, like Jean, he held dual citizenship. And last week his protestations of innocence, that he was merely asking his constituents a question about Jean, were unconvincing to say the least.

If he'd thought there was nothing wrong with the Liberal government of the day naming a citizen of France as Canada's Governor General, he would have never drawn attention to it in the first place.

Scheer's behaviour after that episode on two other occasions also reflects poorly on him. During the 2008 federal election, Scheer's party attacked then-Liberal leader Stéphane Dion for his dual Canadian-French citizenship. In 2015, the Conservatives slammed Tom Mulcair, then-leader of the New Democrats, because he also held French citizenship.

On both occasions, Scheer remained silent. The public didn't know he held joint citizenship, and he obviously saw it as no impediment to his own political career. And this despite the disdain his party's leader, then-prime minister Stephen Harper, openly voiced for political leaders with an attachment to another country. If Scheer had concerns about politicians with dual citizenship, he could have done something about his own status long ago. However, a Conservative party spokesperson said last week that only in August, just before the current federal election campaign kicked off, did Scheer begin the formal process of renouncing his ties to the U.S.

There are, of course, many crucial issues facing voters in this election. Climate change. The economy. Pipelines. Tax hikes and tax cuts. Voters have a lot to learn, consider and weigh. The issue of the Canadian-born Scheer holding U.S. citizenship because his father was American-born will strike some people as a sideshow. But along with party platforms, the character of party leaders matters greatly. The more voters can discover about those who aspire to govern them the better.

For his part, Scheer showed no mercy last month after the revelations Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a supposed champion of diversity, had worn brownface or blackface before entering politics. "Once again we see with Justin Trudeau one set of rules for himself and one set of rules for the rest of us," Scheer remarked.

It's time for aspiring prime ministers of all political stripes to stop throwing stones at others when they themselves live in big, shiny and very breakable glass houses.

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