'He's not the guy': A Quebec Tory candidate on why he thinks Andrew Scheer must go
Maikel Mikhael says the Conservative leader 'was just dragging us down constantly' during the election
Andrew Scheer is on a cross-country listening tour — and he is getting an earful.
At a closed-door meeting in Montreal on Monday, the Conservative leader got some tough feedback from Quebec candidates about his performance in last month's federal election, and his future in the party ahead of a leadership review in April.
"Mr. Scheer knows it's important candidates have a chance to give feedback and that's what this three-part campaign review is about — discussing how our efforts in replacing Justin Trudeau can be better and more focused for the next election," Cory Hann, a spokesperson for Scheer, said in an emailed statement.
Maikel Mikhael was at the Montreal meeting. He ran as the Conservative candidate in the riding of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, and lost to the Bloc Quebecois' Luc Desilets. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Carol Off.
What message did you have for Andrew Scheer at this meeting?
He's not the guy for the job.
Did you think he wasn't the right man for the job before he lost?
I had my personal opinion on the good side, the bad sides. But I still gave him a shot, and that's why I ran.
What do you think it went wrong, in your view?
Concerning the communication team, they thought that they were prepared ... but, in fact, they completely didn't deliver the merchandise.
We felt that certain things were kind of staged or prepared or mishandled instead of going naturally with the flow.
What ... [did] other people say about Andrew Scheer? I guess he was there. What did they say to him?
There was one of my colleagues that brought [up] the fact that he should leave before Christmas. He has to take a quick decision.
We were playing against three teams that didn't have any goalkeepers, and [we] weren't able to hit the target, weren't able to score against those three teams. So we didn't deliver. The score that we had is not the score that reflects all the efforts, all the things that we did.
One thing also that went wrong during the campaign is that I constantly had to defend my leader. So, for example, during my door-to-door, people were asking me about Andrew Scheer. "Oh, why this? Why that? Why his position on certain social issues?"
I had to constantly defend him. A role of the leader is to bring his team up, and he was just dragging us down constantly.
What were the social issues they were saying?
A lot of Canadians heard about abortion and same-sex marriage. These are things that constantly were dragging us down.
You're in a minority government situation. The election could be any time. It's often difficult to change leaders at this point.
Well, certain people said: OK we have the guy, we know what went wrong, so we can focus on working on it.
But personally, the message that we delivered and the message that we keep on bringing is that he's not the guy. And if he doesn't understand that message, it's probably going to show a certain lack of leadership. Because being a leader, you have to understand that [at] certain times, hard decisions have to be taken.
So if he doesn't step down as leader, it's more evidence that he's not a leader?
It could show a lack of leadership, yes.
The Liberals did have a majority. What's the evidence it was winnable for the Conservatives?
We were prepared to win this election. We were campaigning more than a year ago. And we had our candidates ready. We had all the preps done.
We could have hit the goal on all the stumbles that the Liberal Party did. And we were seeing the [NDP] crashing, and the Bloc Quebecois almost disappeared.
But now with all the situations that were brought up directly to Andrew Scheer, we weren't able to score.
In your riding, the Bloc won. You came in fourth, though. So do you think it's not possible that maybe the other candidates just ran better campaigns than you did?
What we noticed is that at the beginning of the campaign ... when we were canvassing, we had supporters that we called back two weeks before the vote and they were saying: "Sorry, we're not supporting you anymore." So we saw this trend.
And you believe it was Mr. Scheer who dragged you down?
Oh, absolutely.
The Conservative Party is all kinds of conservatives — from progressives on one side, to hard-right conservatives, to Tories, to all kinds of different movements [that] all got pulled into this big tent. I mean, is it not possible Mr. Scheer was ... trying to be all things to all people? He was trying to keep this party together, and that it is actually maybe not possible to do so?
The party needs to realign its position.
Are we going to be more on the progressive side? Are we going to be more centred? Where do we want to stand with our new leader?
This is something that we have to decide very fast because the election could happen any time.
You would like to take the party in which direction?
It's not going to be only about me.
OK, but is it your sense that people, Conservatives in Quebec within the party, would like to take it in the progressive direction?
This is what I personally felt. We should go more on the progressive side and then rally as many people as we can together to bring this movement forward.
But you know on the other side, you have social conservatives who wanted Mr. Scheer to be even more vocal on the issue of abortion and gay marriage. So he disappointed them because he wasn't strong enough. So how do you pull all those people together? How would any leader do that?
The whole idea is to represent what Canadians want. If somebody wants to become a prime minister, he wants to represent as many people as he can. You don't want to be a leader of a minority. You want to be the leader of the majority. You want to bring people together. You don't want to divide them.
And what we're seeing right now is a country that is completely divided between the east and the west and the Maritimes.
Almost every day we have heard stories of people ... within the party calling for Mr. Scheer to step down. You're openly talking about it here in this interview. It's considered almost to be treason to speak out against the leader. What does it say to you that nobody seems to be shy about telling us how much they want Mr. Scheer to go?
We don't have a lot of time in front of us. So what we want to do is we want to get things together. We want to get things done. We want to get on. We want to stick to the facts. And we want to bring results.
What we're doing right now is probably drastic, but it's because we're aiming on concrete results.
Kory Teneycke, one of the people working on the campaign, said that to trying to work for Mr. Scheer right now, to be his chief-of-staff, would be like becoming the captain on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. With those kinds of remarks being made, why do you think Mr. Scheer doesn't step down?
I don't know what he's holding on to.
I'm definitely sure that he wants to be the next prime minister of this country and it's something that he's aiming for. And now the decision is for him to see if he wants to a real leader or he wants to put his personal goals in front of it.
Do you actually think that Mr. Scheer believes he could become prime minister?
I'm sure that if he stays, he probably believes it.
Written by Sheena Goodyear and Jeanne Armstrong with files from CBC News. Interview produced by Jeanne Armstrong. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.