Andrew Scheer

At 44 years old, Andrew Scheer has this physical status:

Andrew James Scheer (born 20 May 1979) is a Canadian politician who currently serves as the Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition since 2017.

Scheer has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the riding of Regina—Qu'Appelle since 2004.

Elected to the riding of Regina—Qu'Appelle at the age of 25, Scheer was re-elected in 2006, 2008, and 2011 before becoming the Speaker of the House of Commons at age 32, making him the youngest Speaker in the chamber's history.

He held the speaker role for the entirety of the 41st Canadian Parliament.

On 28 September 2016, Scheer announced his bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party, running under the slogan of "Real conservative.

Real leader."Scheer has described himself as focused on economic development, fiscal restraint, and reducing inefficiencies in government.

A staunch opponent of the federal carbon tax, he has stated that he would balance the federal budget within two years of forming a government and open up the airline industry to foreign competition.

Scheer has been likened to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

On 27 May 2017, he was elected Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

In the 2019 federal election, the Conservatives under Scheer remained the Official Opposition but won the popular vote and gained 22 more seats than in the 2015 election.

On December 12, 2019, Scheer announced he would be resigning as the leader of the Conservative Party effective upon the election of a new one.

Personal life

Scheer married Jill Ryan at the Holy Rosary Cathedral in Regina in 2003. The couple have five children together. Scheer is a practising Catholic who attends Sunday mass and is an active member of the Knights of Columbus. His children attend a private faith-based school. According to Global News, "Scheer’s French is passable, but he’s not fluently bilingual."

Scheer is a hunter and firearm owner. A gridiron football fan, Scheer supports the Seattle Seahawks and Saskatchewan Roughriders; his brother-in-law is professional football player Jon Ryan. Another of his wife's brothers, Steve Ryan, ran for the Saskatchewan NDP in the 2007 and 2011 provincial elections.

When he was speaker of the House of Commons from 2011 to 2015, he lived at the official residence, called the Farm, in the Gatineau Hills. When he was the leader of the Opposition, he lived in the Stornoway.

Scheer is a dual-citizen, holding Canadian and U.S. citizenship, and in August 2019 he began the process of renouncing his U.S. citizenship, which he obtained through his American-born father. Scheer confirmed that he has filed U.S. tax returns and the party verified that he is registered for the draft under the U.S. Selective Service System, which is a list of individuals who can be conscripted into the U.S. military in the event of a national emergency. Scheer denied that he had been hiding this information, but rather stated that he had never been asked about his dual citizenship, nor about having an American-born parent, before the information was revealed by The Globe and Mail during the 2019 federal election campaign. In May 2020, he announced that he no longer plans to renounce his American citizenship, as he will not be prime minister.

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Early life and career

Scheer was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on May 20, 1979, and was raised in Ottawa. He is the son of Mary Gerarda Therese (née Enright), a nurse, and James D. Scheer, a librarian, proofreader with the Ottawa Citizen, and a Catholic deacon. Despite being born in Canada, James was born in the United States, making his son Andrew a US citizen at birth. Scheer's family made more money than average families in Canada, according to a 2019 Maclean's story. Scheer has two sisters. Scheer's family is from Romania. Scheer spent summers in Mississauga with his maternal grandparents. Scheer received the school's "Distinguished Catholic Alumni Award" in 2012 after graduating from Immaculata High School.

Scheer began his studies in 1998, criminology, political science, and history at the University of Ottawa, from which he would graduate in 2008, earning his Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree four years after being first elected to Parliament in 1998. Scheer served on several political campaigns, including the Unite the Right campaign to unite the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties and Preston Manning's campaign to lead the Canadian Alliance during his early university years. Under Stockwell Day, he spent time in the Office of the Opposition's chief. Scheer served on the youth advisory committee of Ottawa city councillor Karin Howard. Scheer ran as a school trustee for the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic School Board in the 2000 Ottawa municipal elections but lost to incumbent Kathy Ablett in his third year of university. Scheer moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, where he continued his studies at the University of Regina, taking some courses for his BA there after meeting his future wife Jill Ryan at the University of Ottawa.

Scheer, an insurance clerk, a waiter, and an assistant in the constituency office of Canadian Alliance MP Larry Spencer, who lived in Regina. Scheer's blog as an MP in 2005 announced that he was an accredited insurance broker, and that he began his insurance industry work at Shenher Insurance in Regina. Scheer, the Conservative leader, had served as an insurance broker before the 2019 election. There was no evidence that he had ever been licensed as an insurance broker, according to The Globe and Mail's inquiry. Scheer retaliated on these allegations by saying he obtained general insurance after leaving Shenher Insurance in Regina. The provincial regulator, Insurance Councils of Saskatchewan, was investigating the matter as of September 2019.

Political career

Scheer was elected as a Conservative candidate in the 2004 federal election in Regina—Qu'Appelle, defeating New Democratic Party (NDP) MP Lorne Nystrom by 861 votes. Scheer accused Nystrom of being too soft on child pornography near the end of the contest. Scheer was re-elected in the federal election of 2006, this time by a margin of 2,740 votes.

Scheer was appointed assistant deputy chairman of Committees of the Whole in April 2006, one of three deputy speakers, during the 39th Canadian Parliament. Bill C-343, An Act to rewrite the Criminal Code (motor vehicle theft), was also supported by the governor, who proposed the creation of minimum sentences for those convicted of a vehicle theft conviction.

During the 40th Canadian Parliament, Bill Blaikie, the House of Commons chairman and chairman of Committees of the Whole, was named deputy speaker of the House of Commons and chairman of Committees of the Whole.

Scheer's experience as deputy speaker of the federal election in 2011 led some to believe he should be elected Speaker of the House of Commons. Scheer defeated Denise Savoie, the sole opposition and only female candidate in the sixth round of voting, on June 2, 2011. Scheer was Canada's youngest Speaker. Liberal MPs, who opposed Scheer's candidacy, chastised the NDP for electing for their own party member rather than pointing the balance toward Conservative MP Lee Richardson based on the MPs' assertions that Scheer was "Harper's Boy."

During his tenure, several opposition MPs were critical of certain of his decisions. Irwin Cotler, a Liberal MP, challenged his credibility following the firm's decision over a robocall incident (it was revealed that Scheer was a client of the company).

During the 2011 Canadian federal election voter suppression controversy, opposition politicians raised questions over Scheer's attempts to silence questions after The Globe and Mail revealed that his riding association loaned $3,000 to Marty Burke, though Burke's campaign was being scrutinized by Elections Canada over the incident.

Scheer was re-elected in the 2015 federal election, in which the Conservative government was defeated. Rona Ambrose, the chief of the Official Opposition and interim Conservative Party leader, was appointed opposition House leader by the party's founder and interim Conservative Party leader. He considered running for the role of interim party leader, but fellow caucus MP Chris Warkentin advised him that the interim leader would not be able to serve on a permanent basis. On September 13, 2016, he resigned as House leader after a party caucus meeting in Halifax in order to investigate a bid for the leadership of the federal Conservative Party.

Scheer also expressed support for the UK's decision to vote for Brexit during the referendum in 2016. "I was pro-Brexit before it was cool," Scheer tweeted later this year.

Scheer declared his run for the Conservative Party on September 28, 2016, saying that he had the help of 32 Conservative caucuses members. Scheer was elected as the second leader of the Conservative Party on May 27, 2017, defeating runner up Maxime Bernier and more than 12 others with 59.5 percent of the vote in 13 rounds. Bernier attributed his failure to those he described as "fake conservatives" in the supply management dairy lobby and agricultural industry. Scheer made a joking appearance at the annual Press Gallery dinner by joking:

Scheer's Conservative Party ran under the slogan "Real Conservative." "I am a genius." He avoided promoting the social conservative causes that some of the candidates endorsed, saying he wanted to "reach a larger audience of Canadians." Several of the positions on which he took a firm stand included abandoning the carbon levy and being "tough on crime." Scheer has been compared to former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and has been described as "Harper with a smile" or "Stephen Harper 2.0" during his career. Scheer, a Blue Tory, is a critic of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet decisions, having also been critical of Trudeau's late father, former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Scheer identified former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and British Parliament member Daniel Hannan as political actors. During the 2016 Manning Center Conference, Scheer introduced US senator Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as "strong conservative voices." Scheer's leadership team was less focused on headlines or eye-grabbing measures and more on statistics and organizing than some of the other candidates.

Scheer predicted that the federal budget would be balanced within two years of being in office, but that specific steps to achieve this were not announced at the time.

Scheer was able to profit from Brad Trost's unexpected help during the leadership race. Any of Trost supporters broke the Canada Elections Act and party membership by giving voters incentives to vote. Dimitri Soudas, a former Harper adviser, said that it broke election laws and benefitted Scheer's campaign, but the result stood because the ballots had been discarded.

After winning the Conservative leadership election, opposition politicians chastised Scheer for removing his campaign page. Scheer's plans, according to Conservative strategists, were not likely to be included in the party's 2019 election platform. After the 2018 Conservative Convention in Halifax, it was revealed that "the powers of the leader are far reaching in stopping policy from being in the party platform." The Leader's office has told DFC [Dairy Farmers of Canada] that he will use this power and that no campaign will be carried out in the Conservative Party platform regardless of the result at convention."

Hamish Marshall, Scheer's campaign manager, was listed as an IT specialist and one of the founders of the far right news outlet The Rebel Media the day after the election. When Scheer asked Scheer if he knew that Marshall served for the Rebel during the leadership campaign, he replied: "I didn't tell Hamish about every client he had" and ended the interview. Scheer was aware that the Rebel was one of Marshall's many clients, but did not know the particulars, but not sure which ones were aware. Marshall was elected Conservative campaign chair for the 43rd Canadian federal election the day after. Marshall and his prior association with the Rebel should not be concerned with his appointment as campaign chair, Scheer said in an interview with Macleans on March 21, 2018.

Scheer announced after the Charlottesville, Virginia "Unite the Right" rally in August 2017, and that he would not do interviews with Rebel News until the "editorial directions" were changed. In an interview with the National Post the following day, Scheer said he would not be allowing interviews with Rebels going forward.

Senator Lynn Beyak was banned from the Conservative caucus on January 4, 2018 after she refused to delete one of her letters that suggested Indigenous people need to get things for "no effort." "Racism will not be tolerated in the Conservative caucus or the Conservative Party of Canada," he said. Scheer said he was only aware of the letters on January 2nd, but Garnet Angeconeb, a student vivor, told Scheer and Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith about them on September 15, 2017 but there was no response. Beyak said neither Scheer nor anyone from his company called her to delete a letter. Beyak's accusation was supported by a senior Conservative source.

Scheer travelled to the United Kingdom in March 2018 to "lay the groundwork" for a Canada-UK trade agreement, if he were to become Prime Minister after the 2019 election. He met with Prime Minister Theresa May, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson, and other UK ministers, including Liam Fox and Sajid Javid, in London. The Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen expressed minor reservations about Scheer's trip. The trip was described as "undiplomatic" and "not statesmanlike," by the Citizen editorial, although the Globe editor pointed out that Prime Minister Trudeau's announcement of a Canada-UK trade deal had already been signed the previous year.

The Opposition held a filibuster in India, which was intended to persuade the government's ruling Liberals to answer questions in the House of Commons and provide clear and concise information to the Canadian public; the filibuster lasted 21 hours costing taxpayers $50,000 per hour. Scheer's office received a briefing by the Privy Council Office a few days before starting the filibuster to request details. "Has the government gave Andrew a briefing?" a Scheer spokesperson responded to these allegations by claiming, "Has the government gave Andrew a briefing?" "Yes" is the answer, and "This [is] fake news." Andrew Scheer said the allegation was "completely false" and that if it were made to all members of Parliament. Michael Wernick, the Clerk of Privy Council, approached Scheer's chief of staff and centrist MP Tony Clement to brief Scheer on any Privy Council information that may not have been revealed later. Clement replied that he would not confirm or deny it. Scheer accepted a briefing a few weeks later.

Scheer denied charges that the Dairy Farmers of Canada partnered with his office to prevent a motion to change the party's position on supply management after a page from the briefing book was already revealed on Twitter by a Conservative delegate.

Scheer led the Conservatives to a total of 121 seats at the 2019 election, up from 95 at the time of dissolution. However, they came in 36 seats behind the Liberals in spite of winning 34.4 percent of the popular vote by a margin of just over 240,000 votes. It was the first time a party secured the most seats since 1979, when the John A. Macdonald-led Tories took power in 1867, who gained 34.8 percent.

Both Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they gained 75% and 66% of the popular vote respectively, was built on a large margin. Despite this, the provincial Conservative government of Doug Ford won five seats in the suburbs of Greater Toronto, and was practically shut out in Toronto itself.

Scheer resigned as the leader of the Conservative Party and Official Opposition on December 12, 2019, retaining power until a new leader could be chosen. The Conservative Party reported on the same day that it had been paying the difference in Scheer's private school tuition for Scheer's children in Saskatchewan and Ottawa's higher cost of tuition—insisting the tuition issue was not the reason for Scheer's resignation.

Scheer was voted Opposition Critic for Infrastructure & Communities in his successor Erin O'Toole's shadow cabinet on September 8, 2020. In this capacity, he sponsored private member Bill C-269 to repeal the Fisheries Act's ban on the deposit of raw sewage in water frequented by fish.

Scheer and Waugh, Battleford-Lloydminster MP Fraser Tolmie, Regina-Lewvan MP Warren Steinley, and Sen. Denise Batters posed for a picture on Friday, 2022. As he felt the protesters' behavior were not welcomed, Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa, requested an apology, and that "MPs and senators in the picture should know better."

In the 2022 Conservative Leadership Election, he has supported Pierre Poilievre's bid to lead the Conservative Party.

Scheer was appointed Opposition House Leader by Poilievre, the Conservative Party's leader, on September 13, 2022.

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