Andrew Scheer wasn’t the candidate Randy Hoback, the Northeast’s MP, backed in the Conservative leadership race, but the Prince Albert MP is excited about his new leader.
“He’s got a gentle soul but a firm grip on what needs to be done,” he said. “He’s always got a grin on his face; having said that, when he needs to get serious, he gets serious. He’s got the right attributes to make a great leader and I think he’ll be one of the great leaders of Canada.”
Hoback said that Canadians can expect Scheer, who’s a Regina MP, to be a strong fiscal conservative.
“He believes in balanced budgets, he believes in being fiscally responsible,” he said. “He’s a family man. He has five kids, so he knows what it’s like to raise a family in this day and age and knows the challenges that go with that.”
The MP added Scheer knows what to be done to ensure government doesn’t make life harder for families.
Hoback is expecting his new leader to become Prime Minister after the next election.
“I’m predicting we’re going to win all 14 ridings in Saskatchewan just because we’ve got a guy from Saskatchewan who’s leader of our party.”
As for the leadership race itself, Hoback supported Erin O’Toole, an Ontario MP. The race ran on a point system: for each one per cent in each riding in the country a candidate earned, they earned a point. The candidate who got the majority of points won. If a candidate didn’t get more than 50 per cent of the points, the candidate with the least amount of points was knocked off and their points distributed to their next choice.
“What an exciting race,” Hoback said. “We had different perceptions and ideas on how this could have unfolded, but nobody really knew. Because of the ranked ballot system and the points, it was really hard to forecast what the end would be.”
The MP figured that Maxime Bernier, a Québec MP, would start off with the most amount of points, but either O’Toole or Scheer would collect enough points after contestants were knocked off to win.
“Erin, I would have thought would have had a better chance in taking in more ridings in Eastern Canada, maybe Ontario, and Andrew, coming out West, would have it tougher, but, you know what?” he said. “When you look at the results coming out of the polling for the leadership race, Andrew did very well in Québec, he did very well in Atlantic Canada, he did very well in Ontario, in the areas we need to gain seats to win back a majority government.”
Scheer won against 14 candidates, winning 50.95 per cent of the points in the 13th round. O’Toole lasted until the 12th round, winning 21.26 per cent of the vote.
Scheer was also ahead of O’Toole among Conservatives in the Prince Albert riding that voted.
“I told people in my riding: vote who you think’s the best. I trust my constituents. They’ll vote for who they think is the best and they did.”
As for rule changes to the leadership process in the future that might be able to better handle more than 10 candidates, Hoback said his party will probably start a process to examine how, if in any way, leadership races could be made better in that aspect. If they come up with something, that will be voted on at a policy convention in Halifax.
That said, Hoback said besides a few small hiccups that are inherent with such a large undertaking, the race’s rules did their job.
“You know what? The system worked really well. We had 260,000 members. That’s a lot of ballots, that’s a lot of votes.”
Leadership race results in the Prince Albert riding
| Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4 | Round 5 | Round 6 | Round 7 | Round 8 | Round 9 | Round 10 | Round 11 | Round 12 | Round 13 | |
| Andrew SCHEER | 29.33% | 29.33% | 29.52% | 29.52% | 29.52% | 29.52% | 29.77% | 30.34% | 38.31% | 39.96% | 40.43% | 54.14% | 69.6% |
| Maxime BERNIER | 17.9% | 17.9% | 17.9% | 17.9% | 18.48% | 18.48% | 18.51% | 18.89% | 19.16% | 19.69% | 19.92% | 23.23% | 30.4% |
| Erin O'TOOLE | 16.38% | 16.38% | 16.38% | 16.38% | 16.38% | 16.57% | 16.6% | 17.94% | 18.39% | 20.27% | 20.31% | 22.63% | |
| Brad TROST | 10.48% | 10.48% | 10.48% | 10.48% | 10.67% | 10.67% | 10.69% | 10.69% | 18.2% | 19.31% | 19.34% | ||
| Michael CHONG | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.77% | 0.77% | |||
| Kellie LEITCH | 4% | 4% | 4% | 4% | 4.00% | 4.19% | 4.2% | 5.15% | 5.17% | ||||
| Pierre LEMIEUX | 16.19% | 16.19% | 16.19% | 16.19% | 16.19% | 16.19% | 16.22% | 16.22% | |||||
| Lisa RAITT | 2.86% | 2.86% | 2.86% | 3.05% | 3.05% | 3.24% | 3.24% | ||||||
| Steven BLANEY | 0.19% | 0.19% | 0.19% | 0.38% | 0.38% | 0.38% | |||||||
| Chris ALEXANDER | 0.57% | 0.57% | 0.57% | 0.57% | 0.57% | ||||||||
| Kevin O'LEARY | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | 0.76% | |||||||||
| Rick PETERSON | 0.38% | 0.38% | 0.38% | ||||||||||
| Andrew SAXTON | 0.19% | 0.19% | |||||||||||
| Deepak OBHRAI |
