“I think Andrew Scheer ran a good campaign,” MP-Elect for Hastings-Lennox and Addington Derek Sloan tells My Bancroft in the wake of the Conservative party’s first caucus meeting.
“To go from a liberal majority to a conservative majority would be nice, but that’s not typically what happens,” he explains. He notes that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper lost to Liberal Paul Martin when he first ran for Prime Minister of 2004, before winning in the next election two years later. With Scheer now having the experience of running for Prime Minister, Sloan is hopeful his party will come out stronger next time out. “If you get a new leader in place, you have the same issue of people not knowing them well and having to start from scratch,” he says.
CBC reports that the caucus vote “wasn’t close” that, if approved, would have seen a federal law invoked that would allow the party to oust Scheer as the party’s leader.
“The idea that there was a lot of factions or discontent with leadership wasn’t what I saw,” Sloan says of the meeting. He says many of the MPs in attendance were supportive of the party when talking about how the election went. “I feel the party leadership is taking those comments seriously,” he adds.
Sloan says he is still working on getting his main office set-up in Napanee. He adds that he will also have a rotating office throughout the riding, with Sloan adding that he expects to have one in Bancroft. He also hopes to set-up a symposium with all Mayors and Reeves in the riding in the new year to discuss the issues they’re facing.
Parliament is set to reconvene on December 5th, with Sloan and his fellow MPs getting sworn in for their terms on the 2nd. There is also talk about the Throne Speech, with Scheer and the NDP’s leader Jagmeet Singh speaking out about whether or not they vote for the speech when the House reconvenes. Electing a Speaker of the House is also on the to-do list.