The Conservatives had their big post-election caucus meeting, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody, they voted not to enact the provisions of the (garbage) Reform Act that would give caucus the ability to turf their leader and force a new leadership contest – predictably under the rubric of empowering the “grassroots,” which as was explained in yesterday’s post, does the complete opposite. As this is going on, Angus Reid had a poll of Conservative voters that showed them particularly split on whether they want Scheer to stay or go (42 percent go, 41 percent stay, 17 percent undecided), so that could be an indication that their own base is leaning toward dumping him at their leadership review in April – especially as the convention will be in Toronto, an area where the party was shut out, and they may be more motivated to punish him for it.

As for Scheer, he arrived at his planned press conference three hours late because the meeting kept going, and it makes one wonder if the “frank discussion” going on inside were to blame – it’s possible there was an airing of the grievances happening, particularly for those who lost their seats. It didn’t seem to daunt Scheer, however, because when he arrived at the microphones, he essentially repeated his stump speech from the campaign. Sure, he said that “no one was more disappointed than me,” but he offered no signs of humility in defeat. When asked about the failure of his climate plan, Scheer said that they simply didn’t communicate it clearly enough rather than admit that it transparently wasn’t an actual climate plan (and his own senators have publicly clocked him on this fact). When asked if he thinks homosexuality is a sin, he prevaricated – again – and forcefully stated that he will defend people’s rights, which shows that he hasn’t learned anything from the campaign about his evasiveness.

This is an especially odd comment by Scheer since his own platform featured some new taxes. A tax on cigarette companies to pay for anti-tobacco campaigns, for example. Or a tax on "tech giants" to make them "pay their fair share". https://t.co/iUYzruhyV8

— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) November 7, 2019

Meanwhile, Matt Gurney makes the point that the party isn’t listening to what people in the GTA have been trying to tell them about what will and won’t fly there if they want to win seats there ever again, and are being told to “calm down” in response – which could spell trouble for Scheer.

Good reads:

• The US Ways and Means committee chair, Richard Neal, met with Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland about NAFTA, saying they’re close to ratifying New NAFTA.
• As more scammers are spoofing the numbers of legitimate government offices, Canadian telecoms are rolling outnew call-blocking technology to prevent it.
• The Liberals will be having an “unofficial” post-election caucus gathering for new, returning and defeated MPs today.
• Liberal minister Dominic LeBlanc has been discharged from hospital in Montreal after a successful stem cell transplant to treat his cancer.
• Alexandre Boulerice has an uphill battle being the last NDP MP in Quebec, and needing to rebuild the party’s organization there.
• Quebec is going to grandfather existing international students in their immigration reforms after an outcry (but hey, it’s like populism has human consequences).
• Heather Scoffield believes that Canada needs a Mark Carney-like figure to be a credible voice for climate change (as though that would sway some minds).
• Chantal Hébert dismantles some of the arguments of so-called “Western sepratists” by applying some lessons from Quebec.
• Chris Selley lambastes the latest outrage in Quebec, where they plan to only offer English services to “historic Anglophones” – in other words, white ones.

Odds and ends:

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