Cariboo-Prince George MP Todd Doherty told Vista Radio he supports Andrew Scheer as leader of the Conservative Party.
Doherty is among the Caucus members to endorse him following Wednesday’s meeting.
“First and foremost I support our leader and I am proud to also call him a friend, and I wish Canadians would see our leader how I see him every day, and his interactions with constituents that I brought forward, Canadians that I have brought forward to meet him, and how he interacts with his family. And to me, he’s a family man first and foremost and I really truly respect him. The leadership review will take place, it always does after an election loss. But we always believe that we’re a grassroots part and over 141 thousand members of the Conservative Party took part in the election of our leader during our last leadership race and we honestly believe that it should be at the grassroots level that the decision of whether we go further into a leadership review takes place.”
Doherty also doesn’t like the analogy of former Conservative Cabinet Minister Peter MacKay that they failed to score on an empty net in losing the election.
He said he likes the progress they made from 2015.
‘If you would have said in 2019 we’re going to be able to bring Justin Trudeau down to a minority government and we were going to increase our seats, 23 additional seats, and have one of the strongest opposition and almost a million more votes for us, the popular vote, I think if you would have told us that back in 2015, I think would have said we’ll take it.”
That said, Doherty says nobody likes to lose and they are now focused on re-evaluating their campaign and policies and going over some of the things they did well and some of the things that they can improve on.
As for criticism on what Scheer or the party could have done better during the election, Doherty says it’s easy to second guess.
“You know I think that there are a lot of armchair quarterbacks and it’s easy to actually call a game when you’re not actually in it. I’m a sports guy, and I never miss that empty net and I’m always able to kick that field goal so I think it’s really easy to do that when you’re on the sidelines. We know that there are things that we need to fix moving forward and we’re all committed to doing that.”
Doherty adds he wants to get back to talking about the issues that matter to constituents in his riding, including jobs in the forest and mining industries.
– with files from George Henderson, My Cariboo Now
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