{"id":78466,"date":"2017-05-30T09:57:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T09:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/critics-accuse-andrew-scheer-of-hiding-policies-after-campaign-win.html"},"modified":"2017-05-30T09:57:51","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T09:57:51","slug":"critics-accuse-andrew-scheer-of-hiding-policies-after-campaign-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/critics-accuse-andrew-scheer-of-hiding-policies-after-campaign-win.html","title":{"rendered":"Critics accuse Andrew Scheer of hiding policies after campaign win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A move by new Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer&#8217;s campaign has made it much tougher\u00a0for average Canadians to consult the policy positions that won the hearts and minds of Conservative Party supporters.<\/p>\n<p>Finding Scheer&#8217;s policy positions used to be as easy as clicking on his website, where his thoughts\u00a0on 26 policies were laid out\u00a0\u2014 from &#8220;Prioritizing Real Refugees&#8221; and &#8220;Standing up for Religious Freedom,&#8221; to &#8220;Freer Trade&#8221; and &#8220;Cheaper Flights.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But in the wake of Saturday&#8217;s leadership\u00a0vote, Canadians who went looking for that website\u00a0\u2014 trying to find out more about the man who pulled off the come-from-behind upset victory\u00a0\u2014 would&#8217;ve come up empty.\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"><strong>Andrew Scheer goes where Joe Clark struggled and succeeded before<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Popular vote numbers show Andrew Scheer winning bigger<\/a> <\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sometime Saturday, before the results of the final vote were even announced, Scheer&#8217;s campaign team transformed the site. Instead of the one that had been up for months with the candidate&#8217;s policies, news releases and biography, visitors were greeted with a photo of Scheer and a message simply saying &#8220;thank you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Late Monday afternoon, even that disappeared and visitors were instead redirected to the website of the Conservative Party of Canada.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Scheer&#8217;s campaign Facebook page is still live<\/a>, including videos where he talks about his various policies, like scrapping the carbon tax or eliminating the HST\/GST from home energy. However, the accompanying links, meant to direct visitors to additional details, no longer work.<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.2981013.1481601369!\/cpImage\/httpImage\/image.jpg_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/ndp-mp-alexandre-boulerice.jpg\" alt=\"NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice\" width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice says he questions what Scheer is trying to hide by shutting down his website as soon as the campaign wrapped up. (Sean Kilpatrick\/Canadian Press)<\/p>\n<p>A dozen of Scheer&#8217;s policy pages \u2014 on subjects like &#8220;Tax Savings on Home Energy,&#8221; defending democracy and &#8220;Common Sense on Firearms&#8221; \u2014 can be accessed indirectly by using tools <a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">like the Internet Archive<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But others\u00a0\u2014 including his positions on refugees, supporting Israel, supply management, free speech on campus and accountability for First Nations\u00a0\u2014 cannot.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Scheer defended the move, saying all campaigns immediately take their websites down after a vote.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All the campaign stuff comes down when the campaign is over\u00a0\u2014 it&#8217;s pretty standard,&#8221; said Nancy Bishay.<\/p>\n<p>However, a review by CBC News found that the vast majority of other candidates&#8217; websites, including their policy positions, were still online as of Monday evening. Only two of the other 12 final candidates had changed their websites: Erin O&#8217;Toole and Pierre Lemieux.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"><strong>OPINION | Andrew Scheer says he won&#8217;t impose his religious beliefs on Canadians. We&#8217;ll see<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice questioned why a leadership candidate would make their positions inaccessible so quickly after the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s fairly strange; there is something fishy about it. Normally if you campaigned with a platform and a program, and you won, you want to continue to spread your ideas,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re incapable of verifying what words he used exactly, what promises he made, what undertakings he has made &#8230; What does Mr. Scheer have to hide, to erase all trace of his election platform?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.cbc.ca\/1.4136950.1496098518!\/fileImage\/httpImage\/image.png_gen\/derivatives\/original_620\/screen-capture-of-andrew-scheer-s-campaign-website.png\" alt=\"Screen capture of Andrew Scheer's campaign website\" width=\"100%\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">A screen capture shows part of Andrew Scheer&#8217;s online policy page, when accessed via the Internet Archive. (Internet Archive)<\/p>\n<p>Canadians can still consult the policy positions that the Liberal Party adopted in the 2015 election campaign, pointed out Liberal MP Francis Drouin.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can go check our Liberal.ca website and the platform is still up there, and you can see all the commitments that we&#8217;ve made, or the commitments that we didn&#8217;t respect, or the commitments that we still need to make.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Bishay dismissed any suggestion that Scheer&#8217;s campaign team changed the website in order to hide his policy positions, saying she &#8220;wouldn&#8217;t characterize it that way at all.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The spokesperson said news releases were issued throughout the campaign, in addition to interviews and news reports. But she could not point to a singular place where average Canadians could currently consult the\u00a0policies and campaign promises that won Scheer the leadership.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Elizabeth Thompson can be reached at elizabeth.thompson@cbc.ca<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/scheer-conservative-leadership-policies-1.4136911?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A move by new Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer&#8217;s campaign has made it much tougher\u00a0for average Canadians to consult the policy positions that won the hearts and minds of Conservative Party supporters. Finding Scheer&#8217;s policy positions used to be as easy as clicking on his website, where his thoughts\u00a0on 26 policies were laid out\u00a0\u2014 from &#8220;Prioritizing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-78466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}