OTTAWA — The social conservative wing of the Conservative Party looks set to have at least one flag-bearer in the leadership race, as former party staffer Richard Décarie is collecting signatures and has a network forming behind him.

“All the so-cons are mobilizing behind me because I’m the only candidate who is running that actually represents their values,” Décarie said on Tuesday.

The party’s social conservative wing is a large, energized voting bloc in leadership races and could well be a kingmaker in a close race, given the ranked ballot system. In 2017, Andrew Scheer received heavy down-ballot support from voters who backed other social conservative candidates, a significant factor in his come-from-behind victory over Maxime Bernier.

Décarie, an experienced Quebec organizer and former deputy chief of staff to Stephen Harper from 2003 to 2005, said he expects to enter the race soon and already has a team in place.

His campaign manager is Russ Kuykendall, who managed Tanya Granic Allen’s 2018 Ontario PC leadership campaign and was deputy campaign manager for Brad Trost’s 2017 federal Conservative leadership campaign. Mike Patton, who handled Trost’s communications in 2017, will be doing the same for Décarie. Trost himself will be campaign chair, meaning he’ll quarterback fundraising. Trost finished fourth in the 2017 race, which had 14 candidates on the final ballot.

Despite the high entry fee ($300,000 in total, with $100,000 of that a refundable deposit), Décarie said he doesn’t expect money to be an issue, and is in the process of collecting enough signatures to formally enter the race.

“That’s a big challenge, because the bar has been set pretty high,” Décarie said about the signatures. Candidates need 1,000 to enter the race — spread across 30 ridings in at least seven provinces or territories — and will need 3,000 in total to get onto the final ballot.

Décarie is francophone, which he said should help him in a race where there are questions about the bilingualism of other candidates. But he said it was the potential candidacy of a Quebecker, Jean Charest, that first motivated him to enter the race. (Charest announced on Tuesday that he would not be seeking the leadership.)

If you have pro-life values, you need to put them ahead in your policies

 

“(Charest) was coming back to the party to make it, I imagine, more of a Progressive Conservative party,” Décarie said. “I helped Stephen Harper in 2003 to unify the conservatives across Canada with the Conservative Party, including the West, and I think Mr. Charest would be a problem.”

Even with Charest deciding to stay out of the race, Décarie said he’s still going full-steam ahead since other candidates appear to be trying to sideline social conservatives. He pointed to Pierre Poilievre’s interview with Quebec newspaper La Presse last week in which Poilievre called same-sex marriage a “success” and said he would oppose any legislation that sought to restrict abortion rights.

Décarie said he knows there will be a big debate in this race over the party’s stance on social conservative issues, and in particular whether Scheer cost them the election in 2019 by giving vague answers on same-sex marriage.

“On the one side, some would say we lost because Scheer was a social conservative, so we have to get rid of it,” Décarie said. “On the other hand, you have all the so-cons who say yes, but he didn’t defend us, so that’s why we lost.”

He said his own takeaway is that you have to be clear about what you stand for. “If you have pro-life values, you need to put them ahead in your policies,” he said. On same-sex marriage, he said his own view is that it’s a religious concept and should be between a man and a woman, and anything else should be a civil union with the legal rights that entails.

The leadership results will be announced June 27 in Toronto. So far there are two other publicly declared candidates, Peter MacKay and Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu. Two more MPs, Poilievre and Erin O’Toole, are expected to announce their campaigns shortly. Former interim leader Rona Ambrose is still considering whether to enter the race.

• Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter: btaplatt

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