I must admit that I was surprised as Max Bernier seemed to have alot of support according to the media and once it was discovered that he only had 30% on the first ballot - the race was on! In a way there were 2 things that probablly should have indicated it would be a tougher go than portrayed by the media.
1) Conservatives have learnt to be very suspicious of Pollsters in the last decade in that they avoid them, rarely tell them the truth as it just leads to "blow-back" on their preferred candidate and
2) the weighted vote method gave equal value to all ridings and weak, non-Tory ridings had as much influence as large, long-time ridings in Alberta or Ontario.
This made Quebec with 78 ridings but virtually NO Conservative Party membership (only 6% of party membership of 259,000) or organizational presence worth 24% of total vote weight - equal to strong CPC bastions of BC and Alberta in the scheme of things.
Then there was push by Bernier to advance a "Libertarian" version of the Conservative Party while downplaying the mostly difficult and electorally controversial Social Conservative wing. A key plank in this Libertarian push was to call for demolishing the Dairy Marketing programs known as "Supply Management" Boards that are pretty popular with special interest groups in Quebec and Ontario.
Ultimately this was a mistake as these groups organized and made sure they bought CPC Memberships to oppose M. Bernier. In fact he barely won his own riding and was heavily penalized in Quebec winning under 60% of the vote. It now seems clear that the vocal opposition of this group across Quebec and Ontario was enough to swing him into a loss. So much for having "Principaled Policy" positions!
Similarly it seems that among the rest of the 13 Leadership Candidates - the So-Con contingent was strongly active. Leading Social Conservatives Brad Troost and Pierre Lemieux worked hard to pull in support from Christians and other Religious groups.
Erin O'Toole had the largest support from within the Cacus MP's reflecting a different perspective on who THEY might feel comfortable leading the Cacus or someone thye could work with - sort of the "Inside Baseball" Team.
Universally rejected as being in the wrong Party appeared to be Michael Chong who key notable campaign issue was support for a Carbon Tax. The groups who supported Chong split mostly to Bernier after he was eliminated - showing their "progressive" leanings.
In the final tally's it seemed that So-Cons split more towards Sheer - who did recieve the 3rd most favourable ranking for Pro-Life issues after Troost and Lemeiux.
In a way I am pleased with the results - as Sheer is a (transplanted) Westerner (born and raised in Ottawa, moved out west to Saskatchewan) and has a strong base in that province. He is admittedly Pro-Life but has tended to say he will follow the Harper Stratagem of keeping "divisive" SoCon issues under house arrest and debate within Caucus. One policy I really like was his plan to defund Institutions who do not respect freedom of Speech on campus - which has turned into a trmendous problem as Campus Radicals are mostly the Academics and Administration.
Here are a few of the good interviews I have seen about Mr Sheer over the last few weeks.
Addendum: June 2, 2017 Vince Byfield - Good news for Canadian Christian, we are not irrelevant!
