{"id":25352,"date":"2019-12-05T18:09:11","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T23:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25352"},"modified":"2019-12-13T18:50:36","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T23:50:36","slug":"conservative-leader-picks-alleslev-as-deputy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/conservative-leader-picks-alleslev-as-deputy\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative leader picks Alleslev as deputy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has tapped Aurora-Oak\nRidges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev to be his second-in-command as the party\nprepares to return to the House of Commons as the Official Opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her appointment, along with the rest of the Conservative\nShadow Cabinet, was announced in Ottawa on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Alleslev, who crossed the floor from the Liberals to\nthe Conservatives in September 2018, said it was an \u201chonour\u201d and a \u201cprivilege\u201d\nto be selected to help steer the party in this minority government, stating\nthat the top priorities on the table include tackling the economy, addressing\nnational unity, and building international relations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI asked [Scheer] for his perspective,\u201d says Ms. Alleslev\nwhen asked what she saw as her mandate in the role. \u201cUltimately a Deputy Leader\nis to be the right-hand-man to the leader, so it is really around how I can\nbest support him in the role and how he wants to divide up the responsibilities.\nWe\u2019re the Official Opposition and we\u2019re in a minority government, and Canadians\nsent a clear message that there is work to do and the economy, national unity,\ninternational relations are on the top of mind. So, with my caucus colleagues and\nmy shadow cabinet colleagues and the leadership team, we need to be holding\nthis government to account and we need to be doing what Canadians have sent us\nhere to do \u2013 that is to shape the future direction of the nation in a way that\nCanada can prosper.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her new appointment, however, got off to a rocky start at\nthe end of last week when Ms. Alleslev issued an apology for comments made\nduring a CBC interview when, after being asked about her opinion on Mr. Scheer\nnot participating in a Pride parade, she likened such events to a St. Patrick\u2019s\nDay parade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments caused controversy and by Saturday afternoon\nshe issued an apology on social media, stating: \u201cI would like to sincerely\napologize for a comment I made on CBC\u2019s The House. Pride parades represent a\nwonderful celebration of the LGBTQ community and are an important symbol in the\nfight for LGBTQ rights.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Ms. Alleslev was ready to hit the ground\nrunning speaking to The Auroran just over 24 hours after her appointment,\ndetermined to make inroads for the party within Ontario and tackling the issue\nof western alienation noted in last month\u2019s election results, an issue over\nwhich she expressed a great deal of concern during the Federal Election\ncampaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Leader has asked me to travel the country and make\nsure we hear from Canadians across the country and understand what [is] really\nthe basis of discontent and what specific actions [can we] take to be able to\ninfluence the government to unite the country,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re stronger\ntogether. The greatest threats to Canada right now, in my mind, are external\nand we are always, for 150 years, better together. We\u2019re going to have to\nfigure out how to value each aspect of Canada and leverage every asset that we\nhave because I am concerned that things are going to get a little bit tougher\nbefore they get better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no question that we\u2019re not going to form a\nmajority government without Ontario and where we need to communicate better, or\nlisten better, or align better with the needs of Canadians is in the GTA \u2013 and\nbeing from the GTA and being from Ontario, I am pretty sure that was one of the\nclear messages the Leader wanted to send to that Region in appointing me that,\nyes, I have a seat at the table, and that\u2019s the strong voice I am looking to\nbring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In bringing that voice to the table, she is backed by a\ndriving philosophy of always getting \u201cthe best information and understanding\nthe lay of the land.\u201d She says she keeps in mind a piece of philosophy handed\ndown from her grandmother: \u201cmake haste slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou want to make change and you want to do things to\nmake a difference, but you want to do it calmly and from an informed\nperspective,\u201d says Ms. Alleslev. \u201cSo, the Conservative party is doing an\nexternal review right now and there\u2019s lots of people who are saying lots of\nthings, but ultimately they are making, in my opinion, a rush to judgement\nbefore they have all the [information]. Yes, we want to make some major\nchanges, however we want to make sure they\u2019re the right ones to achieve the things\nwe have agreed we need to achieve, and we can only do that by having the\ninformation upon which to base that decision, and we don\u2019t have the information\nyet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, what Ms. Alleslev says excites her most about this\nnew posting is the chance to make a positive difference for the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am usually the person who gets called in on all the jobs that I have had to try and take some tough situations and make them better,\u201d she says. \u201cObviously I wish we weren\u2019t in a tough situation and I wish we [the Conservative Party] had done better in the last election, but at the same time working with an incredible Conservative team and with our leader, the challenge of being able to make things better actually does excite me because I can see the possibilities and the opportunities to shape the vision for the country that we have been talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has tapped Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev to be his second-in-command as the party prepares to return to the House of Commons as the Official Opposition. Her appointment, along with the rest of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, was announced in Ottawa on Thursday morning. Ms. Alleslev, who crossed the floor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/2019-12-05-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6AU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 15:25:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}