Andrew Scheer Biography

Andrew Scheer was born Andrew James Scheer, on May 20, 1979, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, to Mary Therese and James Scheer, into a middle-class family.

His mother worked as a nurse and his father was a librarian and a proof-reader. He has two sisters.

Andrew has described his family as middle-class even though his family records showed that they earned more than an average Canadian family. Andrew further said that his parents were about to lose their house at one time in the early 1980s.

He spent most of his summer holidays in Mississauga, where his grandparents lived.

He graduated from Immaculata High School and went on enrolling into the University of Ottawa, where he studied political science, criminology and history.

By then, he was gaining a little interest in politics and participating in a few political campaigns, in favour of the Conservative Party of Canada. As a result of that, he somehow drifted from the academics and was only able to complete his degree in 2008, after he began his BA programme at the University in 1998.

He also worked in the correspondence department during his college years, in the office of the Leader of the Opposition. Along with that, he also worked for sometime in the Youth Advisory Committee, under Karin Howard. Slowly, he began to leave a mark as an enthusiastic young budding politician.

While he was still studying at the University of Ottawa, he met his future wife and moved to her hometown of Regina, where he resumed his BA programme at the University of Regina.

He did several odd jobs along with his studies in Regina. He also worked briefly in the office of the Alliance MP Larry Spencer.

Andrew Scheer began his official political career in 2004, when he contested for a position in the Canadian Parliament, representing Regina-Qu’Appelle area, which he won against a New Democratic Party candidate, who had been serving for a long time by then. Andrew’s masterstroke was said to be his accusations on his opponent Lorne Nystrom, where he accused them of being soft on child pornography.

Andrew had won with a low margin of under 1000 votes, but in the 2006 federal election, he registered a victory against the same opponent with more than 2000 votes. Additionally, he was also named as the assistant deputy chairman of Committees of the Whole. He was also named as one of the three speakers in the House of Commons, which led him to become the youngest MP in the history of Canadian politics to achieve the feat.

He sponsored a bill in the Parliament which asked for a minimum prison time for the auto theft crimes. In 2008, he was promoted to the position of the deputy speaker of the House of Commons and the chairman of the Committee of Wholeness. Thus, very quickly he made his mark on the Canadian national politics.

Further in June 2011, he was appointed as the speaker of the House of Commons, and became the youngest person ever to hold the highly respectable position. It happened after the Conservative Party of Canada won the federal elections of 2011. However, his appointment was debated by many, but given his experience as a deputy speaker, he seemed to be the perfect person to hold the position of the speaker.

Naturally, many opposition MPs were highly critical of his appointment and questioned his unbiased intentions. In 2015, after the Conservative Party lost the elections, he retained his position as the MP from Regina. He was appointed as the opposition House Leader in the Parliament. However, in 2016, he resigned from his position as the opposition House Leader in order to contest for the position for the leader of the opposition.

In September 2016, he officially filed the paperwork regarding his candidacy and in May 2017, he was announced as the leader of the opposition. His campaign was considered to be very powerful, where he had used the slogan ‘Real Conservative. Real Leader’. He further strayed away from raising only the ‘conservative’ issues and based his candidacy on impressing a much broader public of all ideologies.

He brought some changes with him, and went hard on the Conservative Party politicians that gave out racist statements every now and then. He claimed that any sort of racist sentiment will not be tolerated within the Conservative Party.

In March 2018, he travelled to Britain to talk out many trade deals, with assumptions that he would become the Prime Minister of Canada after the 2019 elections. He was also in support of Brexit. His move to talk trade with Britain was criticized by the Canadian media as Justin Trudeau, the incumbent PM, had also visited Britain the previous year for the same reason.

In the 2019 elections, the Conservative Party performed much better than it did in the 2015 elections, and with just 240,000 votes behind, the party lost the elections. In December 2019, Andrew Scheer announced that he would resign from his position of the leader of the Conservative Party, when a new leader was elected.

As the leader of the opposition, he was hard on the China-Canada free trade agreement and said that he would abolish the deal if he becomes the Prime Minister. Unlike most conservative leaders, he has a soft stand on the issue of immigrations. He said that the most marginalized minorities, such as Christians in Middle East, should find it easy to move to Canada.

He was also a big advocate of free speech and claimed that the universities where free speech could not foster, they would not receive any government funding.

He also made the ‘legalization of marijuana’ campaign an issue during his elections campaign. He was against the legalization. He further accused that the liberal party even wanted to legalize heroine in the country.

He continue to be a representative of the riding of Regina in the Parliament.

Andrew Scheer has been married to his college girlfriend Jill Ryan since 2003. The couple has five children together.

He is a strong believer in Christianity and attends Sunday mass regularly and he has enrolled his children into a private faith-based school.

His father was born in America and hence, Andrew owns an American-Canadian dual citizenship. In May 2020, he remarked that he was not planning to denounce his American citizenship as he was not in the race for Prime Minister’s position anymore.