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The Inconsolable Torment of Being Andrew Scheer

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This is a large portrait of Andrew Scheer, leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, leader of the Official Opposition, and a liminal flesh pile who lives in the space between spaces. To look into his dull gaze is to know the soul of a caged animal who has given up on a world outside its confines.

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Andrew Scheer was never meant to be in the spotlight so long. His days were numbered after he lost to Justin Trudeau, the boy king who would show up in blackface to any gathering of fifty or more between the years 1975 and 2010. After his defeat in October Scheer continued to diligently pillage party coffers to secretly send his children to private school. In December, after the fall semester, he announced he would resign when a new leader was chosen. He intended to fade into the background while starry eyed leadership candidates took the limelight, arguing about their unique approach to ruinous environmental policy and corporate welfare based off obscure bible passages. When the circus was over, Scheer would return to America where he could run happy and free comfortably enjoying his past times: homophobia, opposing abortion, and fraudulently selling insurance.

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But that was the before times. Nowadays googly eyed protesters driven mad by rancid bread demand their right to make everyone sick. Ungulates collect government stipends. Children toil in lobster slaughterhouses. Jim Carrey’s The Mask is no longer just a masterwork in comedic hijinks but also a prescient commentary on mid-pandemic cultural politics. And most importantly the leadership race for the Conservative Party has been postponed. This means unexpected more months of enduring Scheer’s beige parade. Canada’s most cruel and inept political party gnaws their upper lips in envy as the second most cruel and inept party in the country governs the nation unchallenged, enjoying sky high approval ratings.

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As the leader of the Official Opposition, Scheer can only manage is to shyly mumble through a vague menu of conservative platitudes (I’m paraphrasing here) “if we give everyone $2000 a month for food and housing, then how do we force them into dangerous and underpaying jobs? It’s as if poor Canadians aren’t even serfs anymore.” All the while knowing that at $260 000 a year, Andrew Scheer is 130 times more of a useless leech than that horse that got CERB.

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To exist as Andrew Scheer is to be loathed as Andrew Scheer. Either the abject rage that comes when someone who’s never had a job lectures you on the value of hard work, or the more existential sadness of being a conservative voter and knowing that this is your avatar: A pink cheeked boy caught in a decades long charade that is too big to fail.

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After December, we all believed Andrew Scheer would melt away like a loose pile of ground beef in early summer’s prairie storm, but instead he lingers like a maggoty rump in still August. And the greatest victim is Andrew Scheer.

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This is your chance to own the despondent visage of a child at the grown-ups table. Confused. Scared. Alone. Always alone. 4ft x 5ft, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas.