Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheer is set to resign.
Global News has learned Scheer will announce imminently that he will be stepping down from the party leadership after losing the last election.
READ MORE: Scheer tries to rally Tories to take on Trudeau amid leadership attacks
His resignation comes as a direct result of new revelations that he was using Conservative Party money to pay for his children’s private schooling.
Senior Conservatives say the expenditures were made without the knowledge or approval of the Conservative fund board, including the chair of the board.
There are also calls for the party president to resign over the schooling expenses.
“I just informed my colleagues in the Conservative caucus that I will be resigning as the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, and I will be asking the Conservative Party national council to immediately begin the process of organizing a leadership contest,” Scheer said in remarks in the House of Commons shortly after the news broke.
“In order to chart the course ahead in the direction this party is heading, the party needs someone who can give 100 per cent.”
Scheer urged members to stay focused and vowed whoever wins the leadership contest will have his full support.
“My only ask to my fellow Conservatives is this: let’s stay united.”
Scheer has been facing an uprising within the party for weeks over concerns that his social conservative views cost the party a stronger showing in the election, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won with a minority government.
Scheer has refused to march in Pride parades and is opposed to abortion, both issues that Conservative Party insiders have flagged as major problems for voters in the ridings of the Greater Toronto Area and Quebec, both key to determining who will form government.
More to come.
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