Conservatives oust O’Toole and choose Manitoba MP Candice Bergen as interim leader

Conservatives will choose a new leader for the third time since 2017

Stephanie Taylor – The Canadian Press

Ian MacLennan – Barrie 360

Manitoba MP Candice Bergen is the new interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Conservative MPs chose Bergen for the role in a secret ballot Wednesday night after voting to remove Erin O’Toole from the top job earlier in the day.

Bergen, who was deputy leader of the Conservatives under O’Toole, has represented the riding of Portage-Lisgar since 2008 and was Opposition House leader from 2016 to 2020.

Candice Bergen rises during Question Period, Monday, December 6, 2021 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

She will serve as interim leader until the party membership chooses a new permanent leader.

This will be the third leadership race since former prime minister Stephen Harper stepped down after losing to the Liberals in the 2015 election.

Conservative MP Scott Reid, the chair of the national caucus, says Bergen was one of nine candidates for interim leader.

Erin O’Toole says he will stay on as a Conservative member of Parliament after being pushed out of the party’s top spot by a majority of his fellow MPs.

O’Toole addressed his loss in a six-minute video shared on social media Wednesday. It was posted only hours after the 49-year-old learned he had lost the support of the Tory caucus by a vote of 73 to 45.

The Conservative’s have 119 MPs, but the party’s national caucus chair, Scott Reid, says he didn’t vote.

In his farewell video, O’Toole said he had officially resigned as party leader and would remain in his seat as the MP for the southern Ontario riding of Durham. He also pledged his loyalty to the next Conservative leader, urging all in the party to do the same.

He became the first party leader to be removed under a process outlined in the Reform Act, legislation passed in 2015 that allows a caucus to give members the power to trigger a leadership review.

Conservative MPs decided they wanted that ability after O’Toole lost last year’s federal election.

Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MP Doug Shipley did not disclose how he voted to respect the confidentiality of caucus.

“I want to thank Erin O’Toole and his family for the service they’ve done,” Shipley told Barrie 360. “It’s not an easy job, especially in these times.”

He said the number one objective is to make sure the Conservatives are cohesive as a group and get ready to defeat Justin Trudeau and the Liberals in the next election.

Shipley said supporting the leader doesn’t mean backing every single decision.

“I’ve played a lot of sports my whole life and I know once you’ve got a head coach or a captain, that’s who makes the decision, and you need to follow him, but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with all of them.”

Barrie-Innisfil MP John Brassard issued a statement thanking O’Toole for his leadership over the past 18 months.

“It’s now time for us to move forward with a new leader who will step up to unite Canadians in all regions of this great country,” the statement read. “It’s time to stop, once and for all the unprecedented division created by Justin Trudeau. A division never before seen in this country.”

“It’s clear that Canadians want to move on from COVID and they want the government to focus on the many serious issues that are impacting our lives today, including affordability and inflation, housing attainability and affordability.”

In an attempt to modernize the party and differentiate himself from Scheer — whose social conservative views dogged him in the 2019 campaign — O’Toole promoted his support of access to abortion and LGBTQ rights.

He also embraced carbon pricing, despite the fact that some of his MPs, including many in Western Canada, fought for years against the Liberal government’s carbon−pricing mechanism, which the Conservatives called a “carbon tax.”

During the leadership contest, O’Toole pledged that it would be scrapped.

During last year’s election campaign, O’Toole tried to attract more voters by putting a more moderate stamp on the party.

He also raised the ire of firearms activists and social conservatives by reversing course on promises midway through the race that were inked into his platform when he was being attacked by the Liberals.

Critics like Sen. Denise Batters, who last November began petitioning the party to hold an early leadership review, said his flip−flops damaged his image with Canadians and made him untrustworthy.

Others also point out that O’Toole finished with two fewer seats than Scheer did in 2019, and failed to make gains the party needed in major cities and suburbs.

Since his election defeat, O’Toole has struggled to bring his caucus together on issues like vaccine mandates, with many of his MPs feeling the party needed to take a tougher stand against such policies.

He has also faced pressure to more forcefully oppose a controversial secularism law in Quebec and faced pushback from members of the party’s social conservative wing for fast−tracking a government bill to ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ Canadians.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 2, 2022.

Banner image: Twitter

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