THUNDER BAY – The grassroots has spoken, says the organizer of Peter MacKay’s local Conservative Party of Canada leadership bid effort.
Now it’s time to get down to business, said Derek Parks, hours after Erin O’Toole was anointed the party’s new leader at a virtual convention in Ottawa.
While his preferred candidate didn’t ultimately come out on top, Parks said he’s more than willing to work with O’Toole to ensure the Conservatives have the best chance to dethrone Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the looming federal election.
“In fairness, it was a decisive win. It showed that Erin O’Toole and his team have what it takes to hopefully win the next general election,” Parks said on Monday morning.
It took three ballots – and more than six hours of counting after issues with an envelope-opening machine that meant the final results weren’t released until early Monday – for O’Toole to be crowned the party’s new leader.
The 47-year-old Durham, Ont. MP soundly defeated MacKay on the final ballot, winning 19,271 to 14,258 in the ranked-ballot system. Social conservatives Derek Sloan and Leslyn Lewis were dropped off the ballot in the first and second round of voting, respectively.
Locally, O’Toole led wire-to-wire in both Thunder Bay-Superior North and in Kenora, though Sloan captured the most votes in the first round of ballots in Thunder Bay-Atikokan and Lewis won the second round.
Parks said he wasn’t surprised at the result.
“Neck and neck, nationally you saw how close it was and it’s nice to see it was mirrored similarly to Northwestern Ontario,” Parks said.
The Conservative’s new leader takes over from Andrew Scheer, who was unable to topple Trudeau in last fall’s election, but did drop him from a majority to a minority.
Parks said there’s plenty of reason to believe O’Toole is the leader to take them back to power in the House of Commons.
“He had a strong showing in Quebec, and if you look at the last general election, we didn’t gain any seats there. And as we all know in Canadian politics, you need to have Quebec at the table in your party to form government,” Parks said, noting O’Toole has reached out to the LGBTQ community and other minority groups, something Scheer was seen by many to be less proficient at.
Parks is confident O’Toole’s big-tent philosophy could lead to success at the local level too. The Conservatives, who haven’t been elected to office in decades in Thunder Bay, but finished in second place in both local ridings last fall with former councillors Linda Rydholm and Frank Pullia representing the party on the ballot.
Conservative Kenora MP Eric Melillo, an O’Toole backer, said he’s thrilled to get down to business. It’s an exciting time for the party, he added.
“I’m looking forward to working with him to hold this government to account and form the next government, a strong, principled Conservative government that I know is going to stand up for Northern Ontario,” Melillo said.
O’Toole showed interest in the region from the start of the campaign, and continued it consistently through the leadership race, he added.
Whenever the election is called, Melillo said he’s confident the Conservatives are ready to take on Trudeau and the Liberals.
“We have a government that is spending money like you couldn’t believe, record-setting deficits even before the pandemic,” Melillo said.
“We were sliding into recession even before and there seems to be no path to an economic recovery.”
The Conservatives, under O’Toole, are the only party who can fix the problem, he said.
