The Official Opposition needs to work towards becoming Canada’s “party of answers” as its members begin searching for a new leader, Perth-Wellington MP John Nater says.
“We need to be a party of solutions,” Nater said Friday, a couple of days after a majority of his Tory colleagues voted to oust Erin O’Toole from the party’s top job. “I think that’s where we really need to go as a party, to move beyond and be the party of answers, be the party of solutions, rather than simply being the party of opposition.”
The party’s 119 members of Parliament met Wednesday via video conference to cast secret ballots after about one-third of them signed a notice that triggered a leadership review. Ontario MP and national caucus chair Scott Reid said in a statement that 73 Conservative MPs voted to replace O’Toole, while 45 endorsed him.
“It’s always disappointing when there’s a change in leadership, especially in the way this one happened, through a caucus vote,” Nater said.
Nater declined to reveal how he voted, but he was among the MPs O’Toole appointed to his shadow cabinet last year.
“I’ll say I’ve always been a strong supporter of Erin O’Toole,” he said.
O’Toole served as a cabinet minister for veterans affairs in former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government before he fell to the Liberals in 2015. After two unsuccessful attempts, O’Toole became the party’s leader in August 2020 by positioning himself as the “true blue” candidate over former cabinet minister Peter MacKay.
Once in power, though, O’Toole told party members changes were needed if Conservatives hoped to make gains in vote-rich regions like the Greater Toronto Area.
In an attempt to modernize the party and differentiate himself from predecessor Andrew Scheer — whose socially conservative views dogged him in the 2019 campaign — O’Toole tried to attract more voters by pulling the party towards the centre. He promoted his support of access to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, embraced carbon pricing, and reversed course on a promise during last year’s election to repeal a ban on some military-style firearms.
Some political pundits have suggested O’Toole’s moderate stance on those issues played a major role in Wednesday’s vote, but Nater pointed instead to September’s election results.
“I think that’s where a lot of unhappiness stems from,” he said. “We made some gains in the Atlantic provinces. We picked up some seats we haven’t held for a generation, in some cases, but we didn’t win overall and I think there was a great deal of disappointment.”
Still, it’s been clear recently that O’Toole 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 also faced pushback from members of the party’s social conservative wing for fast-tracking a government bill to ban conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ Canadians.
Nater said resolving those internal divides is “going to be a challenge,” but he hopes some of O’Toole’s ideas aren’t lost.
“I think where we need to go (moving) forward is really focusing on the issues that matter to Canadians across the country, a broad-based message that applies to different regions of the country, that of a modern Conservative party ready to address the issues of 2022,” Nater said. “W hoever our new leader is when that times comes, their first priority is going to be focusing on the issues that unite us as a party and can unite the country.”
This is the third time the Conservatives have been in need of a leader since Harper stepped down seven years ago. Given the minority status of the current government, meaning an election could happen at any time, Nater said he expects the process to play out “sooner rather than later.”
“I’d like to see that happen relatively quickly,” he said. “I would hope that by the fall at the very latest, that process does conclude and we have a permanent leader in place.”
-With files from the Canadian Press