There are some surface reasons to want Erin O'Toole to be the next Leader of the Conservative Party, the Official Opposition and then PM.
First, he has a seat in Parliament. This is no small thing when we live in this desperate environment where we are facing a PM who is serially corrupt and has no compunction about bending and breaking the Rule of Law and shutting down whole branches of our government, that is, our only democratic tool for oversight of the government and even less compunction about making the new leader wait to take a seat (as he made Jagmeet Singh wait 15 months in far less dire circumstances). While we face a literally unprecedented assault by an unprecedented prime ministerial dictator and his advisors and ministers on our Constitution in the midst of the worst challenge we have faced as a Nation in 25 years (yes, that was in 1995 when we came 50,000 votes away from losing Quebec PRE-Clarity), we simply cannot afford the bump of a byelection. Is this still a relatively ephemeral reason for choosing O'Toole? Yes, if you believe that we will be getting a vaccine for the virus that has unleashed these oppressive forces upon us by September 21, when Parliament is finally due to re-open after almost 6 continuous months of darkness. Even if the virus recedes, we will still be facing a rogue PM who will stop at nothing, including a snap election if need be, to get his way. (BTW, Sloan is an MP but cannot possibly win so he is out)
The next reason is also a relatively negative one but must be said: as a human being, like many Red Tories, Peter Mackay is a nice enough father and husband but, as a politician, he is simply not to be trusted. He is to be depended on to promise the conservative moon while running and then abandon those heights the minute there is any sign of trouble and even while winning. His career is devoid of achievement or principle followed except that set out by the Focus Group and the pollster. He is governed, as so many of his ilk are, by fear which he is afflicted by in determining any course of action and will inflict on others who get in his way. In that sense, most disturbingly, he resembles the PM in a rather casual attitude about basic values of democracy and the Rule of Law. Witness for instance, his seeming to endorse the PM's plans for regulating free speech on the internet or his infamous "stinking albatross" comment on some fellow Tories.
For a man like Mackay, who has to be the youngest "Man of the Past" in history, everything is "relative"even out most cherished ideas if they threaten one's political rear. Such a sanguine outlook might have remotely had some value in a time of perfect peace and tranquility or at least could have been tolerable. But he is one of the people who has helped the Party to lose its way intellectually under Harper and his outlook is not only ill-timed but downright dangerous in a political world where the Conservative Party appears to be the only alternative to the overwhelmingly liberal and socialist third parties and the Government. That critical choice will be weakened and may be negated under a Mackay leadership.
Now, the positives. As a person who is deeply and personally concerned with our Defence, I like that O'Toole will be the first Leader since Pearson to have any military background. This is critical in light of the neglect and lack of vision shown by both main parties in defence affairs since the 90's (including the failure owned in part by Mackay to finish the purchase of new fighters). Is this a narrow reason for liking him? No. Defence is one of the few areas of complete Federal state responsibility and is still one of the biggest parts of the Budget. We need a man in leadership and hopefully in the PMO who finally understands the need for reinforcement and reform of this department and has the brains and guts to carry it out.
Speaking of brains, I am impressed by Erin O'Toole's intellectuality. I once watched him conduct a policy seminar themed on China ( one of the greatest threats to our defence and security today and in the foreseeable future) and saw his mind working in front of me as he carefully dissected the octopus-like challenge of China. No one running for the leadership and no one in leadership of a federal party today shows anything like the depth of mind, seriousness, experience and knowledge, and ability to articulate it to people, that he has. In a word, we have a chance with O'Toole and O'Toole alone to bring an adult back to the OLO and the PMO. But that leads me to the most important reason for supporting him.
He is a man of the people. Yes, his father was an MPP. But he served 12 years in the Forces and rose to be a top lawyer with hard work and application. It is no insult to point out thus that, with relatively minor resources and not great natural talent, he has acquired and built up a remarkable career. In this way, he relates to millions of Canadians who are not necessarily Tories but believe in hard work, honesty and freedom as the passport to a better life. He thus can relate in a way that Mackay cannot, who took relative privilege and deeded opportunity and built a bridge to nowhere. He has both a tactical and strategic political vision and instinct that few, except maybe the scoundrels advising Trudeau, possess.
How did he demonstrate this to me most vividly? During one of his online seminars with Conservative Party members, he made the almost offhand but incredibly astute comment that working class voters in places like Hamilton and Windsor (areas we have written off for almost 50 years now) are no longer represented by the Liberals or the NDP, that is, their own MP's. We should therefore go after them by pointing out that we are the only Party that fights for their interests as consumers, taxpayers and above all workers who often earn their bread in politically incorrect industries like energy, auto or steel. A man with such an original, elegant and broad breadth of mind (and who reflects that he can learn from the recent success of conservatives in jurisdictions like Ontario, the UK and Australia thereby) needs to be in power, first as the Leader of the Opposition, then as, God willing, our PM.
How do we know we can trust him? We do not. We only know that we cannot trust Mackay, except perhaps to complete the Red Tory takeover of our Party, and we cannot accept another term of Trudeau and his gang in office. Erin O'Toole is most likely to preserve the Party's critical choice for Canadians and oust arguably the worst government in our history as soon as possible. Thus, he wins our provisional trust because of what he has said, done, and prioritized so far (such as his unswerving loyalty to Scheer after losing the last leadership and his promise to respect the views of all conservatives, including the stinking albatrosses) and because we have no sound other choice save neophytes or the Old Prince of Red Torydom.
A perfect example of how and why I feel that I can lend my trust to him: in one of his ubiquitous videos (another reason I like him BTW), he appeared on a particularly hot day in Ottawa with the Parliament buildings as a backdrop. As he went through his peroration on Parliamentary democracy being under threat and why he was best to defend it, he was obviously sweating like a pig. Instead of soldiering on and dysfunctionally pretending everything was fine or editing it as no doubt a Trudeau or a Mackay would have done, he wiped his face and said words to the effect of,"Well, this was a hot one for me to do this today, wasn't it!" Any man who is that secure about himself may just deserve our loan of confidence.
Erin O'Toole has proven he is a hardworking, earnest, smart and decent man with superb political skills which his predecessor and opponents signally lack and which this country imperatively needs to defeat Trudeau and the Liberals and restore sanity, the right and respect to our governance again. He has earned and deserves my and all other voting members' vote on August 21. He must be thrust into the heart of our national affairs as soon as possible.
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