The top four Conservative leadership candidates are (left to right) Leslyn Lewis, Peter MacKay, Erin O’Toole and Derek Sloan.
The article on the CBC website leads off with:
The four candidates vying for the Conservative leadership will be on stage tonight for the only English-language debate of this campaign.
For the two frontrunners — former cabinet ministers Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole — it’s a chance to shore up support and woo party members away from their rivals. For the relative newcomers in the race — Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis and rookie MP Derek Sloan — it’s an occasion to introduce themselves to people who will pick Andrew Scheer’s replacement.
The four contenders agree on many things — reducing the size of government, shrinking the tax burden and cracking down on crime.
There’s a lot of back and forth on this CBC article and it gets confusing. A good place to learn more about these candidates is the Wikipedia article ‘2020 Conservative Party of Canada leadership election’. One take away I did get from the article is this paragraph:
The Lewis campaign leaked an audio of MacKay asking social conservative voters, who are generally against LGBT rights and abortion, to “park those issues, for a time” because those positions will be “used against us” by the Liberals and hamper the party’s efforts to appeal to more socially moderate voters in suburban areas around the country’s big cities.
Anyone familiar with the UCP government in Alberta will have an insight to conservative leaders with hidden agendas. A fair question might be asked if all conservative leaders in federal and provincial politics keep agendums only to be discussed after winning elections.
