Maguire, Sopuck cast votes for O’Toole in Tory leadership race

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This article was published 23/05/2017 (2521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Having never wavered in their support for Erin O’Toole, Westman MPs Larry Maguire and Robert Sopuck have already cast their votes in the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leadership race.

The party’s leadership convention will be held in Toronto on Saturday; an event both local MPs plan on attending in hopes of celebrating a victory alongside their top choice.

Sopuck (Dauphin-Swan River-Neepawa) is proud of his status as one of the “original 10” O’Toole supporters among Members of Parliament, citing the candidate’s “national appeal” as a key selling point.

“I want somebody who can beat Justin Trudeau and form a majority Conservative government; that’s first and foremost in my mind,” Sopuck said, adding that while other candidates also carry his support, it’s O’Toole who he believes will best connect with the broadest range of voters.

Just look at O’Toole’s background, Sopuck said, listing his Greater Toronto Area constituency, rural connections, military background, family man status, profession as a lawyer, bilingual abilities and private sector experience as evidence of his far-reaching appeal.

“There’s simply nobody who ticks more boxes than Erin O’Toole,” he said. “For me it was a fairly easy choice, and I haven’t wavered one iota.”

O’Toole’s military decoration for bravery and rank as captain in the air force also point to his well-established leadership skills, Sopuck added.

Maguire (Brandon-Souris) said that O’Toole is the “middle-class guy who understands what middle-class families are all about.”

Further to that, Maguire cited O’Toole’s role in helping create a few significant trade deals under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper as evidence of his literacy when it comes to international trade — an important skill that will translate well for all of Canada, but Westman in particular, he said.

Some of Westman’s key industries depend quite heavily on international trade, he said, listing grain, livestock and oil as benefitting greatly from expanding global markets.

“I think he’s a very knowledgeable and experienced young man,” Maguire said of O’Toole — a politician who at 44 years of age is one year younger than Trudeau.

“I think that the best person to lead us into defeating the Liberals into the next election is Mr. O’Toole, because of his strength of leadership and experience in spite of his young years,” Maguire added.

Regardless of whichever candidate becomes leader of the CPC on Saturday, Maguire said that the party has only become stronger since losing to the Liberals during the last election.

They’ve ballooned to almost 260,000 party members and have raised about $9 million during the first quarter of 2017.

Maguire said that CPC leadership candidates’ shared message of “sound fiscal management” have resonated well with the public at large, particularly in light of the Liberals’ broken election promise of $10 billion annual deficits in favour of about triple that amount.

While Maguire and Sopuck having been singing O’Toole’s praises for months, Stephen Montague has been offering a shrug in the direction of not only O’Toole, but all 13 leadership candidates.

A member of both the provincial Brandon East and federal Brandon-Souris Liberal constituency associations, Montague co-chaired both of Manitoba’s provincial and federal Liberal annual general meetings in Brandon earlier this month.

At these meetings, Montague said that he saw a forward thinking optimism among the province’s Liberals that has been lacking in what he has seen during the Tory leadership race.

None of the 13 candidates currently vying for Conservative leadership offer the same excitement Trudeau shared with voters during the 2015 election, which resulted in his being named Prime Minister, Montague said.

Some people were excited about the prospect of a second generation of Trudeaumania, Montague said.

“For others it was to see a politician actually want to engage with Canadians, talk about how we can be better, how positive politics are important,” he added.

The CPC leadership candidates are not resonating on these levels, he said.

While Montague said that, as a Liberal, he disagrees with Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose’s politics, he admits that she was at least a “strong leader.”

“She took principled stances on issues and was always willing to raise them and do it in a respectful way that fit within our parliamentary style and the way you should act in a parliamentary democracy,” he said. “I think she would have been a great permanent leader for the party, honestly.”

This is a point that Montague will find agreement among Westman’s Conservative MPs, with Maguire citing Ambrose as “a strong interim leader.”

She is not on the ballot, however, and as of this weekend’s leadership convention, she will no longer in the world of politics, either.

In light of the interim leader’s impending departure, Maguire said that “there’s a very strong opportunity there for the new leader to continue where Ms. Ambrose left off.”

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

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