{"id":27023,"date":"2020-07-16T17:51:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T21:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=27023"},"modified":"2020-07-16T17:52:04","modified_gmt":"2020-07-16T21:52:04","slug":"aurora-mp-resigns-from-deputy-leader-post-to-support-leadership-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-mp-resigns-from-deputy-leader-post-to-support-leadership-candidate\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora MP resigns from Deputy Leader post to support leadership candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev has\nstepped down from her position as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of\nCanada to support leadership hopeful Peter MacKay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Alleslev, who will continue as the Conservative\nMember of Parliament for Aurora\u2019s southern riding, formally resigned from her position\nwithin the shadow cabinet on Sunday and announced her support for the former\nNova Scotia MP the following day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her party is facing an \u201cimportant decision\u201d, she says, and\nshe doesn\u2019t want to \u201cstand to the side\u201d while Mr. MacKay, along with incumbent\nMPs Erin O\u2019Toole and Derek Sloan, along with lawyer Leslyn Lewis vie to replace\noutgoing Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think a political party is made up of the people who\nare in it at the time and what the country needs at the time,\u201d says Ms.\nAlleslev. \u201cIn choosing the leader for the Conservative Party, I think we need\nto focus on what the party and the country needs in a leader. We need someone\nwith extensive experience in the areas that really matter [like] defence,\nsecurity and international relationships. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur economy is definitely in disarray, our international\nrelationships are strained, which effects how we\u2019re viewed on the world stage,\nbut it also effects our trading relationship and things at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best candidate to mend those issues, she says, is the\nformer cabinet minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo have a candidate who was Minister of Foreign Affairs,\nwho was Minister of Justice and Attorney General, who was Minister of Defence,\nit means [he has] the wisdom and experience to be able to understand what the\ncountry needs now and how to get it done \u2013 and has shown that he is able to\ndeliver,\u201d says Ms. Alleslev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unity within the party as well as the country as a whole\nis very important, she adds, and says she believes Mr. MacKay has the ability\nto \u201cengage and have his message resonate with Canadians and every part of the\ncountry.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think that he has the ability to understand the\nstrengths and challenges of all of those communities and being able to\nprioritize the greatest good for the greatest number of Canadians from each of\nthose areas,\u201d says Ms. Alleslev. \u201cHe values the big tent of Conservatives and\nall the perspectives in the Conservative Party and will ensure that we all have\nthe opportunity to have our voices heard and, therefore, make the whole greater\nthan the sum of its parts. At this point in our history, we\u2019re only 37 million\npeople in Canada and the world has become a much more hostile and difficult\nplace. We\u2019re going to need unity of purpose and focus to be able to navigate\nthe challenges in front of us and come out stronger as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Alleslev, who began her political career as a Liberal\nMember of Parliament before crossing the floor in 2018, was appointed Deputy\nLeader by Mr. Scheer last November. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been an eventful eight months since taking the\npost of second-in-command and Ms. Alleslev says, from a national perspective,\nit has been a \u201cchallenging time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFrom the oil and gas industry being decimated, to auto\nmanufacturing plants being closed, to aerospace manufacturing declining, to\nloss of capital investment, to increases in personal household debt, all of\nthose things were putting us in a very challenging perspective, then we had the\nblockades which essentially shut down our economy and had a drastic impact on\nCanada, and then we found ourselves facing the challenge of a virus,\u201d she said.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, my term as the deputy leader has basically witnessed a rapid acceleration in economic challenges and decline at a time when we needed to be moving in another direction. Now we find ourselves in an uncertain period because we don\u2019t really know what it is going to take for us to start regaining our economy and when and how. We don\u2019t know what the criteria are to open borders, we don\u2019t know what the plan is to get to a stage where we can live with COVID or are we going to be in this period until there is a vaccine \u2013 when will the government not be providing these benefits and under what criteria? Essentially Canadians find themselves almost in a period of limbo, not really knowing what\u2019s going to happen next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora-Oak Ridges-Richmond Hill MP Leona Alleslev has stepped down from her position as Deputy Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada to support leadership hopeful Peter MacKay. Ms. Alleslev, who will continue as the Conservative Member of Parliament for Aurora\u2019s southern riding, formally resigned from her position within the shadow cabinet on Sunday and announced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-71R","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 00:23:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}