National Post (National Edition)
Tory leadership contender Lewis seeks rural seat
To make bid in Ontario stronghold
OTTAWA • Leslyn Lewis, who emerged out of political obscurity this year to put up a surprisingly strong fight for the Conservative leadership, has decided she will seek the party’s nomination in Ontario’s Haldimand-Norfolk.
“Haldimand-Norfolk is a beautiful place with the most amazing, hard-working people,” Lewis said in a statement released Tuesday morning. “It would be an absolute honour to represent them and fight to make their lives better.”
Lewis, a Toronto lawyer, promised she would run for the party in the next election and her decision of where to do it has been highly anticipated by her supporters. In her statement, Lewis said she is now house-hunting in the region.
Haldimand-Norfolk is a rural region about an hour south of Toronto, and has effectively been a safe seat for the party since it was redrawn in 2004. Diane Finley has won the riding handily in every federal election since then, but Finley announced this summer she wouldn’t be seeking re-election.
Finley put out a statement supporting Lewis’ nomination, and the two have been touring the riding together.
“Leslyn has shown time and again that she is hardworking and passionate, just like the people here in Haldimand-Norfolk,” Finley said. “Not only has she proven with each conversation that she is knowledgeable about the issues that matter most to our community, but the way that she connects with people makes me confident that she would represent us incredibly well.”
Nominations have not yet officially opened for ridings, but Finley’s backing makes it very likely Lewis will win it. Finley, like her husband, Doug, who passed away from cancer in 2013, is influential in Conservative circles. Doug ran the party’s federal election campaigns in 2006 and 2008 before being appointed as a senator, while Diane served in Stephen Harper’s Cabinet and was on the 2020 leadership race’s organizing committee.
Heading into the leadership race, Lewis had almost no profile, at least outside of Toronto. But she built momentum throughout the contest and was one of four candidates to qualify for the final ballot. Although she was backed strongly by social conservatives, Lewis attracted a wide range of support and ran a very strong campaign that took many in the party by surprise.
One of her strongest regions in the race was southern Ontario, including in Haldimand-Norfolk which she won by a wide margin on the first ballot. Lewis also received heavy support in Western Canada, including coming in first in Saskatchewan and second in Alberta.
Lewis is pro-life and laid out a set of social-conservative policies during her leadership campaign, including banning sex-selective abortion and boosting funding for services that counselled alternatives to abortion.
However, she said she didn’t want to be known solely as a “so-con” in the race, and spoke out on many other issues such as environmental policy and the Black Lives Matter movement.
On the second ballot, Lewis actually won the popular vote after Derek Sloan was eliminated. But the race used a system that weighted every riding equally, and because Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole had a more even geographical spread in their support, Lewis finished third in electoral points and was eliminated. Her voters then largely flowed to O’Toole, a big reason why O’Toole was crowned the winner.
Lewis stood out for many reasons during the race, including the fact she was the only woman and only visible minority on the final ballot. She immigrated to Canada from Jamaica when she was five years old, and has two children.
As a lawyer, Lewis specialized in commercial law and helping companies sell green technology abroad. She has four university degrees, including a master of environmental studies from York University and a PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School.
In her statement announcing she would seek the nomination, Lewis singled out environmental policy, saying she “has consistently promoted a plan that includes incentives for green tech and tax credits for green home and business renovations over a carbon tax.”
Lewis has never held elected office, but she’s run in a federal campaign once before — albeit in difficult circumstances. She lost in the 2015 election after stepping in mid-campaign for Conservative candidate Jerry Bance, who was infamously caught urinating in a mug on an investigative TV show and had to drop out. “That was an uphill battle,” she told the Post in an interview in the spring.
THE WAY THAT SHE CONNECTS WITH PEOPLE MAKES ME CONFIDENT.