Caroline Mulroney, lawyer and daughter of former PM, joins PC leadership race
TORONTO — Caroline Mulroney, the Toronto lawyer and daughter of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, is running to become the leader of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party.
Mulroney confirmed the news, which has been rumoured for over a week, in a series of interviews Sunday afternoon at a hockey arena in north Toronto. She took questions from reporters between watching her two boys play on their Triple A teams.
The 43- year- old mother of four said despite the recent turmoil within the party after the sudden resignation of former leader Patrick Brown, the Tories can come together and win the June 7 provincial election.
“After 15 years of Liberal government we need a fresh change,” she said. “People are tired. They want a new government. They want something new. So, I decided to put my name forward.”
Mulroney believes she’s the candidate to unite the disparate wings of the PC family, despite never having held elected office.
“I am committed to making sure that we deliver this change,” she said. “People deserve a government that cares about them. As I’ve been knocking on doors, I know that I can be that leader and provide that leadership to the party.”
After taking a quick break between interviews to snack on french fries her husband Andrew Lapham brings by, Mulroney gets down to business, addressing the criticisms which have already been levelled at her.
“That means they’re nervous,” she said of her competitors in the race. “I can’t control what other campaigns do. All I can do is make sure I can run a campaign that’s true to the kind of person that I am.”
Mulroney has already been criticized for spending part of her life outside of Canada — she attended Harvard and New York University — but she says the attacks don’t hold up.
“That’s just a misstatement of fact,” she said. “I’ve lived the majority of my life in Canada and Ontario.”
Just hours after confirming she was in the race, Mulroney received a key endorsement from another rumoured candidate. Former Postmedia executive Rod Phillips said he will not seek the leadership and will throw is support behind Mulroney.
“Caroline and I, like many of our Party’s candidates across Ontario, represent a new generation of inclusive and accountable leadership for the Progressive Conservative Party,” Phillips, who’s also the PC candidate for Ajax, said in a statement. “Caroline will unite our party and lead us to victory in June, and I look forward to working closely with her to achieve that.”
Mulroney also weighed- in on some of the most difficult issues facing the Tories as they try to regroup following Brown’s resignation. She intends to consult party members about the PC platform — the so- called People’s Guarantee — but says it’s too early to say if she’d want to make changes to the document.
“I’ll make sure we’re open to conversations, but it’s Day 1 of my campaign,” she said.
Mulroney said she will stick to the PC pledge to cancel the Ontario government’s cap- and- trade climate change plan, but hinted that she will keep the Tory platform’s carbon tax, which funds most of the spending in the plan.
“This is something the federal government is imposing on all of the provinces,” she said. “We have a choice to let them keep the revenue and administer it or we can make sure that we ... put the money back in people’s pockets. I think we would be better suited to doing that than the Liberals are.”
Mulroney also said she will not reopen the divisive debate about the Liberal government’s sex education curriculum update.
Toronto politician Doug Ford, brother of the city’s late former mayor Rob Ford, is also in the running.
Ford officially launched his bid to lead Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party with a rally in Toronto Saturday night, where he outlined his platform in the race’s first campaign rally.
Ford promised to keep taxes low, attract more business to the province, and reject a federally imposed carbon tax if elected as the next premier of Ontario.
Candidates have until Feb. 16 to register, and the new leader will be announced March 10.