The Tories’ cupboard is bare

VANCOUVER— With Stephen Harper’s farewell behind them, the Conservatives gathered in Vancouver for a post-defeat convention begin to take stock of his would-be successors and find — at least for now — sparse offerings on the leadership shelf.

Harper never groomed an heir. It was not his style. Given that he was seeking a fourth mandate, it was also not in his interest. Had the party won re-election last fall, the victory would inevitably have set off a countdown to his retirement. Until the October federal vote, his focus was on securing a final victory.

Party insiders implicitly acknowledged the need to fully air the succession issue when they opted for a longer-thanaverage campaign. But one of the collateral consequences of pushing off the vote to next spring is that this convention does not feature the full slate of leadership aspirants.

At least that is what the delegates are hoping. At this juncture, none of the three declared candidates is generating what could be described as a convention buzz. MPs Maxime Bernier, Michael Chong and Kellie Leitch will receive plenty of encouragement this weekend but precious few solid endorsements.

With a year to go to the actual leadership vote, most Conservatives are keeping their options open. It would come as an unpleasant shock to many of them if, in the end, their choices boiled down to the three currently declared candidates.

For this is a party that believes it does have a shot at coming back to power in four years. Even if it rarely pans out, that’s an assumption common to most recently defeated governing parties.

Fresh out of a decade in government, the Conservatives are in the market for a prime minister-inwaiting. The former junior ministers who make up the first trio out of the gate will need the next year to try to convince party members that one of them could readily step into Harper’s shoes.

That is not to say that there is a consensus dream candidate in sight even among the so-called bigger names floating around.

Former attorney-general Peter MacKay shows well in post-election polls but less well on the momentum scale within the party.

For many Conservatives, replacing Harper with MacKay — who was the last leader of the former Progressive Conservative party — would fail the test of generational change. The same is even truer of former Treasury Board president Tony Clement. With two leadership defeats under his belt (in Ontario and at the federal level) he has yet, in spite of otherwise effective performance in frontline politics, managed to offset a charisma deficit.

Some have in the past predicted that if Jason Kenney wanted the leadership it would be his for the asking. And indeed Harper’s former go-to minister is more popular within party ranks than his low standing in the polls would suggest. But if the mood at this convention is any indication, a coronation is not in the works for anyone.

If Kenney, who says he will make his intentions clear in late summer, does run, many will want to kick his campaign tires hard before they buy into his leadership bid.

If only because he regularly reminds the Conservatives that he is flirting with a run, corporate Canada’s reality TV king Kevin O’Leary has them debating whether he would be a welcome addition to the lineup. By all indications, the jury is still very much out on that.

In his parting speech to the Conservatives, Harper himself did not tip his hand. His text was scrupulously free of prescriptions that could polarize the succession debate or tie the hands of the next leader.

If Kenney, who says he will make his intentions clear in late summer, does run, many will want to kick his campaign tires hard before they buy into his leadership bid

But the former prime minister did set one bar high over the course of his address and it is the one pertaining to language skills.

Switching seamlessly from English to French throughout his farewell speech, Harper singled out the party’s progress in Quebec as one of the accomplishments he is the most proud. Even in opposition, the party still boasts a significant Quebec footprint.

That stands as close as Harper could come to warning the Conservatives to beware of candidates like O’Leary, among others, who would want to sell them on the delusion that a nonbilingual leader could maintain the party’s hard-earned connection to Quebec. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.