OTTAWA—Former Conservative cabinet ministers Peter MacKay and Erin O’Toole are both putting together teams in a bid to replace Andrew Scheer as the party’s leader.

Conservative sources speaking on background confirmed that camps are forming around MacKay and O’Toole, and that representatives for both men have been making calls to Conservative activists Friday.

“Both camps are mobilizing by the sounds of it … the foundation is being laid,” said one Conservative source, who spoke on the condition they not be named.

“Everyone is just trying to figure out who is in this race and who isn’t, (and) what does it look like.”

The Conservative party was plunged into a leadership contest Thursday after the surprise announcement that Scheer intended to step down.

The parameters of that race have not been decided. The Conservative party’s national council held a meeting Thursday night to formally accept Scheer’s resignation, but has not yet scheduled a meeting to set up a committee that will determine the rules, and length, of the upcoming contest.

Those deliberations could stretch into the new year, a party source told the Star. But some candidates aren’t waiting.

MacKay, a Nova Scotian native who served as the last leader of the Progressive Conservatives before it merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the modern Conservative party, did not immediately respond to a request for an interview.

Neither did O’Toole, a lawyer and air force veteran who came third in the Conservatives’ 2017 leadership race, who has served as the party’s foreign affairs critic under Scheer.

Both men were widely expected to launch leadership bids, with MacKay’s name floated even before the Scheer campaign’s disappointing results in the last federal election. A front page story in the Globe and Mail during the election campaign suggested that MacKay was already exploring a leadership bid. MacKay told reporters at a campaign stop in Nova Scotia in the dying days of the campaign that he supported Scheer’s leadership.

O’Toole publicly supported Scheer but was widely expected to run in the next leadership after his strong finish in the 2017 contest.

Speculation in media and Conservative circles has been rampant about who will run to replace Scheer after the embattled Conservative leader announced he would step aside after the party chose his successor.

It’s difficult to separate who is seriously considering a run from someone who Conservative activists hope will run. Rona Ambrose, a former senior cabinet minister under Stephen Harper who served as interim leader of the party after the 2015 election, is a name floated often.

A person close to Ambrose said the former MP was not doing interviews Friday. But she received two high-profile endorsements after Scheer announced his resignation.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, who served in Harper’s cabinet with Ambrose, told the Calgary Herald Thursday that Ambrose would make a “brilliant” leader for the federal party.

“She can certainly expect a call from me asking her to consider it. I know Rona loves the fact that she has a normal life these days… but I would say to her, to any number of people, voters told us they want a new prime minister,” Kenney told the paper.

“I haven’t thought it all through yet, but Rona would be my first call.”

Kenney is one of Canada’s most-prominent conservative voices, and still holds sway within the federal party. The Alberta premier was himself mentioned as a potential successor to Scheer — speculation he tamped down in interviews this week.

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But another prominent conservative, former Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, also publicly endorsed Ambrose on Friday — posting on Twitter that he wasn’t in the running, but hoped Ambrose would put her name forward.

That Wall and Kenney would publicly endorse a candidate who has not announced their intention to run raised eyebrows in Conservative circles Friday.

“Nothing is a coincidence,” one senior Conservative source told the Star Friday.

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