Because MacKay cannot compete with substance. And he has the track record to prove it.

Earlier this month MacKay wrote to Justice Minister David Lametti urging that any new federal legislation on physician assisted-dying include a freedom of conscience exemption for health care providers so they are not “forced to betray deeply-held religious and personal beliefs.”

MacKay should know the assisted-dying file well. He was, after all, Canada’s Minister of Justice in February 2015, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the total prohibition on the practice, finding that the outright ban violated the rights of competent adults who were suffering intolerably as a result of grievous and irremediable medical conditions.

The Supreme Court gave the then Conservative government a year to pass a constitutional law.

But Justice Minister MacKay, decided to sit on his hands and in April of that year, he told The Canadian Press that Canadians “should not expect that there will be any legislation before the election.”