OTTAWA–The Conservatives are nervous.

They’re facing seemingly existential questions about their leadership, a Liberal party knocked down to a minority but stubbornly strong, and some are even questioning whether a coalition of fiscal hawks, red Tories and social conservatives can be held together.

The year is 2005.

As the party gathered for its first policy convention that year, plenty had questions about the viability of the Conservative party in federal politics. In 2020, few would question that the Conservatives are capable of winning and holding government.

But many of the same questions raised at the party’s founding are once again being publicly aired after the Conservatives’ disappointing performance in the 2019 election.

How does the party accommodate social conservatives while appealing to the broader electorate? What pitch can resonate with voters in rural Alberta, suburban Ontario and Quebec at the same time? How do you balance the interests of Canada’s natural resource industries with a changing climate?

These will be familiar questions for Peter MacKay. They may also be the ones that scared the likes of Jean Charest, Rona Ambrose and Pierre Poilievre out of the party’s leadership race this week.

Back in 2005, MacKay’s message to the party’s rank and file was to not let their political opponents define them. In 2020, MacKay has an opportunity to provide his own definition for Canadian conservatism.

The 54-year old lawyer and political veteran will formally announce his candidacy for the Conservative leadership at an event in Stellarton, N.S. on Saturday. Born into a political family — his father, Elmer, was a Progressive Conservative MP who held cabinet posts in the Mulroney government — MacKay was elected in 1997 in his native Pictou County.

MacKay went on to lead the Progressive Conservatives after promising not to merge the party with Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance. He swiftly broke that promise in 2003 and paved the way for a united Conservative party — a decision that still sticks in the craw of many a progressive conservative, despite the electoral successes of the merged party.

MacKay did make one significant move to ensure the old PCs weren’t completely subsumed by their Reform cousins. As a condition of the merger, the new Conservative party would have to treat every riding equally when it came to electing a leader.

In this leadership contest, each riding will count for 100 points, which means a Calgary riding with 2,000 card-carrying members has the same weight as a downtown Toronto riding with 200. The system was designed explicitly to prevent the Canadian Alliance, with its huge membership in Western Canada, from absorbing the smaller PCs.

The issue came to a head at that 2005 convention, where a furious MacKay stormed out of a meeting over a suggestion from MP Scott Reid to fix the “distortions” created by the system.

“It’s my hope that … there will be a recognition by our delegates if we are to stack certain regions or certain ridings, this party’s in real jeopardy in my view,” MacKay told CBC at the time. MacKay carried the day, and 15 years later will be playing by the rules he helped design.

The spat still has relevance for the party today. After the 2019 election, most Conservative MPs represent ridings between the Rockies and the Manitoba border. The party’s poor performance in other regions, particularly Ontario and Quebec, hastened the departure of outgoing leader Andrew Scheer.

The next leader of the party will not be able to depend on regional strength alone, but will need to appeal to a broader coalition.

After a series of high-profile departures from the leadership race this week, MacKay’s main challenger — assuming no other big name emerges — will be Erin O’Toole.

The 47-year old lawyer and Air Force veteran has represented the Ontario riding of Durham since 2012, and finished a surprising third in the 2017 leadership contest. O’Toole has been travelling the country in recent weeks to drum up support, and has put together a team of veteran Conservative organizers, including some who worked on his 2017 campaign. Like MacKay, he is seen as a moderate Conservative.

MacKay is seen as the front-runner — someone who, as a former Progressive Conservative and a longtime Harper cabinet minister, can span the divide between the two founding factions of the modern Conservative party. But he has prominent detractors within the party as well, and insiders expect an “Anybody but MacKay” movement to emerge. That could be to O’Toole’s benefit.

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Any contender will have to address some of the foundational questions expressed at that convention in 2005, and gather Conservatives from different ideological traditions under the same tent while broadening the party’s appeal to Canadian voters.

It won’t be easy. Take it from the last guy who did it.

“It’s always a challenge in a Conservative party,” Harper said in 2005.

“If you don’t have factions, you’re not a Conservative party.”

With files from Tonda MacCharles and The Canadian Press

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