OTTAWA — When Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai was speaking in Parliament last week, Kellie Leitch gave her seat to Conservative leadership rival Erin O'Toole's daughter Mollie so she could bear witness to history alongside her dad. Leitch didn't mind — she found a much better place to sit, right in front. The two Conservative MPs may be seat mates in the back row of the House of Commons these days, but their campaigns to take over the permanent leadership of the party couldn't be much farther apart.

Conservative leadership candidates Erin O'Toole and Kellie Leitch are following two very different paths in their party's contest. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press) Leitch is on the populist path; the centrepiece of her campaign is a requirement that all newcomers be interviewed to verify their "Canadian" values. She rails against "out-of-touch elites," though some suggest the former cabinet minister and pediatric orthopedic surgeon is one herself. "I talk about Canadian values, one of those values being hard work. I think when Canadians work hard they are extremely generous back," Leitch said recently during a roundtable interview with The Canadian Press. "That's different than having an elitist attitude of thinking you know best and you can tell people what to do. That's not what I share." Every day on the campaign trail, she said, she hears about the disconnect between working Canadians and their government. Closing that gap, she believes, requires getting government out of the way with "common sense" policies like spending caps and no carbon taxes.