CALGARY — Erin O’Toole is promising a climate-change plan, vowing not to remove rights from women and the LGBTQ community, and is pledging to fight back against what he calls “foreign-funded sources of influence.”

He’s the newest face in the federal Conservative leadership race, and on Monday O’Toole said he’s learned from the mistakes of outgoing leader Andrew Scheer.

Speaking to the Star in Calgary, O’Toole said that “in this time of major disruption globally” he plans to “push back and fight” against what he sees as foreign-funded interests, attacks on both “traditional work” and people providing for their families.

His tone and comments echo statements Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has made when discussing what he says is a foreign-funded activist campaign to stymie the growth of the province’s oil and gas industry. Kenney’s provincial government has set up a publicly funded corporation to the tune of $30 million a year in order to correct what it characterizes as misinformation spread by these interests.

While vague on details as to what interests he was referring to, O’Toole similarly pledged Monday to fight back against them.

His campaign announcement had been expected for some time but was finally made with a video shared online in which O’Toole promised to challenge “attacks from cancel culture and the radical left.”

“In a period of disruption, I think Andrew had difficulty articulating where the Conservative party needed to go and fighting back against some of the attacks.”

With Parliament in a minority situation, an election could be on the horizon in the near term, and the Conservatives plan to choose their new leader on June 27. This is O’Toole’s second bid for party leadership after coming in third during the 2017 race.

“My biggest strength is I’m not a career politician,” said O’Toole, who served in the Canadian military and practised law before he was first elected in 2012 as the MP for Durham in Ontario, later serving in Stephen Harper’s government as veterans affairs minister.

After the Conservatives’ election loss last year, Scheer was criticized for what some said was an unclear stance on social issues and an inability to capitalize on Justin Trudeau perceived weaknesses.

With the Conservatives unable to secure the support they needed in Ontario and Quebec, all eyes are currently on the new leader’s ability to grow the voter base through a clear message.

Watching the Conservative defeat in the most recent election taught O’Toole some lessons, he said.

On the issue of climate change, he said, he wants the party to come out with a plan “a year or more ahead of the election.”

“Our problem is we released something a few weeks before the election, and then we never spoke about it again,” he said, adding that the NDP, Green Party and Liberals were ready to hammer them on the issue — among others.

“Knowing we’re going to face a multi-pronged war, we have to get out and say, ‘This is a solid, Conservative approach to climate change, to Indigenous reconciliation.’”

Scheer also faced criticism for not providing a clear answer on where he stood when it came to same-sex marriage and for being personally anti-abortion, despite his pledge not to reopen the abortion debate as a lawmaker.

When asked about his own stance on those issues, O’Toole cast it as a matter of “rights.”

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“I stand up for all rights,” he said, adding that he doesn’t want to remove any rights already granted by the courts.

“That’s where our party needs to go,” O’Toole said. “Not removing rights from Canadians.”

Should he become the leader of a Conservative government caucus and a private member’s bill came forward legislating around conscience rights, such as a medical practitioner’s right to refuse a service based on religious grounds, O’Toole said he would allow it.

However, if a private member’s bill came forward explicitly restricting abortion services, O’Toole said, that’s a line he wouldn’t cross.

“There’s a number of other things where people can advocate for their positions, from a faith point of view on right to life and a whole range of things, that don’t involve removing the rights of another Canadian,” he said.

“I will not personally support anything that restricts rights,” O’Toole later clarified in a followup comment to the Star, “but no party leader can interfere with a member’s right to introduce a bill.”

O’Toole joins the front of the race alongside Peter MacKay, a former cabinet minister, long-time Conservative politician from Nova Scotia, and onetime leader of the Progressive Conservatives before they merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the modern party in 2003.

In his launch video, O’Toole pledged to support out-of-work auto manufacturers, forestry workers and military service members. Notably absent was any mention of Alberta’s oil and gas workers, who were hit hard by the 2014 downturn in the provincial economy, leaving tens of thousands of workers unemployed.

However, O’Toole said he was in Calgary for the launch of his campaign because “the biggest crisis of confidence in the leadership of Trudeau is most evident” in Alberta.

“I wanted to come here to send that message that national unity means a Conservative leader from Ontario will fight for issues here.”

Update, Jan. 27, 2020: The story has been updated with a later comment from O’Toole on his position regarding a potential abortion-related private member’s bill.

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