The Conservative Party should take advantage of its defeat Monday to rethink its policies and to reach out to disaffected Progressive Conservatives, says former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal.

It should also take its time about choosing its next leader.

“I would not be in a rush,” Segal, who resigned from the Senate last year and is now Master of Toronto’s Massey College, said in an interview with iPolitics. “Once they choose an interim leader I think it would be good for that interim leader to serve for at least 24 months, during which time that interim leader – whoever it is – would be a good person to lead an open policy process that is open to the grassroots, that attracts some of the best minds in the country to engage constructively.”

With some senior Conservatives already musing publicly about succeeding Stephen Harper before he’s even vacated 24 Sussex, Segal’s approach might seem incremental even though it would avoid an ideological split over leadership.

“I hope the renewal is not just one of running around to find a new leader,” Segal said. That’s important and that’s a good thing but the members of the Conservative Party have a duty to sort out what it is that they believe in and they want their party to stand for so you’re not being held hostage by whatever candidates happen to run for leader, but the party itself has laid out its core, underlying principles for the 21st century.”

A career stalwart of the former Progressive Conservative Party and outspoken Red Tory, Segal said the party has to regain the balance it had in the 2004, 2008 and 2011 elections if it hopes to once again win power. The balance that has traditionally worked for the Conservatives is to be a party of modest government, fiscal responsibility and conservatism but to be a progressive party when it comes to individual rights, equality of opportunity, strong national defence and supporting its allies in the world, he said.

“That’s the balance, I think, that people look for when they think about whether the Conservative Party is an option for them whenever the next election rolls around and if that balance is lacking, then there is a risk that we end up as prisoners of our 30 per cent, not to be sneezed at – 30 per cent is pretty respectable – but it’s not enough to form a government.”

“You cannot form a government only in the small towns and rural areas. They are important and a vital part of our legacy, in a sense. But you have to be able to put into the marketplace of ideas notions that are attractive to people who live in our urban areas which are by definition multicultural, multiracial and very diverse. Any insensitivity to the opportunity that diversity has given this country is profoundly anti-Conservative. It runs against the Canadian Bill of Rights.”

Segal said many Red Tories were troubled by the party’s “lack of generosity” towards Syrian refugees and the Islamophobia associated with the niqab debate, prompting many of them to stay home and not vote Monday.

“When the former chief of the defence staff – Rick Hillier – says we have the capacity to bring 50,000 in by Christmas, process them on our bases and make sure on ship and elsewhere that we do the security checks and we have the logistical range to do that and the government chose not to go that route, that sent a message which for many of us was deeply problematic.”

The niqab debate and the launch of a snitch line for barbaric cultural practices “became very problematic” added Segal.

“I think a lot of people who would consider themselves, as the prime minister does, a John Diefenbaker Conservative – Canadian Bill of Rights and all that, or a Charter of Rights Conservative….were just troubled by all of that and just felt that for whatever reason, it didn’t reflect the kind of Canada or the kind of Conservative Party in which they believed.”

Those are questions that should be addressed as part of the party’s renewal process, said Segal.

“The progressive side of the party was troubled by those events and would hope that in the renewal of the party process going forward the kinds of issues that I would call balance, equality of opportunity, fairness would be a prominent part of the debate. It doesn’t have to win every argument but it does have to be a prominent part of the debate.

“I would hope that the party considers a broad and wide open policy process for renewal – not just a leadership convention whenever that may transpire.”

[email protected]