While the ‘barbaric cultural practices’ tip line famously turned into a political nightmare for the Conservative cabinet ministers tasked with selling it — Chris Alexander and Kellie Leitch — Alexander now says he wants to revisit the policy’s central aim: putting an end to underage and forced marriages in Canada.

Alexander, now running against Leitch and a very large field of rivals for the Conservative leadership, told iPolitics today he definitely regrets “the way” the announcement happened — “the context, the timing.”

“In retrospect, I can see that it was absolutely the wrong call for that day.”

“At the same time, as you probably know, forced marriage remains an issue that deserves Canada’s attention at home and abroad.”

The former immigration minister, who also served as Canada’s ambassador to Afghanistan, said 15 million women and girls continue to fall victim to this practice around the world.

“We know that this phenomenon is with us here in Canada. We know dozens, maybe even hundreds of girls are forced to leave Canada against their will to marry people underage in other parts of the world every year,” he said, “I think that deserves more attention, specialized training for community workers, for frontline social workers, to ensure that prevention is strengthened.”

He said the problem deserves qualified investigators who can take action. “That’s (what) the substance of that announcement was about.”

A Harper government bill tabled and passed last year, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act, gave government new tools to fight polygamy and forced marriage. Alexander pointed out that the Liberal caucus supported the legislation, “including the current prime minister.”

But while Alexander acknowledges the tip line pitch did the Conservatives damage during the election campaign, when asked what he would propose to confront the problem, he fell back on the idea of some sort of tip line.

“I do think people need to be able to call for support … and have someone on the end of the line who knows what they’re talking about.”

He said social workers and frontline workers need specialized training to look for signs of forced marriage.

“Because there’s too much complicity often in the family unity that means … no one’s going to be in the position to actually tell the truth. But with a bit of training, it allows people to see the warning signs.”

He said investigators and law enforcement officers need specialized training as well.

“When that action starts to be taken then we find people coming out of the woodwork saying, ‘This happened to me, this happened to me too.’ People unfortunately suffer in silence.

“It’s not a huge issue but it’s one of the issues — forced marriage — that we need to make progress on if we want to protect the overall integrity of our immigration system.”

As party leader, Alexander said he would propose training for workers “who are most likely to encounter women and girls in this situation, and then larger-scale efforts … to train groups that do advocacy and do prevention work for forced marriage globally.”

Alexander couldn’t say how many cases of early or forced marriage there are Canada annually, although he suggested that studies have shown that in certain parts of the country there are “hundreds of cases.”

“I don’t think we’ll have more reliable stats until we start to have well trained teams of social workers and investigators that are working together.”