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It was always likely to end this way once Kellie Leitch had made the calculated gamble to mount a “Canadian values” crusade as part of her leadership bid for the Conservative Party — namely, in defeat, ostracism and, ultimately, exile.

In a statement obtained Tuesday by the National Post, the former minister and Conservative leadership contender said she will not seek re-election in 2019 and plans to “return to the public service that is core to my being and forms the very roots of who I am: being a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon and getting children back on playgrounds.”

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Leitch was always a long shot for the leadership but became a lightning rod for controversy — and alt-right support — when she began to advocate Trump-like positions on issues like screening immigrants.

She should have known better, her previous flirtation with the tactics of intolerance, in the form of the barbaric cultural practises tip line, having helped blow up a decade of successful multicultural outreach for the Conservatives. In a teary mea culpa on live television, Leitch later lamented that the messaging around the tip line had focused on race, not women’s rights.