MacKay leads O’Toole in Manitoba donations By: Dylan Robertson Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Jun. 22, 2020

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2020 (1605 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A near-equal number of Manitoba Conservatives are opening their wallets for the federal party’s two top leadership candidates, but one has a much larger pot of donations.

Peter MacKay has raked in almost half the $113,876 that Manitobans donated to seven candidates during the first three months of this year, according to Elections Canada filings.

MacKay’s $58,760 in support is almost four times that of runner-up Erin O’Toole, who fundraised $15,277 in Manitoba between January and March of this year.

But the two are on near-equal footing in terms of how many people have offered financial support. MacKay has 154 unique donors from the province, compared with O’Toole’s 144.

Meanwhile, social-conservative candidate Derek Sloan — whose views some of his colleagues have deemed racist — earned $19,157 from 111 Manitoba donors.

The filings show the first round of donations after current Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer announced last December he’d be stepping down from the party.

Four candidates remain in the race, including another social conservative, Leslyn Lewis, who attracted $12,192 from just 75 people in Manitoba by the end of March, well before a recent jump in her popularity.

Interlake-area MP James Bezan is leading MacKay’s campaign, and said MacKay has the chops to hold together different factions of the party.

“He has both the demeanour and the experience to lead this country after a very challenging time, under the last five years that Trudeau’s been at the helm,” Bezan said

Yet his fellow Manitoba MP, Raquel Dancho, says O’Toole has a better shot at cracking beyond the party’s base.

“He has more next-generation Conservative MPs than anybody else, so for us to say that’s the guy to lead us for who knows, the next decade, speaks volumes,” said the MP for Kildonan-St. Paul.

Bezan argued that MacKay’s larger share of big donations shows the confidence people place in his candidate, while Dancho contended that O’Toole’s smaller donations show a more engaged base that is key to a national electoral campaign.

Both have few policies specific to Manitoba.

This month, O’Toole released a 50-page platform, though it promised “the construction of deep-water ports at Churchill” and in Nunavut, despite the northern Manitoba town having such a port since 1931.

MacKay, meanwhile, has only published some policy online, not a full platform. In April, he pledged to restore a military base in Churchill, which hosted thousands of soldiers during the Cold War. Bezan said it would include an air-force and navy presence.

Both leading candidates reject carbon taxes, though Bezan argued that O’Toole’s pledge to implement “a national industrial regulatory and pricing regime” would inevitably boost costs for consumers, even if it’s through cap-and-trade systems.

It appears no Manitoba PC MLAs have endorsed any federal Tory candidate. When asked if they’re barred from donating or publicly endorsing anyone, the PC Caucus would only say its MLAs are “free to support a candidate if they choose.”

Dancho named a few MLAs who have quietly voiced support for O’Toole. “Often provincially, to not step on anyone’s toes, they’re often encouraged to just observe rather than get involved,” said Dancho, a recent Manitoba Legislature staffer.

The federal Conservatives held their only leadership debates last week, and the party is accepting mail-in ballots until Aug. 21.

Elections Canada will publish its updated fundraising figures for April to June, shortly after the Conservatives’ deadline to submit the data on July 30. That means updated results should arrive ahead of the August deadline, though it’s unclear how many will have voted by the time those figures are made public.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca