(Ottawa) As the federal Conservative Party prepares to welcome a new leader next Saturday, the interim leader announces that she will not run in the next election.
Posted at 12:49 p.m.
Candice Bergen was chosen by her peers to become interim leader of the Conservative Party — and of the official opposition — when Erin O’Toole was ousted by her caucus in February following the party’s disappointing defeat in the general elections last September.
Mme Bergen, 57, was first elected in 2008 in the Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar, where she has been re-elected tirelessly ever since. Within the governments of Stephen Harper, she was appointed in 2011 Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Security, then in 2013 Minister of State for Social Development.
In opposition after the 2015 elections, Mme Bergen was named House Leader of the Conservatives; then, under Erin O’Toole, she became Deputy Party Leader in 2020.
Mme Bergen said in a written statement Tuesday that she will remain an MP “for the immediate future” and that she looks forward to seizing “new opportunities.”
She assures that she will “wholeheartedly” support the person who will be chosen as the new leader of the party next Saturday and she says she is “incredibly optimistic” about the future of the Conservative movement in Canada.