He lost on several levels. He's old guard Harper-esque (a party unifier in the early 2000's) and they are slowly falling out of favour with the more radical right wing material. The more centrists still in the party didn't like the fact he stood with the truckers in Ottawa and he's been caught off-guard about 'real' conservative issues (abortion, vaccine freedoms). He always seems smarmy to me when I see him in interviews
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When I was younger the (now) Conservative Party of Canada was known as the "Progressive Conservatives". In fact, they actually introduced legalization legislation (yeppers cannabis) in 1976, well before the liberals in 2016! The 'progressive/centrist' conservative fell out of favour after the party lost elections and you guys down there went all Reagan and 'war on drugs' (you gotta play nice with the 800lb gorilla next door to a degree). There's some middle years here of Quebec influence (84 - 93) on the party (Mulroney) and the birth of the Block Quebecois to flex Quebec francophone wishes on a more national level. The conservatives then started drifting even more and more right but were still losing elections because there was a smaller "more right-wing" party started in the Alberta area ("if Quebec can, we can", they said ) taking votes nationally. Harper was the first to really amalgamate those fringe right wingers left in Quebec, the Alberta factions and the remaining progressives to win elections. (2006 - 2015). O'Toole comes from that crowd.
The 2015 loss to the liberal party (they promised us cannabis legalization finally and delivered once in) had Harper retire and the leaders of the CPC since have been seen as week, one even being caught lying about old employment and later found to be using party money to pay for his kids private school, a mini-van, private security and a couple other items. So the party is growing very tired of the old harper-guard.
www.politico.com
