Martin Frost
American politician
Peter MacKay
Canadian politician
Peter Gordon MacKay is a Canadian lawyer and politician. He was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2015 and has served as Minister of Justice and Attorney Generalin the Cabinet of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
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About the Peter MacKay
Peter Gordon MacKay is a Canadian lawyer and politician. He was a Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2015 and has served as Minister of Justice and Attorney Generalin the Cabinet of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. MacKay was the final leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, and he agreed to merge the party with Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance in 2003, forming the Conservative Party of Canada and making MacKay one of the co-founders of the current conservative wing of Canadian politics.
The son of Canadian politician and Minister of Public Works Elmer MacKay, MacKay received his undergraduate degree from Acadia University and his law degree from Dalhousie University. MacKay represented the riding of Pictou–Antigonish–Guysborough from 1997 to 2004, and the riding of Central Nova from 2004 until 2015, when he decided not to run in that year’s federal election. With the defeat of the Conservatives in the 2015 federal election, he was considered a potential candidate to succeed Stephen Harper as permanent leader of the party. Between 2015 and 2020, he was a partner with Baker McKenzie at their Toronto office.
On January 15, 2020, MacKay announced his candidacy for the 2020 Conservative leadership race. He was defeated by former veterans affairs minister Erin O’Toole on the third ballot of the leadership vote. Since the race, he moved back to Nova Scotia and is now a senior counsel with the law firm McInnes Cooper, and a strategic advisor with Deloitte Canada.
8 Quotes by Peter MacKay
- 1.
We have to stress our conservative credentials and emphasize that we are the natural, national alternative to the Liberals. Clearly the Alliance has shown it can’t break out of its Western box. The Alliance is at single-digit support in three quarters of the country.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 2.
If the United States leads a multinational force into Iraq without United Nations backing, Canada should fight beside its neighbour. We’ve gone from being a middle power to a muddle power on this one.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 3.
My gut tells me and continues to tell me that the Conservative party is on a road back to government.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 4.
What Canada has to do is to have a government connected to the priorities of the people of which it is elected to serve. Those priorities include ensuring medicare is sustainable, support for the military, and tax and justice systems that work.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 5.
I want to lead the Progressive Conservative Party, a party that will promote true conservative values and principles. I can tell you right now, I am not the merger candidate. I am not interested in institutional marriages with other parties.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 6.
We have to be focused on growing the party and getting young people to see us as a viable option.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 7.
It’s not as if our party has a leadership campaign underway.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician
- 8.
I guess my natural inclination is to finish what I started. We have a Conservative government in Nova Scotia. What I want to see is a Conservative government in Ottawa.
Peter MacKayCanadian politician