From what I see so far, its Lewis for me. My wife already seems 100% set on her. And that's based on her platform and the fact she's NOT been in gov't before, somewhat like the swamp-drainer south of the border, except with some class. Lets see, qualifications: Numerous degrees that aren't drama or gender studies : check. Owns a successful business: check. Her firm deals with commercial litigation and international contracts trade, specializing in energy policy: check. (Gee, I wonder if she'd support pipelines and such??). I'm imagining that as a lawyer she'll have some debating skills, and as a business owner some management skills as well, especially considering she's been at it for decades.\
My choices based on her qualifications supersede the fact that she's both black & Indian and female, but one cannot dismiss that those details will have vote-gathering ability all on their own (not that I agree with voting on appearances alone, look at our current PM Zoolander for what can go catastrophically wrong there). I admit that I think it would be hysterical to rub any left wing, virtue-signalling noses with the fact that Canada's second female PM (and first visible minority PM ) is also a Conservative. ( and technically she would be the first voted in as such, rather than by the majority party's leadership vote like with Kim Campbell).
Between MacKay and O'Toole I'd not have a clear choice between the two, though admittedly I have more research to do on them.
From her Wikipedia page (copied below) it noes that when she ran for a seat previously she only had a very short amount of time to campaign as she was a replacement candidate in her riding. Despite this, she still got a fairly good number of votes, still it was quite far behind the Liberal winner, but given a scandal with the previous candidate and only 3 weeks to run, it was pretty good considering (the Liberal winner had 29,913 and she came 2nd with 13,387). Given no previous candidate scandal and 5 to 7 more weeks to campaign and she'd probably have had a solid chance there. Also notable is that she had a Harper endorsement.
Wikipedia: "Lewis began her political career in the riding of Markham-Stouffville, where she was Vice President and a primary fundraiser of the riding under Paul Calandra (Member of Parliament). In 2015, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed her as a replacement candidate to run the riding of Scarborough-Rouge Park only a few weeks before the vote. The riding had been plagued with a scandal, for which the previous Conservative candidate had been dismissed.[6] An article in the National Post referred to Lewis as a “high-quality substitute".[7] She eventually placed second to Liberal Gary Anandasangaree, but managed to obtain over 13,000 votes[8] – one of the highest vote counts among Conservatives in the GTA.
In February 2020, she was the first woman confirmed as an official leadership contestant for the Conservative Party of Canada,[1] following the stepping down of former Leader Andrew Scheer in December 2019. She is the first visible minority woman to run for the leadership of either of the two major federal Canadian parties"
