OCTOBER 20, 2015
I have spoken with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he communicated to me a request to initiate a number of actions pursuant to my responsibilities as laid out in the constitution of the Conservative Party of Canada.
I thanked the Prime Minister for his leadership on behalf of our party. Stephen Harper has changed Canada for the better, having built a durable, national Conservative movement focused on building a fair, more prosperous and globally significant Canada.
The Prime Minister indicated that he will continue to sit as a Member of Parliament and asks that a process to both select an interim leader and initiate the leadership selection process in our party begin immediately.
First, I am communicating to the newly elected House of Commons caucus their responsibility to elect an interim leader as soon as is possible.
Second, I will be convening a meeting of the National Council to create a Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) to set out the rules, dispute resolution mechanism and logistics related to the selection of a new leader.
Third, I am tasking Dustin van Vugt, the Executive Director of the Conservative Party of Canada, to initiate a transparent process to review the 2015 campaign.
While the election result was not what Conservatives across Canada hoped and worked so hard for, we respect the outcome of our democratic process. I want to take this moment to thank the hundreds of thousands of Conservative activists in every part of Canada who volunteered their time, money and ideas, allowing our party to serve our country as government since 2006.