Parry Sound Muskoka MP Tony Clement says despite the fact that he’ll be taking a run at the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada and hoping for this country’s top political job, he won’t leave his riding behind.
“Obviously I’ll be doing some campaign events in Muskoka and Parry Sound as well but it was pretty important to get as much of the national media out as possible,” he said of first launching his campaign last night, July 12, at a Royal Canadian Legion in Mississauga.
“I also wanted to highlight a Legion where we had all of the MPs before the last election and none of the MPs after the last election and obviously part of why I am running is we can win back those seats with the right leader and the right policies,” said Clement who is hoping to appeal to a greater number of voters than the party’s former leader Stephen Harper.
“We can be successful in ridings like Mississauga and what they represent, which is ridings in Vancouver and ridings in Montreal and so on, in urban centres as well as rural centres.”
Clement, 55, and a graduate of University of Toronto, immigrated to Canada from the U.K. in 1965. His maternal grandmother was from Syria, his mother from England and his father, a Greek Cypriot. “So I really represent the mosaic of our country,” said Clement,
We need to reconnect with Canadians who have been around for eight generations but also Canadians who have been around for eight minutes.MP Tony Clement
Clement’s mother later married John Clement of Niagara Falls, also a lawyer, who served as a provincial cabinet minister under Bill Davis and influenced Tony Clement’s own political career.
Asked about his most memorable moments in his political career so far, provincially Clement said it was serving as Health Minister during the SARS outbreak. “It thrust me into a role where I worked with some amazing doctors and nurses and other health practitioners to stem the tide of the epidemic. That’s something that I will never forget, seeing the heroism and being part of the leadership team.”
Federally, Clement is also pretty proud of his role as the President of the Treasury Board under Stephen Harper’s government for four and half years and “being able to get us back into a surplus position when we left office… it shows my experience in national budgeting.”
This is Clement’s second kick at the can. He ran for the party’s leadership in 2004 and placed third against Harper and auto parts heiress Belinda Stronach.
He says news of his intent to run for the leadership has been well received not only from across the country but in his own riding. As far as any detractors go, especially those throwing out puns on social media related to G8 Summit spending in 2010, Clement says he’s unmoved.
“I answered all those questions five years ago. The Auditor General found that all the money was accounted for and went to the purposes intended,” said Clement, noting that at the time there were 28,000 different infrastructure projects across the country “because we were using infrastructure to build our way out of the great recession. I mean haters are going to hate on social media but it’s not an issue.”
Clement said he’s been through many a political adventure and he’s comfortable in his own skin.
I don’t have to prove anything to anybody, I am very comfortable with who I am and what I’ve done but I do believe that I can offer more to the Conservative Party and then by extension to the country. Clement
He noted how very serene he was when he took the plunge and announced he’d be taking a run at the leadership of the Conservative Party in Mississauga on Tuesday.
“I didn’t have any jitters or nerves. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
Given his diverse background we asked if he speaks any other languages, he said French. What about Greek, we asked. “Just swear words,” he laughed.
Clement first ran for a seat in Parry Sound-Muskoka in 2006, narrowly beating out long-time incumbent Liberal cabinet minister Andy Mitchell.
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