The final ballot count was 19,271 points for O'Toole to 10,681 for Peter MacKay. It was 1:00 AM Eastern Time when the result was announced, concluding a mail-in voting process delayed by the pandemic. O'Toole, a former Royal Canadian Air Force officer and MP from Durham, Ontario, had run and lost in the 2017 leadership race. This time, he pitched a "True Blue" platform to the party base while promising a "Take Back Canada" message for the general electorate. His victory was a rebuke to the party establishment, which had largely backed MacKay.
The leadership contest exposed a fundamental rift. MacKay represented the party's progressive conservative wing, while O'Toole courted social conservatives and populists. O'Toole's win signaled a rightward shift in tone and policy, including a pledge to repeal the federal carbon tax and confront "cancel culture." The convention itself was a muted, virtual affair, stripped of the usual arena spectacle. The moment mattered because it set the stage for the 2021 federal election. It defined the opposition facing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
O'Toole's tenure proved brief. He led the party through the 2021 election, gaining seats but failing to secure a victory. Internal criticism of his campaign strategy, which attempted to moderate his earlier stances, grew swiftly. The Conservative caucus voted to remove him as leader in February 2022, after just eighteen months. His election on this date was the peak of a political arc that ended in one of the shortest leadership tenures in the party's modern history. The event underscored the persistent and unresolved tension within Canadian conservatism between populist impulse and centrist appeal.