Veteran cabinet minister, MP Tony Clement expected to seek Tory leadership
OTTAWA — Former Conservative cabinet minister Tony Clement is expected to throw his hat into the ring Tuesday to seek his party’s leadership.
The longtime Conservative politician served in the Ontario provincial government of Mike Harris before becoming a versatile cabinet minister over the nine-and-a-half years of the Stephen Harper government in Ottawa.
In government, the gregarious 55-year-old most recently served as Treasury Board president before the Conservative defeat transformed him into one of his party’s two very vocal foreign affairs critics.
It is a new role that Clement admitted early on would carry a steep learning curve, but he embraced it enthusiastically, dutifully hammering the ruling Liberals on a range of issues from withdrawing Canada’s CF-18 fighter jets from the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition in Iraq and Syria to the government’s decision to re-engage diplomatically with Russia.