Quebec and the West rally behind the suburban Ontario MP Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Nearly 175,000 members of the of the Conservative Party of Canada voted to elect Erin O'Toole as their new leader by an overwhelming majority. While the first two ranked-choice ballots were razor-tight between O'Toole and rival Peter MacKay, the Durham MP trounced MacKay on the third ballot, with some 19,200 points against 14,500. The first round went mostly as expected, with rookie MP Derek Sloan getting swiftly eliminated, although Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis capitalized on the stark East/West divide between the two frontrunners to win Saskatchewan and snag a surprising second-place finish over MacKay in Alberta and O'Toole in the Atlantic provinces. MacKay ended the round in first place with slightly over 11,300 points, as O'Toole kept on his tail with 10,700 and Lewis had just shy of 7,000. On the second ballot, Lewis came remarkably close with more than 10,000 points to her rivals' 11,000 apiece. O'Toole ultimately won support from social conservatives and Western Canadians, as expected, but also surprised pundits by sweeping Quebec. The results, which were supposed to start rolling in at 6 p.m., were delayed until 12:20 a.m., partly because of COVID-19 restrictions, but more so because the machines that are meant to slice open ballots ended up slicing thousands instead. The staffers had to manually check and re-fill in each ballot (under the watchful eye of scrutineers from each camp), and then feed the fresh ballots back into the machines to get them properly counted. Former leader Andrew Scheer gave the world's earliest opening act with a 13-minute farewell speech at 8:45 p.m. After pining for a Tory cabinet that would never be, he dove into many personal thanks and offered a thorough critique of big governments, chirping at the Soviet Union and communist Cuba. "The Liberals are all candy before supper," he mused, before echoing American right-wing language by praising the "silent majority" and encouraging Canadians to turn to far-right outlets like The Post Millennial and True North Media instead of mainstream news outlets like, uh, the one you've subscribed to for this email. Thanks for sticking with us! The party will now have to rally behind O'Toole, especially as rumors of a fall election heat up. (You can read Maclean's profile of the new Tory leader here.) Despite MacKay's numerous gaffes, the weird Zoom call breach and other bitter moments during the race, supporters of both O'Toole and MacKay, at least, can rest easy knowing that the two veterans of Stephen Harper's cabinet, both Dalhousie law school grads with military credentials and politicians for fathers, are basically the same guy. In other news: The husband of Katie Telford, the prime minister's chief of staff, is back in the headlines. Earlier this year, Robert Silver repeatedly contacted the office of former finance minister Bill Morneau in hopes of getting his employer, a private mortgage company called MCAP, eligible for the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS). Silver's attempts failed, perhaps because (as sources tell Vice ) his requested changes would have "uniquely benefited MCAP." Telford seemingly recused herself from any discussions affecting MCAP, so this may once again be an issue that looks worse than it is for the Liberals—but at a time when they desperately need positive public opinion, the optics aren't great. They'll find no help from our nation's procurement ombudsman, Alexander Jeglic, whose office confirmed to the National Post that they are reviewing six separate sole-source government contracts. The contracts were all handed out by Trudeau's government without a bidding process and were signed between 2017 and 2020, and are worth less than $40,000, which is the threshold that would have required a tendering process. There isn't necessarily any foul play, but the office will investigate to make sure each contract was handled lawfully. And now, more polls! This mud-slinging doesn't seem to be damaging the Liberals too badly, all things considered. (For average Canadians, "all things" means "a global pandemic.") While an Abacus poll found Liberal support recovered slightly after the weight of the WE scandal fell hardest (36 per cent of polled Canadians would vote for them today, versus 30 per cent for the Tories), an Ipsos poll found 49 per cent of respondents would consider voting Conservative in the next election. But the poll may have simply exposed a blindly ideological divide: 47 per cent of respondents said they didn't know the Tories were electing a new leader. Max investing. The People's Party of Canada disclosed their financials on Friday, revealing they raised more than $2.6 million in the run-up to last year's election. The party's founding leader, Maxime Bernier, who lost his own seat after defecting from the Conservatives, will draw an annual salary of $104,000 this year from the party coffers. Bernier didn't receive a salary from the party before the election, because he was still a sitting member of parliament. A little more bipartisan love. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood a polite six feet apart from Ontario Premier Doug Ford during a joint announcement in Brockville, Ont., that 3M Canada would be increasing its capacity to produce N95 masks. They're hoping the investment will preemptively solve any problems around PPE supply chains in the future. The federal and provincial governments are each kicking in $23.3 million to get 25 million masks apiece over the next five years. For the mathematically curious, that means each mask will cost them about $1.07. Not a bad price when you look at what Home Depot charges . In news that was otherwise overshadowed by domestic politics this weekend, the Transport Safety Board of Canada finally received a flight recorder readout report of the downed Ukrainian airplane PS752. While nowhere near the final report, the document "is consistent with information that TSB investigators received while attending the download of the recorders in France," a TSB spokesperson said in their release. Deja vu for Joe. American presidential nominee (we can officially drop the word "presumptive") Joe Biden accepted the Democratic Party's nomination on Thursday with a speech that some Canadians felt was a ripoff of the famous final letter by the late NDP leader Jack Layton . Compare Biden's quote ("For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. And light is more powerful than dark") with Layton's ("My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair"). Historical types dutifully pointed out that we could trace the format back to Wilfred Laurier ("Let me tell you that for the solution of these problems you have a safe guide, an unfailing light if you remember that faith is better than doubt and love is better than hate"), so it might just be that politicians like to say "good things are better than bad things" to inspire the electorate. But the accusation against Biden carries a little more weight, since accusations of plagiarism effectively ended his 1988 presidential campaign. —Michael Fraiman | 