Peter MacKay

Peter Gordon MacKay (born September 27, 1965) is a Canadian lawyer and politician, who served as Member of Parliament from 1997 to 2015 and as Minister of Justice and Attorney General (2013–2015), Minister of National Defence (2007–2013), and Minister of Foreign Affairs (2006–2007) in the Cabinet of Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. MacKay became the final leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada — he agreed to merge the party with Stephen Harper's Canadian Alliance in 2003, forming the Conservative Party of Canada and making MacKay one of the co-founders of the current conservative wing of Canadian politics. The son of Canadian politician and Minister of Public Works Elmer MacKay, MacKay received his undergraduate degree from Acadia University and his law degree from Dalhousie University. MacKay represented the riding of Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough from 1997 to 2004, and the riding of Central Nova from 2004 until 2015, when he decided not to run in that year's federal election. With the defeat of the Conservatives in the 2015 federal election, he was considered a potential candidate to succeed Stephen Harper as permanent leader of the party. Between 2015 and 2020, he was a partner with Baker McKenzie at their Toronto office. On January 15, 2020, MacKay announced his candidacy for the 2020 Conservative leadership race. He was defeated by former veterans-affairs minister Erin O'Toole on the third ballot of the election. Following the race, he moved back to Nova Scotia and became a senior counsel with the law firm McInnes Cooper and a strategic advisor with Deloitte Canada.