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MP and former Conservative leadership candidate Scott Aitchison is expected to resign his seat later this fall, three sources tell CBC News.
A senior Conservative source said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was told last week that Aitchison plans to leave at the end of the fall sitting.
The MP’s departure was expected to be announced next week, one source said.
The resignation would add Aitchison to a list of Conservative MPs exiting electoral politics in recent months.
Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed former Conservative MP Richard Martel to the Senate early in the summer. Martel was sworn into the Red Chamber earlier this week.
Former MPs Cathay Wagantall and Larry Brock both stepped down in the past month.
Aitchison has been the MP for Ontario’s Parry Sound-Muskoka riding since the 2019 election.
CTV News first confirmed the news of his departure.
Pierre Poilievre and Aitchison hug as Poilievre is announced winner of the Conservative leadership race in 2022. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
The former Muskoka mayor launched a leadership bid in the 2022 Conservative campaign that saw Poilievre chosen as the party’s chief. Aitchison finished fifth.
Housing was a key feature of Aitchison’s leadership campaign and Poilievre named the MP as his housing critic.
Aitchison’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
The resignation would create another vacancy in the House, where six seats are currently empty.
In addition to Brock and Wagantall, former Liberal cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault officially resigned last month. Former Liberal MP Shaun Chen resigned in mid-August.
Former NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice and the Bloc Québécois’s Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay both left federal politics to run in Quebec’s provincial election.