The Conservatives have become a vehicle for right-wing ideologues in the American tradition, not the Canadian progressive tradition. They abandoned their history with the merger of the Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance. 
Harper appropriated the Conservative name and hijacked the party to the extreme right. Instead of being an instrument of the people and an expression of the collective will, Conservatism has become a rigid ideology that only appeals to a minority of true believers.
An intelligent party would have chosen a different path after Harper’s decade of authoritarian deceit and corruption. 
Now the CPC seems ready to choose one of the bit players on the leadership list who have clung to Harperism and its ill fated future.