As Peter MacKay exits stage right, Liberals eye his Nova Scotia riding

WATCH ABOVE: In the years when the right was split between the Reform Party and the PCs, Peter MacKay played a big role in bringing everyone into the same tent. Jacques Bourbeau looks into the role MacKay played in shaping the Conservative Party.

OTTAWA – Almost four months ago, Justice Minister Peter MacKay was fielding reporters’ questions about the sudden departure of longtime Conservative minister John Baird.

“I had no idea,” MacKay said.

“I suspect he has a lot on his mind.”

On Friday it was MacKay’s turn to talk about his own period of “reflection.”

The Nova Scotia MP and former Progressive Conservative leader who helped broker the merger of the modern Conservatives with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Canadian Alliance in 2003, announced he would not seek re-election this fall.

READ MORE: Peter MacKay leaving federal politics

“For entirely personal reasons, the time has come for me to step back from public life and concentrate on my young and growing family,” said MacKay as his pregnant wife Nazanin Afshin-Jam looked on with their two-year-old son Kian.

Harper, who spoke at MacKay’s announcement, effusively praised his colleague as an “historic figure.”

And while Baird’s departure was more sudden and surprising, MacKay’s absence leaves a hole in a party already vulnerable to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in Atlantic Canada.

“It clearly makes his riding more interesting from a Liberal point of view,” Liberal MP John McCallum told reporters Friday morning.

“Now that he’s gone, I think that the Liberal party will have a much better chance in Peter MacKay’s old riding.”

But it’s complicated: The riding’s erstwhile Liberal candidate David MacLeod announced earlier this week he’s with withdrawing his candidacy – also for personal reasons.

WATCH: Peter MacKay believes that his seat will be filled by another Conservative

“With Peter McKay stepping down, we look forward to a vigorous open nomination to elect a new representative for the residents of Central Nova,” Liberal spokesman Olivier Duchesneau said in an email.

The Conservatives and Liberals hold four seats each in Nova Scotia. The NDP holds three.

But MacKay’s exit reverberates beyond Atlantic Canada.

Stephen Azzi, an associate politics professor at Carleton University, said MacKay’s departure is the nail in the coffin of the Progressive side of the modern Conservative party.

With MacKay’s departure, Azzi predicts a “Liberal sweep” of the Atlantic provinces.

“The Conservative hope is that a resurgent NDP will polarize the electorate,” he said.

NDP MP Paul Dewar called MacKay a “fair person,” without whom Harper would not have been able to unite the right.

But the departure of such high-profile Tories so close to the election raises questions about the state of the party itself, Dewar said.

“I guess for the prime minister it’s a question of, ‘Who’s next?’”