CREDIT: Andrew Vaughan, The Canadian Press

Despite his strong lead, insiders say Peter MacKay needs to deliver a detailed policy speech at this weekend's convention to ensure victory.

Each day this week, the National Post will profile a federal Tory leadership candidate leading up to Saturday's vote. Today, Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief Sheldon Alberts speaks to 37-year-old front-runner Peter MacKay.

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Until recently, the two things most Canadians have known about Tory leadership candidate Peter MacKay are that he plays competitive rugby and has been voted sexiest member of Parliament for five years running.

Mr. MacKay, 37, is passionate about the former, embarrassed about the latter, and intent on convincing Canadians that there is more substance to him than style.

"That is pretty superficial stuff. I'm not really hung up on that," says Mr. MacKay, who actually recoils in his chair when an interviewer raises the matter of his pretty-boy image on Parliament Hill.

"I don't like to talk about it.... I just find it amusing because I just don't see myself that way. I have always thought of myself as more of an ugly duckling."

His own modesty notwithstanding, Mr. MacKay's looks have been more of a blessing than a curse in his rise to the upper echelons of Tory politics.

His annual wins in the sexiest-MP contest -- a title awarded by Ottawa's weekly The Hill Times newspaper -- have done more for his public profile than dozens of policy speeches in the House of Commons.

And television images of Mr. MacKay suited up with the Pictou County Senior Rugby club play better with voters than, say, pictures of an MP who tugs on cigarettes and has eaten too many dinners on the rubber-chicken circuit.

But as he prepares for the biggest political challenge of his life at this weekend's Tory leadership convention, Mr. MacKay must put to rest lingering doubts about his political depth that exist in the minds of some delegates.

Party insiders say his hopes of victory hinge on delivering a strong and detailed speech to the nearly 3,000 delegates who will be at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Friday night to hear his sales pitch.

In Parliament, the MP for Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough has earned a reputation as a fierce critic of the Chrétien Liberals' record on political ethics. A former Crown prosecutor in central Nova Scotia, Mr. MacKay is also known as a law-and-order MP who supports the death penalty, opposes the gun registry, champions victims' rights and believes more juvenile offenders should be tried in adult court.

During the leadership campaign, he has sought to add some heft to his policy plans. He has proposed aggressive measures to increase economic and military integration with the United States, and says Canada should establish a new border security agency by collapsing Canada Customs with the Coast Guard, Port Police and Air Security Agency. He also wants to experiment with private health-care delivery and legislate national debt repayment.

"I was more focused on criminal justice issues certainly than I am now, and I have broadened my perspective considerably," he says.

From the time of his election to Parliament in 1997, Mr. MacKay has had "heir apparent" status in Conservative circles.

The CBC's Fifth Estate raved two years ago that Mr. MacKay "has politics in his blood, brains in his head and a lot of down-home charm."

Senator Norman Atkins, a respected Tory party elder, once said that Mr. MacKay had the "potential royal jelly" for leadership.

"He sees potential in me and that is encouraging," Mr. MacKay says of the senator's praise. "But I also know that potential that isn't realized is a sad thing. There are a lot of people that have potential out there who coast. That is not my nature."

There is evidence to back up his claim. Mr. MacKay refused to drop his 1997 bid for the Tory nomination in his Nova Scotia riding despite the threat of losing his job as a Crown attorney. The Liberal provincial government ultimately fired him. Mr. Mac-Kay won the nomination and the election.

The candidate says he learned the need for personal toughness by playing rugby.

"The only metaphor I know about politics is that it is a blood sport. And I guess there is a bit of that in rugby too," he says. "Rugby is a hard game. It is tough. It requires a lot of physical fitness and mental toughness too."

At first glance, Mr. MacKay has the kind of family pedigree that could pave an easy path to the top of Canada's elite.

His father, Elmer MacKay, was a long-time Tory Cabinet minister and close personal friend of Brian Mulroney, connections which open doors in Ottawa and with political donors on Bay Street.

But Mr. MacKay's life has not been without adversity. His father spent most of Peter's school years serving in the trenches of the Mulroney government and was rarely home in Nova Scotia.

Mr. MacKay has "tremendous respect" for his father, but there are hints of past tensions.

"On a personal level, I have come to have probably a better relationship with my father now than when I was a kid because I didn't see him. He was away doing something very important," he says.

"You can never deny the influence of a parent. But he did not actively encourage or discourage me from doing this. He cautioned me, and I think he understood better than most the commitment and the sacrifice and the type of lifestyle that it requires."

Mr. MacKay's pride in his father's record of public service has always been evident in the way he practises politics.

Always a willing defender of the Mulroney government legacy -- even when public sentiment made that a risky proposition -- Mr. MacKay fought to clear the former prime minister of suspicion during a long and ultimately aborted RCMP investigation into the Airbus affair.

"I am not going to be an apologist for somebody and say that the Tories did everything right. I think humility goes a long way in this business because clearly there were some things that should have been done differently," he says.

"But overall, I think public sentiment has softened somewhat. There is at least a begrudging acceptance that the policy initiatives turned out quite well .... More good than harm was done under a Conservative government led by Brian Mulroney."

Heading into the Tory convention, Mr. MacKay is the front-runner. He has already won more than 40% of delegates pre-selected as leadership voters. But to win, he must woo skeptics on a second ballot.

He has spoken of having a "burning desire to search for justice" in Canada and expects the new leader's first task will be to re-establish the Tories as a national political force.

"The new leader is going to be called upon to make a Herculean effort travelling and connecting with Canadians.... This is very much an exercise in hard work and you have to be committed very much to the party," he says.

"I remember when John Hamm became the leader of the Nova Scotia party. He talked about the need for people in the party to believe that it was possible. And I think that translates well into our own situation. We have to regain our confidence, believe that this is a possible venture."

But Mr. MacKay says he is not interested in becoming a career politician and admits to missing the cut-and-thrust of life as a prosecutor.

"In any walk of life that I have experienced, there is nothing that has more human drama than sitting in court waiting for a jury to come back. It's compelling. There is so much at stake," he says.

If he achieves power, Mr. Mac-Kay said he hopes he is not to be seduced by it. Too many politicians, he says, overstay their welcome.

"There is nothing sadder than an old boxer still in the ring, or an old politician in there getting battered," he says.

Ask Mr. MacKay about how long he plans to remain in politics and he gives a surprising answer.

"I have been here almost six years now. It'll be six years in June. You know, if I am here another six years, or 10, I think that will be enough. It was never my intention to do this and have this be my last career," he says.

"I think that politics should be like service to the armed forces or service with a certain charitable organization. I think you should go into it, set some goals, have some reasonable expectations and move on."

PETER MACKAY:

BORN Sept. 27, 1965, in New Glasgow, N.S.

MARITAL STATUS Single.

EDUCATION Graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts from Acadia University. Graduated with a law degree from Dalhousie Law School in 1990. Called to the bar in 1991.

PRIVATE CAREER Began a general law practice in New Glasgow in 1991, then joined the Crown attorney's office for Nova Scotia's central region in 1993.

POLITICAL CAREER Elected MP for Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough in 1997. Re-elected in 2000. Has served as Tory House Leader and Justice critic.

RESIDENCE New Glasgow, N.S.

salberts@nationalpost.com