Federal Conservative leadership candidate Andrew Sheer says the party needs to learn from its mistakes in the last election.

Sheer says they were on the right track but needed to be a little gentler in getting the message across.

"We had a very strong record on balancing the budget and keeping taxes low, I think that those are things that are very important for people, I think it came down to a question of style, tone and image and that's where we did lose touch," sheer says. "We didn't realize that Canadians although they may have been satisfied with the policies that we were providing wanted something that was a little bit different in the way that we communicated it or the way we contrasted ourselves with the other party."

He says wedge politics may work when trying to win the party leadership, but just don't work in a general election campaign.

"I think Conservatives do best when we offer that positive vision, when we can articulate our policies in a way that doesn't look like we're playing wedge politics or when we're writing off entire swaths of the electorate," he says. "Some candidates think that that's a good way to win the leadership, leadership races are different than general elections. I've made the decision that I am running I am running this leadership race as if I were running the election in 2019."

Sheer has the support of Foothills MP John Barlow.