(OTTAWA) Patrick Brown’s team in the Conservative leadership race is also concerned about alleged “misleading” emails sent to activists by Pierre Poilievre’s team.
Posted at 5:00 p.m.
Updated at 6:04 p.m.
Patrick Brown’s national campaign co-chair John Reynolds sent a letter Thursday to the leadership election organizing committee asking it to investigate emails sent by the Poilievre team before last month’s deadline to to sell membership cards for $15.
The Conservative Party had ruled that Canadians who want to elect the next leader had to be members in good standing by June 3.
Team Poilievre says it alone has sold nearly 312,000 membership cards, including some 119,000 in Ontario.
But in his letter, Mr Reynolds alleges his team received a “number of complaints” from party members who said they bought a new card after receiving what appeared to be an “official-looking warning”, from the Poilievre team, which indicated that their membership status was incomplete.
A spokesperson for the Poilievre team said the email in question was forwarded to people who “according to our own records” were not party members. “We would have no advantage in registering someone who was already a member,” wrote Anthony Koch. These people would still only have the right to vote once. »
Mr. Poilievre also asked the party to reveal the number of membership cards that his team had managed to sign, which the authorities have so far refused to do.
Party spokesman Yaroslav Baran confirmed on Thursday that Mr Brown’s complaint had been received and would be assessed to determine whether it warranted an investigation. In the meantime, he said the main objective for the party was to validate the membership cards sold by the six candidates running.
A record number of members expected
The Conservatives are bracing for a possible slate of more than 600,000 voting members, which would be a record for the party. By comparison, in the previous leadership race in 2020, when former leader Erin O’Toole was elected, the party boasted an eligible voter base of 270,000.
Baran said on Thursday “there is a small army of people” working to validate the membership cards sold to determine if they are compliant. He said the party remained on track to deliver on its promise that a “preliminary voters list” would soon be provided to campaigns – that date had been set for July 4.
When it comes to duplicate memberships, Baran believes this is less of an issue because these duplicates are easy to spot. If someone bought two membership cards, he said, the party would simply count the other card sold as a membership for the following year.
The team of MP Leslyn Lewis, who finished third in the 2020 leadership race, have also raised concerns about the possible existence of “tens of thousands” of duplicate memberships, and believe that emails from the Poilievre team may have contributed to these duplicates.
Another factor lies in the delays in processing new membership cards at party authorities, said Mike Coates, president of Jean Charest’s team.
In his own letter to the Leadership Election Organizing Committee, Mr Coates argues that some activists who had purchased a first membership card bought a second one because they still had not received confirmation by the deadline. .