Disqualified from the race for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), candidate Patrick Brown said Wednesday that he was evaluating his options to appeal the decision of the organizing committee to exclude him from the process. He also proclaimed loud and clear that his team had scrupulously respected all the electoral rules of the party and of Canada.
The race organizing committee took the decision, in an 11-6 split vote held on Tuesday night, to disqualify Mr Brown over what was described as ‘serious allegations of wrongdoing’ by the committee chairman Ian Brodie.
On Wednesday, CCP Chairman Rob Batherson confirmed the allegations came from someone on Mr Brown’s campaign team.
Neither Mr. Brodie, nor Mr. Batherson or the CCP has disclosed in detail the allegations made against Patrick Brown. The party and committee are now facing a barrage of questions from many members as well as former Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s campaign team, who want more information.
So far, Mr. Brodie has only said that the allegations relate to the financing rules of the Canada Elections Act and that the information would thus be passed on to Elections Canada.
Patrick Brown, who is mayor of the city of Brampton in Ontario, spent the day Wednesday giving interviews to the media. He told The Canadian Press that the race’s organizing committee, which sets the rules, received a tip from an anonymous source that someone working for his campaign would be paid by a private company.
Concerns were first raised last week with Mr Brown’s campaign team over his funding.
Fishing trip?
The candidate asked for details about the identity of the employee involved in the allegation or the company allegedly involved in the scheme, but no details were reportedly provided.
In his statement released after the disqualification vote, Ian Brodie said the party’s returning officer informed Mr Brown of his concerns and requested a written response. Mr Brown’s campaign response reportedly did not allay concerns and the returning officer then recommended that he be dropped from the race.
According to Patrick Brown, his team also had to respond to other allegations from the party that collaborators were also employees of the Brampton town hall office. His team ensured that in such a case, the contribution to the campaign was made outside working hours at the town hall.
Mr Brown accused the party of engaging in a “fishing expedition” against his clan, but assured that he “always complied with all bizarre requests and unsubstantiated claims” from the organizing committee.
“I’m angry, I’m disappointed. It’s unbelievable that such a thing happens, ”he said of his disqualification.
“We were, we believe, on the verge of winning the race. We thought we had a great trajectory,” he continued.
The former leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario points out that his team had recruited more than 150,000 new members for the CPC. Many of them come from cultural minorities in major cities across the country, where the party struggled to find support in the last federal election.
On allegations that a member of his team was paid by a company, Mr. Brown replied that his team has 1,800 volunteers across the country and that it is difficult to monitor what each person is doing.
“If there was anyone that the party would be aware of working for our campaign instead of being employed by them, we would be very happy to reimburse all costs, but that’s difficult to respond to allegations whose content we do not know, ”he says.
His team has consulted legal experts to assess possible remedies to overturn the decision, but the chances seem slim. According to the rules of the race, there does not appear to be an appeal process.
Party spokesman Yaroslav Baran told The Canadian Press that “there have been many […] allegations and accusations that have been made”.
He said he was not at all surprised to see “sand thrown in the air” by Mr Brown with his accusations that the situation had been handled unfairly.
“I can tell you that there are different categories of transgressions that have been alleged, and the (Conservative race organizing) committee had to make a decision based on their assessment of the nature of the allegations, the credibility of those who made these allegations, etc. »
Mr Baran said the list of party members that was relayed to campaigns last week – which is a very important document that candidates use to persuade party members to vote for them – was not provided to Mr. Brown’s campaign because he allegedly violated the rules of the race.
Patrick Brown lays the blame on the supporters of his opponent Pierre Poilievre, who would seek to exclude him from the race. He claims the CCP establishment wants to see Poilievre crowned.
Mr Poilievre’s campaign released its own statement on Wednesday, saying Mr Brown was attacking the party and trying to “turn himself into a victim”.
“As things stand, the only people who know the true extent of the causes of Patrick’s disqualification are Patrick and the (leadership race organizing committee). »
Mr. Brown also finds himself in hot water with his detractors at the municipal level, when five members of the Brampton city council planned to hold a press conference in the afternoon. They said in a statement that “once again, our beautiful city is in the national news for all the wrong reasons because of Patrick Brown.”
The Conservatives will announce the winner of the leadership race on September 10 in Ottawa.
Besides Messrs. Poilievre and Charest, the other candidates still in the running are MLAs Leslyn Lewis and Scott Aitchison, as well as Roman Baber, a former independent member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.
Patrick Brown’s name will remain on the ballots as many have already been mailed out to members.
Last week, the party said around 675,000 members had registered to vote for a new Conservative leader. The political party described this as an unprecedented number for any federal political party.
The pool of members eligible to vote in 2020, when Erin O’Toole was elected leader, was around 270,000. At the start of this year, the party said it had 161,000 active members across Canada. About 48,000 of the membership cards were due to expire before the membership deadline in June.