Patrick Brown Ousted From CPC Leadership Race
We’re playing catch-up again! By the time this article is published it will have been almost two months since Patrick Brown was expelled from the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race over allegations of financial misconduct. Let’s take a look at where he is now and how he got here:
On July 5th, chair of the leadership election organizing committee, Ian Brodie, announced that Patrick Brown had been disqualified from the CPC leadership race. The disqualification came as a result of a whistleblower, Debra Jodoin, who was an ally of Patrick Brown and long time organizer for the CPC, revealing that she had been paid by a third party for her work on the Brown campaign. Jodoin said she voiced concerns with Brown about her pay arrangement and was told he would fix it but ultimately took no, or insufficient, action. The CPC committee tasked with deciding Brown’s fate was said to have found sufficient evidence to disqualify Brown for violations of the Canada Elections Act, including evidence related to other allegations of using money orders to buy party memberships and allowing non-compliant membership sales through a portal, and did so after an 11-6 vote.
The CPC said they gave Brown several opportunities to rectify the issues and remain a part of the leadership race, including both Brodie and party lawyer Arthur Hamilton personally working for a week to find a way for the Brown campaign to remain viable, but Brown has pushed back and said that no details of the allegations were shared with him and that when questioned by the CPC committee, he was unable to provide solid answers due to the questions lacking details. The CPC has pushed back against those claims saying Brown gave evasive answers, excuses, and was unable to convincingly defend himself. Brown has since said that the CPC is taking an extreme jump to the right and that the “old boys club” of the CPC wanted to clear the field for Pierre Poilievre.
His disqualification from the federal leadership race has paved the way for him to seek a second term as Mayor of Brampton but he faces a challenge in convincing Bramptonians that being Mayor is not his second choice and another in leading a deeply divided city council. Following his disqualification, a group of five Brampton city councillors released a statement decrying Brown’s pattern of bad behaviour and calling for forensic investigations into allegations of financial and contract irregularities. The divisions on the council are partly due to the hasty appointment of Elaine Moore to replace Charmaine Williams on the city council. Moore had made it clear that she would support investigations into Brown’s worrisome behaviour including giving a firm that employed his best friend three times the council-approved amount for BramptonU, deliberately misleading the integrity commissioner by not disclosing that $375,000 out of the $2.3 million he needed to buy a new home came from a man he gave a PC nomination to as PC leader, and a host of others. and so Brown and his council allies (Rowena Santos, Harkirat Singh, Michael Palleschi, and Paul Vicente) boycotted four council meetings to protest her appointment before taking the issue to the Ontario Supreme Court. The court agreed with Brown and his council faction and ordered the five councillors (Jeff Bowman, Martin Medeiros, Gurpreet Dhillon, Pat Fortini, and Doug Whillans) to pay a $20,000 fine. Since then, the “anti-Brown” faction have refused to participate in rescheduled council meetings claiming that they are on summer recess and Brown should be aware of their plans. Brown has floated the idea of fining councillors who miss five consecutive meetings.
It's clear that Patrick Brown has a real mess on his hands, and it can be hard to tell who’s controlling the narrative. His issues with the city council are important because some of those issues (specifically the aforementioned purchase of his new house) gave Brodie pause while vetting him as a CPC leadership candidate. It should be fair to say that Patrick Brown does have a troublesome past of bad or “not-good” behaviour and so believing that he did violate the Canada Elections Act shouldn’t be controversial. However, it’s also important to consider the other side of the story. Ian Brodie was the Chief of Staff for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper; the same Stephen Harper that gave a rare endorsement to Pierre Poilievre, who previously served as a cabinet minister in Harper’s government. It does sound a bit like an “old boys club”, doesn’t it? Couple that with the fact that the CPC committee vote was only 11-6, and not unanimous, in the face of what is supposed to be compelling evidence, and you can clearly see why Brown may feel like he’s being pushed out of Poilievre’s way, and why he might be right. For his part, Brown has shifted his focus to his mayoral campaign and has thrown his support behind Jean Charest for leadership of the CPC. Perhaps when the leadership votes are tallied, we’ll have a clearer picture of just how much his disqualification was due to his own behaviour, and how much was due to the “old boys club”.