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With Patrick Brown out of the Conservative leadership contest, the Pierre Poilievre and Jean Charest campaigns are reaching out to organizers of the Brampton, Ont., mayor’s team to nab their support in the race.
“Poilievre and Charest have contacted us for our support,” said one Brown organizer, who spoke to The Hill Times on not-for-attribution basis to discuss details of their interactions with the two campaigns.
In a shocking move on July 5, the Conservative Party informed party members that the Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) had decided to disqualify Brown over concerns of financial irregularities and it was referring the case to the Commissioner of Canada Elections for further investigation. The committee said the party gave Brown ample opportunities to provide answers to the questions raised by LEOC, but the Brampton mayor’s campaign failed to satisfy their concerns.
In reaction, Brown came out swinging, blaming the Conservative Party establishment and Poilievre (Carleton, Ont.) of working together to undermine him because he was the main rival to the Ottawa-area MP’s campaign. The Poilievre campaign says it has signed up 312,000 members, while the Brown campaign claims it brought in 150,000 people. The total number of eligible party members to vote is 675,000, and the party has not released an official breakdown of the number of memberships attributed to each campaign. Brown said that the party never provided him the specifics of the allegation and denied him due process. As of late last week, his lawyers had advised the party that they intend to challenge the party’s decision in a court of law.
When the disqualification was first announced, media reports suggested that Brown had been removed based on complaints that at least one of his paid campaign staffers’ salaries were paid by a third-party private corporation. According to Elections Canada rules, corporations are not allowed to donate any money to any federal candidates. The personal donation limit is $1,625.
In another email on July 8, LEOC chair Ian Brodie told party members that they could not share all the specifics of the allegations against Brown for legal reasons. But, he said the Brampton mayor’s campaign “knew full well what the allegations were.”
LEOC chair Ian Brodie told party members on July 8 the party cannot share the specifics of allegations against Patrick Brown for legal reasons. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
“In the spirit of good faith and fairness, the party gave them every opportunity to clarify and resolve their concerns aside. Ultimately that effort failed,” Brodie said in the email obtained by The Hill Times. “To be clear, the Brown campaign knew full well what the allegations were. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply incorrect. LEOC could not afford the risk of having a leadership candidate under the investigation of Elections Canada for breaking federal law—especially one that did not answer the questions we put forward to him to bring him into compliance. Our leadership race is to select a person to contend for the role of prime minister of Canada. The process must be beyond reproach and in full compliance with the law.”
According to media reports, the final tally by the Leadership Election Organization Committee to disqualify Brown was 11-6. These reports suggested that the LEOC members who voted against Brown’s disqualification did so because they were not shown the evidence to substantiate the allegations.
The Brown campaign has retained legal counsel from high-profile firm Henein Hutchison LLP to challenge the LEOC decision to boot him from the leadership election, but according to the Conservative Party leadership rules, “All decisions of the LEOC are final and are not subject to internal appeal or judicial review.” It remains to be seen if a judge would still agree to accept Brown’s challenge of the LEOC decision.
“This decision is based on anonymous allegations. Our campaign was never provided with the full details or evidence of these allegations, failing an even basic requirement of due process. In recent days, the party has been on a fishing expedition requesting information with which we have co-operated entirely through our lawyers,” Brown said in a July 6 statement to party members. “LEOC never particularized the anonymous allegations, contrary to its statement tonight, and even though ample time was not provided to respond to questions we still complied with every bizarre request and unsubstantiated claim. Simply put, there was no due process provided in this decision, and an unprecedented reverse onus was applied to our campaign.”
The party said that the complaints about violations of the finance laws came from within the Brown campaign.
Marjory LeBreton, former government Senate leader in the Stephen Harper government, says that she’s ‘disgusted’ with the way the Conservative leadership election is unfolding. The Hill Times file photograph
On July 7, Debra Jodoin, a longtime party activist and former campaign organizer for the Brown campaign, issued a statement through her lawyer that she worked on the Brampton mayor’s leadership for a month but was reimbursed for her work and expenses by a private company. She said that Brown had personal knowledge of this arrangement. Jodoin said that through her lawyer, she contacted the Conservative Party to share this information with the party. She said she was issuing this statement on her own and was not coerced by anyone.
Meanwhile, three Brown organizers contacted by the Poilievre and Charest campaigns told The Hill Times that they would make a decision who to support after meeting with the two candidates. At the same time, they said, they expect that the party would make all the evidence against Brown public to satisfy rank-and-file members that everyone is treated fairly. They said they were saddened to see their first-choice candidate’s disqualification and wanted the party to be more transparent in sharing with party members why they decided to take this step.
Brown organizers waiting to weigh options
The Brown organizers interviewed for this article said they were first called by Poilievre and Charest campaign staff, and were later told that both candidates would either call them or meet them in person. These organizers said that they know that Poilievre is the frontrunner but will make a decision after meeting with both candidates.
“Whoever is best for the party and the country,” said one Brown organizer, describing what factors they will take into consideration before making a decision. “So my thing is, I want to see these allegations. I have asked the party to officially release this evidence. They [LEOC] say they have paper trail and they have text messages, so [I say to them] release it.”
The other two organizers echoed the same views. One organizer was hopeful that, considering the fact Brown has retained one of the most prominent lawyers in the country and was confident that he has done nothing wrong, that the Brampton mayor may be reinstated as a candidate again.
John Reynolds, national campaign co-chair of the Brown campaign, told The Hill Times that LEOC has “poorly” handled Brown’s disqualification. He said that, according to his information, the final tally for the LEOC vote was 10-6. Reynolds argued that the fact that six members voted against the party’s decision speaks for itself that they were not satisfied with the outcome. Before disqualifying Brown, Reynolds said, they should have provided the specifics of the allegations so that he could have a fair chance to defend himself. Also, he said the party could have passed on the allegations along with evidence to Elections Canada and not have booted Brown. This way, Elections Canada would have done its investigation and made a decision.
“They want to move [Patrick Brown out of] the race. It’s that simple,” said Reynolds. “The damage they’re doing to Patrick is unbelievable for something that he may know nothing about.”
After Brown’s disqualification, five candidates are left in the field competing for the party’s top job, including Conservative MPs Poilievre, Leslyn Lewis (Haldimand–Norfolk, Ont.), and Scott Aitchison (Parry Sound–Muskoka, Ont.); former Quebec premier Jean Charest; and former Independent Ontario MPP Roman Baber.
Nik Nanos, founder and chief data scientist for Nanos Research, said that after Brown’s disqualification, all leadership candidates would be under the microscope by rival campaigns to check if any of them violated the laws that the Brampton mayor has been accused of. He said that political parties never take the kind of extreme step as they did in Brown’s case unless they believed a serious breach of the rules had taken place.
“All the campaigns will now be under the spotlight because of this very drastic decision,” said Nanos. “So it’s a game changer for the Conservative Party because it negatively impacts its brand. It’s also a game changer for the race, because with Patrick Brown out the race—at least for many card-carrying Conservatives—it will be a race between a progressive alternative, Jean Charest; one anti-establishment alternative, Pierre Poilievre; and I also put Leslyn Lewis in there, as a social conservative.”
He said that whether Poilievre wins or Charest wins, the unity of the party is at stake.
“The Conservative movement will be divided coming out of this leadership, regardless of what the outcome is,” said Nanos. “For a significant proportion of Conservatives, if Pierre Poilievre, as the anti-establishment candidate, wins, they will walk. Likewise, for another significant proportion of Conservative Party members, if Jean Charest wins—who’s the progressive—they will walk.”
Former Conservative senator Marjory LeBreton said that she was disappointed with the way the party has run the leadership contest. She said there should have been more transparency in handling the Brown case.
“There seems to be so many unanswered questions. We’re supposed to be the party of openness and fairness and transparency,” said Lebreton, who was the government Senate leader and a senior minister in the Stephen Harper cabinet. “I’m just disgusted by the whole thing.”
The Conservative Party was formed in 2003 after the merger of the Progressive Conservative and Canadian Alliance—two now-defunct right-of-centre parties with sharply different ideological positions on social and economic issues. Before the current leadership contest, the Conservatives have had three leadership elections, and after each, at least one unsuccessful candidate has either left the party or was pushed out for various reasons—but in each case, the conflict started during the preceding leadership election.
After the 2004 leadership election, runner-up Belinda Stronach left the party to join the Liberals; after the 2017 leadership race, second-place finisher Maxime Bernier left the Conservative Party to start the People’s Party of Canada; and, after the 2020 leadership election, Erin O’Toole (Durham, Ont.) expelled fourth-place finisher Derek Sloan from the Conservative caucus. Sloan has also started his own party: the Ontario Party.
arana@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times
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