As most of you know, there are few politicians I view with more distaste than Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown. Brown would probably not be leader at all, in fact, if he hadn’t lied to a large number of voters and persuaded them that he was very conservative before promptly stabbing them in the back once he had secured the leadership. Since then, Brown has managed to alienate nearly every conservative faction in the PC party—when a video of him thanking Rona Ambrose for her years of service was shown at the federal Conservative leadership convention earlier this year, it was actually met with a chorus of boos. Conservatives don’t like Brown.
Brown knows that he doesn’t have a lot of friends in the rank and file, which is why there are constant accusations from nomination races across the province that he and his imported cronies are interfering. But Brown has to interfere in order to remake the PC party in his own image and restock the caucus with politicians loyal—or at least indebted—to him. One of the voices speaking out on Brown’s personal PC project is John Casselman, who with a number of others is working to inform Ontario’s conservatives of what is going on. In a recent email, he listed some of the evidence that Brown is not conservative and does not intend to govern as one:
For your consideration, here’s a short list of all the Liberal stances that Patrick Brown has taken on our behalf, with our money, and with our work and volunteer hours:
He flip-flopped and supported a carbon tax / carbon pricing;
He flip-flopped and supported Kathleen Wynne’s sex-ed curriculum;
He’s allowed a failed McGuinty Liberal nomination candidate to be hired at PC Party Headquarters (Costas Manios);
He’s allowed several candidates with past Liberal affiliations or world-views to run as conservative candidates;
He supports a $15/hour minimum wage;
He supported and whipped the vote for the provincial Islamophobia motion;
He supported and whipped the vote on removing the family roles of “father” and “mother” from all provincial legislation;
He supported and whipped the first vote on the Liberal Bill 89 allowing CAS to take kids away from families with traditional family values;
He has marched in several unnecessarily lewd gay pride parades while, simultaneously, spending six months publicly smearing many respected social-conservatives within the Party;
He’s over-looked clear incidents of ballot box stuffing;
He flip-flopped and appointed all 64 candidates up to that point on June 3rd instead of allowing the Party to judiciously adjudicate several legitimate appeals;
He has shown that he’s still willing to appoint candidates; and
He has shown little respect for all of these local or other concerns being raised and reaching a breaking point.
Many people believe that it is necessary to support Patrick Brown because otherwise Kathleen Wynne might hang on to her job. I don’t think that’s the case. There are individual PC candidates that I would be happy to support, but the Progressive Conservative Party as a whole is rapidly becoming no different than the Liberal Party—and Brown is working hard to ensure that social conservatives and other factions have no voice in the party that he is building for the purposes of serving his own political ambitions.
For conservatives to have a party and a premier that actually represents them and their interests at Queen’s Park, Patrick Brown must go–and conservatives must work to make that happen.
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