OTTAWA –
Patrick Brown’s campaign said it was consulting with its legal team after the organizing committee for the federal Conservative leadership election voted to disqualify him from the race late Tuesday.
Ian Brodie, the commission’s chairman, announced the stunning move in a written statement after a meeting to discuss the matter.
He said the party recently learned of “serious allegations of wrongdoing” by the Brown campaign.
The charges relate to funding rules in the Canada Elections Act, Brody said, but did not provide further details.
Brown’s campaign responded with a statement accusing the party of basing its decision on “anonymous allegations” and without providing full details or evidence.
It accused the party of going on a “fishing expedition” and not giving the campaign “sufficient time” to respond, but said it “still complies with every outlandish request and unsubstantiated claim”.
The move is further said to disenfranchise thousands of Brown supporters who bought party memberships by the June 3 deadline to select his name on the Conservative Party’s ranked ballot.
“This is reprehensible, undemocratic behavior that violates the faith of hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have embraced Patrick Brown’s vision for a modern, inclusive Conservative Party,” the statement said.
In a statement late Tuesday night, Brody said the party’s chief returning officer informed Brown of the concerns he had received about his campaign finance, requested a written response and decided to withhold the provisional list of members from his campaign.
Brody said the response from Brown’s campaign did not address the concerns, and the chief returning officer recommended the leadership election’s organizing committee disqualify him, which voted to do so.
Brodie said the party will share what it has with Elections Canada.
He said both he and the party’s chief returning officer have done everything they can to be fair to Brown, who is the current mayor of Brampton, Ont., and a former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. He also said they had done their best to provide time to refute the allegations.
“None of these issues have any impact on the integrity of the vote itself,” Brody said.
“While we felt it was important to provide a transparent response to party members on this matter, as this matter is now subject to further investigation, we will not be speaking further on the subject.”
Brown’s campaign has accused the party of acting in favor of the leadership candidate seen as his main rival for the top job.
“Why is the party doing this? It expected the coronation of Pierre Poilliever,” the statement said.
The campaigns for Poilievre, a longtime Ottawa-area MP, and Brown attacked each other throughout the race.
Poilievre had yet to respond to the organizing committee’s decision on the leadership election as of late Tuesday night.
The campaign for former Quebec premier Jean Charest, who is also in the leadership race, responded by calling the news “deeply troubling.”
“We await further communications regarding the allegations of wrongdoing,” Charest campaign spokeswoman Michelle Coates-Mather wrote.
“Transparency is paramount. We need to find out what the allegations are and how Patrick Brown’s campaign is responding.”
The Conservatives will announce the winner of the leadership race in Ottawa on September 10.
The other candidates in the race are Leslyn Lewis and Scott Aitchison, Conservative MPs from Ontario, as well as Roman Baber, a former independent member of the Ontario legislature.
Although disqualified, his name is still expected to appear on the ranked ballot. A party spokesman said late Tuesday that many of them had already been mailed to members.
Last week the party said around 675,000 members had signed up to vote for a new Conservative leader.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 5, 2022.
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