As much as the Conservative Party of Canada would like to believe otherwise, the odour coming from its decision to abruptly disqualify Patrick Brown from the party’s leadership race this month has not gone away.
This is true in spite of the fact that Mr. Brown has ended his campaign, saying he’s effectively been left with no way to overturn his disqualification before the votes are counted on Sept. 10. He says he’ll vote for the other leading progressive in the race, Jean Charest. And this week he said that he’ll seek re-election as mayor of Brampton, Ont.
No doubt the party would like to wash its hands of the matter. Nothing to see, people. Move along.
But while Mr. Brown’s campaign is over, the story of its termination isn’t. There are too many questions about how it was put down to ignore the suspicion that there is more to this than meets the eye.
It begins with the upshot of Mr. Brown’s disqualification. In a leadership race that is a proxy for the Conservative Party’s internal battle between its Reform Party wing, embodied by Pierre Poilievre, and its vestigial Progressive Conservative wing, now represented by Mr. Charest, the elimination of Mr. Brown has tilted the field in Mr. Poilievre’s favour.
That is not to say this was necessarily the party’s intention. But it’s a fact that Mr. Poilievre has by far the most support among MPs, senators and the post-Stephen Harper establishment. It’s also a fact that Mr. Brown was the leading challenger to, and harshest critic of, the populist Mr. Poilievre. If (or as now appears likely, when) the latter wins the leadership, there will be questions about whether he got the job in part because his chief rival was abruptly and summarily banished from the race.
Which brings us to the banishment.
The party dropped a bombshell on July 5 when it announced it was disqualifying Mr. Brown based on “serious allegations of wrongdoing … that appear to violate the financial provisions of the Canada Elections Act.”
It then clammed up, claiming that, since it had sent its evidence to Elections Canada, it could not possibly comment on an ongoing investigation.
It was poorly justified, and looked all too convenient. Disqualifying a leading candidate in the middle of a leadership race, based on unproven allegations the party did not make public, yet which it alleged “appear” to involve wrongdoing, seems like a disproportionate response no matter who is involved. It’s not in sync with a party that claims to believe in transparency and due process.
If the party had a smoking gun, why not make it public? It leaves people wondering whether the evidence now in the hands of the commissioner of Canada Elections was not enough to summarily convict and sentence Mr. Brown in so consequential a way.
What is known is that a whistleblower told the party that Mr. Brown was aware that a corporation was paying for her work as a campaign volunteer, a violation of the Canada Elections Act. That’s a serious charge. But it is not a proven one. And Mr. Brown says that, when his campaign became aware this allegation, it reimbursed the corporation more than $7,000, a remedy permitted under the law.
It will be up to the commissioner of Canada Elections to sort it out, but therein lies another twist that is convenient to the Conservative Party: Any decision is almost certain to come long after the race is over. Just last week, the commissioner publicized a series of fines related to violations of the Canada Elections Act committed during the – wait for it – 2019 election campaign.
So it may well be that, years after the new Conservative leader is installed in September, Mr. Brown will be cleared of wrongdoing. That alone should have prompted the party to give him the benefit of the doubt and let him continue his campaign.
Instead, as much as the party may want to pretend otherwise, the Conservative leadership campaign is tainted by the whiff of interference on behalf of a preferred candidate.
There are two things that could change that perception: Mr. Poilievre doesn’t win; or Mr. Brown someday finds himself in court, charged with a serious violation of the Canada Elections Act, and is found guilty. For Mr. Brown, an appearance before a court would at least be different from the Conservative expulsion process. He would, after all, be allowed to defend himself.
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