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Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown is trying to figure out what to do about troublesome Ottawa-area MPP Jack MacLaren, after MacLaren’s second apology for embarrassing misjudgments in as many weeks.
Last time, it was for telling dirty jokes about Liberal MP Karen McCrimmon, to her face, in front of an audience of 350 people at a cancer fundraiser. Now it’s for using made-up names and pilfered pictures to stand in for constituents supposedly singing his praises in testimonials on his website.
“Measures were taken to protect the privacy of individuals who provided positive feedback to my office,” MacLaren said in a written statement after the Citizen first published a story that traced the photos to random photographers’ Flickr accounts and news stories from around the world (he had not responded to two days of attempts to reach him before the story ran). “While this was not intended to be misleading, I recognize that it was improper. I apologize and have asked for the content to be removed immediately.”
And indeed, by mid-morning Wednesday, MacLaren’s MPP website first had the testimonials page yanked off it, and then went down entirely.
MacLaren himself was in Toronto, where he was in the legislature for a morning sitting and then hid out for over an hour while Queen’s Park reporters waited to talk to him. He eventually emerged and headed straight to his office without speaking.
This is probably for the best. MacLaren is not always his own best advocate and his capital with Brown is clearly running low.
“My office is gathering all of the facts. Caucus discipline is an internal matter. Once I have all the facts, I will weigh my options,” Brown said in a statement of his own.
That was the whole thing. If the premier said that about a cabinet minister, you’d assume he or she’d be out in the next shuffle. If the general manager of a hockey team said it about the coach, the coach would pack up his office.
Brown owes MacLaren. He was the second sitting MPP to endorse Brown’s outsider candidacy to lead the Progressive Conservative party and gave Brown a shot of credibility in the party early, when he needed it most. MacLaren speaks for the rural-populist movement represented by the Ontario Landowners’ Association — they’re not numerous but they’re committed, and MacLaren brought them to Brown’s camp. Brown rewarded him with senior caucus jobs as natural resources critic, boss of the party operation in Eastern Ontario, and chair of a panel on property rights.
People who knew the provincial party better than Brown did when he arrived could have predicted what’s happened since: MacLaren’s been a lot of bother.
He was already known for causes like abolishing the Niagara Escarpment Commission and promoting the idea that the government can’t regulate what people do on private land if somebody can dig up an original Crown patent for it. He’s rejected climate change as a hoax and frets that the United Nations is trying to take over our lives through something called Agenda 21.
Let’s call that stuff eccentric. Anyway, at least it has an audience.
But MacLaren, emboldened by his leader’s confidence, has been increasingly active. As the party’s ambassador to Ontario’s Tamils, he introduced a Sri Lankan as a friend and guest at Queen’s Park who was facing deportation for terrorism. He picked a backroom fight with fellow MPP Lisa MacLeod that Brown had to stop before it turned into a war. The dirty-jokes episode is horrifying for a party Brown wants to present as modern and inclusive. Now he’s hacking away at the party’s credibility on basic facts, like that people it claims as supporters do, in fact, exist.
That credibility is already fragile, given the nonsense platform it offered in the last election.
MacLaren is a gaffe-machine that we have no choice but to assume would be a minister in a Patrick Brown government, given his current prominence. Brown can’t let that situation stand. He doesn’t owe MacLaren that much. Other conservatives in Ontario who want a viable Tory party certainly don’t.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
Last time, it was for telling dirty jokes about Liberal MP Karen McCrimmon, to her face, in front of an audience of 350 people at a cancer fundraiser. Now it’s for using made-up names and pilfered pictures to stand in for constituents supposedly singing his praises in testimonials on his website.
“Measures were taken to protect the privacy of individuals who provided positive feedback to my office,” MacLaren said in a written statement after the Citizen first published a story that traced the photos to random photographers’ Flickr accounts and news stories from around the world (he had not responded to two days of attempts to reach him before the story ran). “While this was not intended to be misleading, I recognize that it was improper. I apologize and have asked for the content to be removed immediately.”
And indeed, by mid-morning Wednesday, MacLaren’s MPP website first had the testimonials page yanked off it, and then went down entirely.
MacLaren himself was in Toronto, where he was in the legislature for a morning sitting and then hid out for over an hour while Queen’s Park reporters waited to talk to him. He eventually emerged and headed straight to his office without speaking.
This is probably for the best. MacLaren is not always his own best advocate and his capital with Brown is clearly running low.
“My office is gathering all of the facts. Caucus discipline is an internal matter. Once I have all the facts, I will weigh my options,” Brown said in a statement of his own.
That was the whole thing. If the premier said that about a cabinet minister, you’d assume he or she’d be out in the next shuffle. If the general manager of a hockey team said it about the coach, the coach would pack up his office.
Brown owes MacLaren. He was the second sitting MPP to endorse Brown’s outsider candidacy to lead the Progressive Conservative party and gave Brown a shot of credibility in the party early, when he needed it most. MacLaren speaks for the rural-populist movement represented by the Ontario Landowners’ Association — they’re not numerous but they’re committed, and MacLaren brought them to Brown’s camp. Brown rewarded him with senior caucus jobs as natural resources critic, boss of the party operation in Eastern Ontario, and chair of a panel on property rights.
People who knew the provincial party better than Brown did when he arrived could have predicted what’s happened since: MacLaren’s been a lot of bother.
He was already known for causes like abolishing the Niagara Escarpment Commission and promoting the idea that the government can’t regulate what people do on private land if somebody can dig up an original Crown patent for it. He’s rejected climate change as a hoax and frets that the United Nations is trying to take over our lives through something called Agenda 21.
Let’s call that stuff eccentric. Anyway, at least it has an audience.
But MacLaren, emboldened by his leader’s confidence, has been increasingly active. As the party’s ambassador to Ontario’s Tamils, he introduced a Sri Lankan as a friend and guest at Queen’s Park who was facing deportation for terrorism. He picked a backroom fight with fellow MPP Lisa MacLeod that Brown had to stop before it turned into a war. The dirty-jokes episode is horrifying for a party Brown wants to present as modern and inclusive. Now he’s hacking away at the party’s credibility on basic facts, like that people it claims as supporters do, in fact, exist.
That credibility is already fragile, given the nonsense platform it offered in the last election.
MacLaren is a gaffe-machine that we have no choice but to assume would be a minister in a Patrick Brown government, given his current prominence. Brown can’t let that situation stand. He doesn’t owe MacLaren that much. Other conservatives in Ontario who want a viable Tory party certainly don’t.
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
