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Now that Patrick Brown is out as leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, some right-wingers he angered with his centrist politics aren’t necessarily rushing back.
Brown quit last week after CTV News reported on one woman’s allegation that he exposed himself to her and another woman’s claim that he assaulted her in his home. Brown, who has “categorically” denied the allegations, had pinned his hopes in June’s provincial election on promises way to the left of his party’s usual comfort zone: Subsidized electricity bills, tax credits for child care, a carbon tax. That’s just the start of the leftish promises in the 80-page Tory platform with Brown’s face big and proud on the cover.
Ottawa’s Jay Tysick sought the party’s nomination in the new Carleton riding but the party disqualified him before the vote in late 2016 — because, in his telling, his politics are too conservative for Brown’s middle-of-the-road vision. He tracked stories of disqualifications all over the province, grew increasingly disillusioned, and eventually quit to form the Alliance Party of Ontario.
Jay Tysick, left, confronted then Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown during a town hall at The Glen restaurant in Stittsville on Sunday January 29, 2017.
The party, whose name will soon be changed to Ontario Alliance, is a philosophical descendant of the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties that broke away from the federal Progressive Conservatives in the 1990s. More populist, more individualist, more religiously minded than the Tories, the party’s founding principles mark the supremacy of God, the importance of “natural families” and the benefits of small and decentralized government.
Tysick is the Alliance’s interim leader, until a full convention picks a permanent one, and claims 30 candidates for the election due in June (out of 128 ridings, but that’s still a lot for an upstart party) and several thousand members.
“We’ve got riding associations, we’ve got university clubs,” he said. The Alliance saw an uptick in new members once Brown’s scandal broke, he said.
“The party today is the exact same party it was two weeks ago. Nothing’s really changed,” Tysick said.
Brown is gone and his interim successor Vic Fedeli has purged the leader’s office; Tory party president Rick Dykstra soon resigned just ahead of a story (which he denies) that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2014. But the rest of the party executive is still in place and so are Brown’s policies. Fedeli also kept Brown’s chief of staff as his own.
Ontario PC party interim leader Vic Fedeli speaks at a press conference after a caucus meeting at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Friday, January 26, 2018.
Many of Brown’s backers have moved to support Caroline Mulroney’s yet-undeclared leadership bid. The rookie candidate in York-Simcoe, one of Brown’s prize recruits, could end up being Brown without the baggage, Tysick said.
“The platform … is still there. The candidates that Brown installed are still there,” Tysick said. “Brown was the face of the things that we were upset with and hoping to oppose. But with him gone, it’s still the same party.”
Fedeli is on the right track but there’s too much to do, Tysick said. “The task is too daunting. I wish him well, but I don’t know how far he’s going to be able to progress.”
Another outspoken Progressive Conservative dissident has a lot of the same concerns but more hope the Tories can be hauled back to the right.
Lawyer Jim Karahalios dropped out of the party’s nomination race in Cambridge last fall, alleging it had been rigged to help a candidate Brown favoured (Dykstra said it was “categorically false”). He ended up arguing that Brown’s support for a carbon tax made it impossible to be both a federal Conservative and an Ontario Progressive Conservative at the same time; the party sued him on claims he’d misused an illicit copy of the Tory membership list but lost.
In December, he said, he found out his membership had been revoked. He wants it back.
“I’ve always considered myself to be a PC party guy. You devote 15 years of your life to a party, (being ejected is) not going to deter me,” Karahalios said. “I believe that the vast majority of members of the party agree with me. I’ve always considered myself a PCer.”
He is not done fighting, however.
Since Brown’s downfall, Karahalios has been sending open letters about cleaning house in the Progressive Conservative party’s executive. After Brown went, he wrote that Dykstra had to go. After Dykstra went, he wrote that Fedeli needed to scrutinize the party’s membership list and reconsider the Brown-faced election platform.
“It’s not in alignment with what a majority of members believe. That’s clear. And that’s the fight: is to stop the splintering of conservatives in Ontario, because the PCs are the natural home,” Karahalios said.
Now, he said, the rules for the upcoming leadership contest are being drafted by an executive group still loaded with Brown’s people and could favour candidates who will just cement Brown’s legacy. Karahalios might run himself, if the party allows it and lets him propose the policies he favours.
“It’s traditional in politics that when a leader’s out, his team and the people he brought in, they bow out,” he said. “I am aghast, appalled, that they haven’t made an effort to create a transition that doesn’t appear to be free of conflict of interest.”
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
Brown quit last week after CTV News reported on one woman’s allegation that he exposed himself to her and another woman’s claim that he assaulted her in his home. Brown, who has “categorically” denied the allegations, had pinned his hopes in June’s provincial election on promises way to the left of his party’s usual comfort zone: Subsidized electricity bills, tax credits for child care, a carbon tax. That’s just the start of the leftish promises in the 80-page Tory platform with Brown’s face big and proud on the cover.
Ottawa’s Jay Tysick sought the party’s nomination in the new Carleton riding but the party disqualified him before the vote in late 2016 — because, in his telling, his politics are too conservative for Brown’s middle-of-the-road vision. He tracked stories of disqualifications all over the province, grew increasingly disillusioned, and eventually quit to form the Alliance Party of Ontario.
Jay Tysick, left, confronted then Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown during a town hall at The Glen restaurant in Stittsville on Sunday January 29, 2017.
The party, whose name will soon be changed to Ontario Alliance, is a philosophical descendant of the Reform and Canadian Alliance parties that broke away from the federal Progressive Conservatives in the 1990s. More populist, more individualist, more religiously minded than the Tories, the party’s founding principles mark the supremacy of God, the importance of “natural families” and the benefits of small and decentralized government.
Tysick is the Alliance’s interim leader, until a full convention picks a permanent one, and claims 30 candidates for the election due in June (out of 128 ridings, but that’s still a lot for an upstart party) and several thousand members.
“We’ve got riding associations, we’ve got university clubs,” he said. The Alliance saw an uptick in new members once Brown’s scandal broke, he said.
“The party today is the exact same party it was two weeks ago. Nothing’s really changed,” Tysick said.
Brown is gone and his interim successor Vic Fedeli has purged the leader’s office; Tory party president Rick Dykstra soon resigned just ahead of a story (which he denies) that he sexually assaulted a woman in 2014. But the rest of the party executive is still in place and so are Brown’s policies. Fedeli also kept Brown’s chief of staff as his own.
Ontario PC party interim leader Vic Fedeli speaks at a press conference after a caucus meeting at Queen’s Park in Toronto on Friday, January 26, 2018.
Many of Brown’s backers have moved to support Caroline Mulroney’s yet-undeclared leadership bid. The rookie candidate in York-Simcoe, one of Brown’s prize recruits, could end up being Brown without the baggage, Tysick said.
“The platform … is still there. The candidates that Brown installed are still there,” Tysick said. “Brown was the face of the things that we were upset with and hoping to oppose. But with him gone, it’s still the same party.”
Fedeli is on the right track but there’s too much to do, Tysick said. “The task is too daunting. I wish him well, but I don’t know how far he’s going to be able to progress.”
Another outspoken Progressive Conservative dissident has a lot of the same concerns but more hope the Tories can be hauled back to the right.
Lawyer Jim Karahalios dropped out of the party’s nomination race in Cambridge last fall, alleging it had been rigged to help a candidate Brown favoured (Dykstra said it was “categorically false”). He ended up arguing that Brown’s support for a carbon tax made it impossible to be both a federal Conservative and an Ontario Progressive Conservative at the same time; the party sued him on claims he’d misused an illicit copy of the Tory membership list but lost.
In December, he said, he found out his membership had been revoked. He wants it back.
“I’ve always considered myself to be a PC party guy. You devote 15 years of your life to a party, (being ejected is) not going to deter me,” Karahalios said. “I believe that the vast majority of members of the party agree with me. I’ve always considered myself a PCer.”
He is not done fighting, however.
Since Brown’s downfall, Karahalios has been sending open letters about cleaning house in the Progressive Conservative party’s executive. After Brown went, he wrote that Dykstra had to go. After Dykstra went, he wrote that Fedeli needed to scrutinize the party’s membership list and reconsider the Brown-faced election platform.
“It’s not in alignment with what a majority of members believe. That’s clear. And that’s the fight: is to stop the splintering of conservatives in Ontario, because the PCs are the natural home,” Karahalios said.
Now, he said, the rules for the upcoming leadership contest are being drafted by an executive group still loaded with Brown’s people and could favour candidates who will just cement Brown’s legacy. Karahalios might run himself, if the party allows it and lets him propose the policies he favours.
“It’s traditional in politics that when a leader’s out, his team and the people he brought in, they bow out,” he said. “I am aghast, appalled, that they haven’t made an effort to create a transition that doesn’t appear to be free of conflict of interest.”
dreevely@postmedia.com
twitter.com/davidreevely
查看原文...
