PM THE BIG WINNER

Tory brand takes another hit with Brown ousted from race

There’s no way to make this look good: The Conservative Party kicked out one of the three candidates thought to have a chance of winning the Conservative leadership race to oppose Trudeau in the next Federal election, just as ballots were being mailed out.

So party members, the voters, will get ballots that will allow them to vote for a candidate who is no longer allowed to see the party’s highest office.

The only person smiling over this should be Justin Trudeau, who gets to watch his opponents shoot themselves in the foot once again.

News of Patrick Brown being ousted as a candidate, hit the airwaves a week ago Tuesday with a text message arriving at 8:48 p.m.

“They are now trying to get Patrick disqualified,” said the text. “There is a LEOC meeting happening now.”

LEOC stands for leadership election organization committee. This is a group that sets the rules and determines which candidates are allowed to run.

Frantic calls, emails and text messages to the various campaigns didn’t turn up any proof of what was being claimed and then a statement was released at 10:46 p.m.

“In recent weeks, our party became aware of serious allegations of wrongdoing by the Patrick Brown campaign that appear to violate the financial provisions of the Canada Elections Act,” the statement from organizing committee chair Ian Brodie said.

The party said it was serious enough to refer the matter to Elections Canada, meaning a possible violation of federal election law. Party officials also said they wouldn’t provide details of the allegations and wouldn’t be saying anything more at that point.

That allowed the rumour mill to start turning.

Brown has faced many claims that his campaign didn’t follow the rules, but without evidence to back that up, it’s nothing more than rumours. We’ve heard all kinds of claims against Brown, but we’ve seen very little in the way of evidence from those making the claims.

Brown spoke to the media last Wednesday morning and he said that this was all due to an anonymous complaint that an organizer somewhere had been paid by a private company to work on his campaign . He said that he wasn’t given any information on who the organizer was or who the company allegedly paying the organizer was, meaning he couldn’t refute the claim.

“You can’t fight a phantom,” Brown said. That’s true. You need to know the accusations and the identity of the accuser to respond.

Otherwise, anyone can claim anything and make it stick. The Conservative Party of Canada is still refusing to release the information that led to Brown being booted as a leadership candidate.

That said, a party official said Brown was given evidence, ample time and ample opportunity to respond to the allegations against him – he just didn’t do it. This will come down to who you believe.

Brown said this is happening to ensure Pierre Poilievre wins the leadership race. “As always, when caught, Patrick tries to make himself into a victim, but ultimately the only person responsible for his disqualification is himself,” a statement from the Poilievre camp said.

The other candidate, Jean Charest’s camp, sent a note to supporters saying that this didn’t change their campaign, but called for more transparency from the party.

One party official, speaking on background, admitted that this didn’t look good, but said the alternative of not acting was worse. The problem, though, is how swing voters will see this.

Are the people fed up with a Trudeau government that can’t offer basic services to Canadians going to hand power to a group of people that has trouble running its own leadership campaign?

It’s a valid question to ask.