Volunteers in two Ottawa PC riding associations quit en masse
Two Progressive Conservative riding associations in Ottawa have suffered the mass resignation of volunteers amid concerns about leader Patrick Brown.
thestar.com
By ROBERT BENZIE
June 26, 2017
Differences with Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown have triggered the mass resignation of volunteers from two Tory riding associations in Ottawa.
The Ottawa West-Nepean executive board quit on Friday to protest the controversial nomination there last month where there were ballot-stuffing allegations.
That exodus followed the Kanata-Carleton Progressive Conservative riding association’s decision to break with the party on June 11, complaining of a “toxic and destructive” environment.
They are loyalists to MPP Jack MacLaren, who left the Tories to join the fledgling Trillium party late last month.
In a letter to PC executive director Bob Stanley, departing Ottawa West-Nepean riding association president Emma McLennan said the entire executive would step down.
“The board is resigning because we strenuously disapprove of the undemocratic decisions that Patrick Brown and the party leadership have made in relation to the OWN (Ottawa West-Nepean) nomination process,” McLennan wrote.
“We will not continue to support a leadership that condoned the serious, even fraudulent, irregularities at our nomination meeting,” the long-time party volunteer continued.
“Frankly, what this party has done to Ottawa West-Nepean is stunning and unforgivable,” she wrote.
“When you denied our members their right to a fair vote, you made a mockery of the basic principles of democracy that we value as Canadians.”
Earlier this month, Robert Elliott quit as the Conservatives’ third vice-president and policy chair to protest shenanigans in the May 6 nomination.
The nine-year party vice-president, and chief returning officer for the 2015 Tory leadership contest won by Brown, questioned why there were 28 more ballots in boxes than people that had registered to vote.
Karma Macgregor defeated runner-up Jeremy Roberts by 15 votes in Ottawa West-Nepean. Roberts abandoned a challenge to the result, which has been accepted by Brown.
Nomination problems there, in Newmarket-Aurora, and in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, where there is a legal challenge to the results, have led the Tories to hire private-sector auditors PwC to oversee candidate elections.
The situation in Kanata-Carleton differs because it is about political ideology, not electoral problems.
In a June 11 email to PC executive director Stanley, former riding association president Tim Broschuk decried the centrist direction Brown is taking the Tories.
“After almost a decade of volunteering, first as donors, then as door knockers and later as riding executives, we believe that we’ve been here long enough to understand the trajectory of the party’s culture, its people and its identity,” wrote Broschuk.
“We can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as we have ever seen it,” he continued.
“The party has veered so far from the place we joined that we can no longer in good conscience say that we identify with what it stands for. We knew it was time to leave when we realized that we could no longer look our members in the eye and tell them what a great party we had.”
Broschuk said he and the other executive members were alarmed that “many of the leadership in our party don’t display a Conservative culture.”
“It astounds me how little the party’s leadership gets a basic truth: if members don’t trust you they will eventually stop supporting you. It doesn’t matter how clever you are. I hope this can be a wake-up call for you.”
Rick Dykstra, the PC party president, played down the controversies in the two Ottawa constituencies.
“There will be new annual general meetings in these ridings to elect new executive members, who I know will help us mount a formidable campaign effort to beat the Liberals in the next election,” Dykstra said in an email.
