Something smells in Brampton, Ontario, and it is not the roses that the city is famous for. Patrick Brown has returned to confuse and compound. A lost boy, Patrick clings to Brampton as his life raft in a stormy sea.
The former city councillor and Member of Parliament for Barrie, Ontario never has been tuned into the Brampton mysteries. He never understood the understated humour of former premier of Ontario Bill Davis. Bill was always proud of being from Brampton. It is a small town with grand ambitions.
It is not a Barrie, wrapped around a beautiful bay. It is not a Barrie, well-served with a major hospital and community college with links to major universities. It is not a Barrie with a hard-working city council. It is not a Barrie with its year-round tourism attractions. It is not a Barrie where a political Patrick Brown honed his skills as a retail politician.
A retail politician such as Patrick was never countenanced in Brampton. Retail politicians sell themselves. The brand is immaterial. A retail politician is a user. People are used and then discarded. Aides, are flattered and then floored when unknown. Voters are only a seasonal target.
Brown’s success as a retail politician was greatly expanded when fellow MP Jason Kenney explained to him the key to the ethnic diasporas of Canada. Kenney arranged for his young acolyte to make the long pilgrimages to India and Pakistan to make the connections to the Canadian diaspora from the Sub-Continent. It was how he swamped the membership in the Ontario progressive conservatives to win the leadership of Ontario’s conservatives. It was how he connected to more than 100,000 temporary sign-ups to the conservative party of Canada. It was what won him the Brampton stage four years ago.
But there is little honour in being a retail politician. You are kept busy keeping too many balls in the air. Mistakes can be made. Rules can be broken. And members of Brampton city council started to understand the callowness and selfishness of this gate crasher in the mayor’s chair. Patrick Brown just might have struck out this time. It might be time for him to get a real job.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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