It is all Patrick Brown’s fault. I was rereading one of my blogs complaining about the past year in politics and I realized that it was all that damn Brown’s fault. I am holding him to blame for a really bad year. I am talking about the Patrick Brown, who was, at one point, my member of parliament, then leader of the Ontario conservatives, then mayor of Brampton, when he really wanted to be chair of Peel region, and, while mayor of Brampton, ran for the leadership of the federal conservative party, likely as a stalking horse for former Quebec premier John Charest. And you would think, if he could do all that, he could do one of those jobs properly.
Brown is a boy from Barrie who was trained as a lawyer, who might not have bothered passing the bar exam, since he fell in love with politics. And, to be honest, he was good at it. He found it easy to get elected on Barrie council. From that launching pad, it took him two tries to take out the incumbent liberal MP and head for Ottawa. I met him in that first winning federal election—and disliked him before I knew who he was and why he was at my door.
Brown became known politically as a retail politician. He made sure he was known for supporting local charities. He developed and ran a hockey night in support of the local hospital and made sure his name was prominent. It got him re-elected. It got him to successfully gerrymander the two Barrie ridings that were created for the growing city. He made sure there were sizeable numbers of strongly conservative rural voters added to the new urban constituencies.
Brown became bored with Ottawa. He did little. I listened to him read a speech for Bell Canada at a CRTC hearing. He saw what Jason Kenney was doing for the Harper government in the ethnic communities and must have befriended him. Kenney gave him the Indian sub-continent to be MP liaison. Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims have been immigrating to Canada from there since our country started keeping track of immigrants in the 1890s. The two largest groups of Sikh immigrants are in Brampton, Ontario and Vancouver, B.C. Hindi and Moslem immigrants spread out, mainly in Ontario.
Patrick Brown easily signed up more than 40,000 temporary members of the Ontario conservatives, many from the Indian sub-continent. And he won the Ontario leadership.
There were rumours that questioned the legitimacy of many of Brown’s sign-ups. There were other rumours as to his relationships with women. It made some claims about his relationships seem more credible. They led to his downfall as Ontario leader of the conservatives and a lawsuit over the claims. It also led to the subsequent win by Doug Ford of the Ontario party leadership.
So, we can blame Patrick Brown for Doug Ford becoming Ontario premier.
As you know, Brown ended up as Brampton mayor. It is credibly believed that he won because he promised the Sikh population there that he would convert more of the city parks to cricket pitches. Most Sikhs love cricket.
And then there was the federal conservative party leadership. In this fiasco, Brown appeared to be a stalking horse for former Quebec liberal premier, John Charest. A stalking horse is supposed to sign up temporary members and then drop out and ask all his sign-ups to vote for a specific candidate. Brown failed to do the job, was pilloried by his party for reportedly ignoring the rules and maybe even the law.
So, we can blame Patrick Brown for Pierre Poilievre winning the federal conservative leadership.
And, we can also blame Patrick Brown for Justin Trudeau staying on as prime minister because it should be easy for Trudeau to deal with Poilievre.
Patrick Brown, you let us down.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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