In an erudite e-mail the other day a reader equated Ontario Conservative Party Leader Patrick Brown’s intelligence to that of a barrel of axe handles. He felt that it was a measure of our democracy where “someone as disadvantaged as Patrick can aspire to the leadership of a political party.”
But dammit, he should go away to Toronto and do the job that he appears to have bought and paid for. We are quite tired of him hanging around Barrie, spending our federal taxes to continue to promote him self. We excused the terribly self-serving, four-colour, full page ads in the local papers after he had resigned from the Parliament of Canada. We figured it was his last hurrah and good riddance.
But no such luck. We got another ugly grey mailing from him just this week promoting his half marathon promotion in June. It clearly said that it was from MP Patrick Brown and you could get more information on this event by e-mailing him at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.
Is he or is he not a Member of Parliament? Is he or is he not the Leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario? Is he fish or fowl?
And now he is getting the New Democrat opposition in Ottawa in on the act. It appears that they have officially complained to the federal Board of Internal Economy about Brown’s attendance in Ottawa while running for the Ontario party leadership. They point out that if you show up for just 31 out of 131 votes in the House over the past seven months you are hardly doing your job as an MP. And they believe that using federal government communications to run for the Ontario party leadership is also a no-no.
But it is hardly a surprise to Barrie residents that Mr. Brown is using every loophole available to him to use our tax dollars for his benefit. Having attempted to analyze the figures reported from his last federal election campaign, we can only comment that the boy might have a future as a fiction writer.
And we still do not know who paid the more than $400,000 for the memberships in the provincial Conservative party that got the leadership for Mr. Brown.
It is wonderful to live in a democracy. It does not mean that persons such as Mr. Brown can abuse that democracy for their personal gain.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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