After the Legislature of Ontario rose for the holidays there must have been a press gallery gathering to talk about how to handle PC Leader Patrick Brown. The discussion might not have got very far but there must have been general agreement that the socially conservative website LifeSiteNews has a point in referring to him as a “shape-shifting weasel.”
Those of us familiar with Brown are quite willing to go along with that for his epitaph. He does go to a lot of trouble to convince you that he is whatever you want him to be. He was raised a Roman Catholic and has all the words handy to convince the devout of his sincerity. It was no surprise that in free votes in the House of Commons, he voted in favour of socially conservative issues.
Brown has always worked hard in his electoral district at keeping the Barrie Christian Council on side. While the stronger churches in Barrie today appear to be the socially-conscious as opposed to the more doctrinaire, the council has kept close contact with the City Council. Brown counts on this religious group for support.
In nine relatively wasted years voting Conservative for Stephen Harper in Ottawa, Brown’s only responsibility was to get re-elected. He promoted this by pre-empting fund-raising for local charities. Every month, he would pick one or two charities to support on his taxpayer-funded mailings to his electors. He was known for supporting charities and spending the most of all MPs on taxpayer-funded mailings. Many constituents foolishly claimed they voted for him because he did “such a good job for charities.”
What he really did was stifle the charities and interfere with their fund raising. The worst situation in this regard was the co-opting of Hockey Night in Barrie which started as a fund-raising effort for Royal Victoria Hospital. The hockey players and RVH staff involved could not object to Brown’s getting himself included. There is no question that his imprimatur helped make the event more successful but there were many questions asked about expenses, cost to Barrie taxpayers, actual funds raised and the need for auditing of the entire event.
Brown continues enjoying the notoriety of the event today without making any further contribution.
But the main concern for people in the Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte provincial electoral district is where does this guy really intend to take this province. It all depends if you like surprises!
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Copyright 2017 © Peter Lowry
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