The wife was worried with my unrestrained laughter over breakfast. “Brown is back,” I finally managed to tell her. It was word in the Toronto Star that Barrie’s own Patrick Brown is running for chair of Peel Region that had sent me into paroxysms of laughter.
She did not think it was funny at all. Her first question was “Could he win?” I thought about that for about half a minute and nodded. “Yes.”
It is the same area in which Brown launched his scheme to win the leadership of the Ontario conservatives. The Hindu temples that he used as base to link all areas of sub-continent immigrants in Ontario are in the Brampton area which is the heart of Peel Region.
While I am sure my old friend Hazel McCallion, former mayor of Mississauga, could make short work of a putz such as Brown, you have to remember she is 97. He has a good chance in a large field of mediocre candidates such as those already nominated.
A four-year sinecure as Peel chair, paying about $175,000 per year plus lots of expense money, would please Mr. Brown no end. He could even use it as a calculated catbird seat for his future ambitions in Ontario politics.
Brown’s ‘tell-nothing’ book should be out in time for the October 22 election. It will probably be a rather fictionalized version of events leading to his downfall as Ontario conservative leader.
But neither can it include discussion of the reports from the young ladies who caused his downfall. That is the stuff of a lawsuit with CTV television. I expect the Bell Canada lawyers are going to be digging into that problem soon enough and Mr. Brown might have an undisclosed, but still handsome sum, to put aside for a rainy day.
I understand that Patrick has a ‘fiancé’ these days to keep him out of bars where underage ladies might be skulking in wait for him.
Just what he sees as the opportunity in the Peel regional chair eludes me. Admittedly, Paul Godfrey, went from regional chair in Toronto to some heavy wheeling and dealing in the newspaper business that has left him in a quite respectable position in which to retire.
But like in any other skulduggery, it is always a question of following the money. Running for regional chair is not an inexpensive undertaking. From the lakefront in Mississauga to the northern tip of Caledon is not a hop, skip and jump. There are about 1.4 million residents in that area and it keeps growing. You do not run for chair on a ward-healer’s budget.
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Copyright 2018 © Peter Lowry
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