To ignore the obesity problem is not compassionate.
In the end, in the immortal words of Groucho Marx, Patrick Brown didn’t want to belong to any club that would accept him as a member.
In this, he showed excellent taste too, just as Groucho did when speaking about the now defunct Friars Club in Beverly Hills.
And the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario did want Brown — sort of, kinda, for a while, well a bit anyway, you know, until the first opportunity came along to dump him, and then they were merciless.
He was, to be sure, a flawed candidate for the leadership that was, mere weeks ago, his.
He has on his plate allegations ( albeit much- calledinto- question allegations) of sexual impropriety, a justopened investigation into his real estate holdings by the provincial integrity commission underway ( albeit prompted by a complaint from one of Brown’s most bitter antagonists, renegade MPP Randy Hillier), lingering questions about just how much he had grown the party membership ( albeit raised by interim party leader Vic Fedeli, who quit the leadership race in 2015 and backed Christine Elliott over Brown, and briefly showed a raging hunger for the permanent job again, until caucus decided it wouldn’t just be handed to him) and constant sniping and leaking from other fellow Conservative MPPs.
No sooner had CTV aired its sensational story alleging Brown had acted badly with t wo unidentified young women (I phrase it that way because the allegations certainly didn’t rise to the level of criminal conduct, and as the story weakened over the ensuing days and weeks, it’s even debatable they rise to the level of that beloved modern # MeToo catchword, “misconduct”) on Jan. 24 than the party began the process of throwing their beloved leader under the bus.
The speed with which Brown was castrated that evening was always shocking.
In a matter of hours, he was done, with nary a voice in his party — or much anywhere else — raised in his defence or, more important, in defence of fair play.
But thanks to a terrific Maclean’s magazine scoop by reporter Jen Gerson ( ex of the National Post) exactly a month later, the world now knows exactly how shabby and self-interested are many of those in that party.
Gerson got a copy of the audio of a conference call held on Jan. 24.
Brown had held his news conference, announcing he was innocent of wrongdoing and would stay on to fight, at 9: 45 p. m. that evening, shortly before CTV went on the air with its story.
By 10: 30, the PC caucus was in full seek- and- destroy mode, as Gerson’s stor y makes clear.
While at least 20 of the party’s 28 caucus members were on the line at various points, the discussion was led by Hillier and party whip John Yakabuski, who kicked things off by modestly proclaiming that “nobody has been any more loyal to their l eaders than me” — you know, except that night, with that leader.
He immediately called for Brown’s head.
At one point, MPP Ted Arnott asked about the allegations, and “What, exactly, do we know for sure?”
“Two women accused him and so far — two of his top staff and two of his top campaign team — have urged him to resign,” Hillier answered.
Arnott asked who the women were, and what exactly they were alleging.
“I’ve read the allegations, Ted,” Hillier said. “They’re two young women and there’s — I’m not going to reiterate,” as though, just by repeating the allegations, Hillier would be soiling himself.
Caucus wanted Brown to resign, that night. Nothing less would do.
Virtually no one stuck up for him.
And when — these folks are the Keystone Kops of politics, who couldn’t organize a secret stab- in- the- back conference call any better than they could a one- car funeral — it turned out that Brown and his deputy communications person, Rebecca Thompson, were also on the line, the Tories pressed on.
Brown begged for the decision to be put over until the morning and vigorously defended himself ( or tried to) against the allegations, at one point saying, “Listen, it’s like being hit by a truck with these statements. Imagine this happened to any of you. Imagine someone making up bulls--t about you and you’ve got no time to respond.”
They would have none of it.
It’s all over now, since Brown quit a second time this week, and the leadership candidates, Fedeli et al want nothing more than to move on down the road.
But the truth is, Brown was done in by the very party he grew (and at least according to Thomas DeGroot, the party’s executive chair of IT, Brown did grow it — hugely, to 234,066 members) and whose leadership he won fair and square back in May three years ago.
A lot of the caucus never backed or much wanted him. But a lot of those ordinary new Conservatives, many from ethnic communities, did. How interesting it will be to see how many of them get their memberships “verified” by the March 2 voting deadline.
Brown hasn’ t said definitively if he plans to run again as an MPP. Bets are Groucho, having seen the nest of vipers that is this club, wouldn’t.