Spurned Hamilton PC candidate taking party to court

A defeated Progressive Conservative nomination candidate has filed a lawsuit against the party alleging fraud at a selection meeting last month in Ancaster.

Vikram Singh, a lawyer and a runner-up in the four-contestant May 7 PC nomination in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, has gone to court seeking to overturn the election won by Ben Levitt.

Singh has named Tory Leader Patrick Brown, party president Rick Dykstra, PC executive director Bob Stanley and staffer Logan Bugeja in the suit filed with the Ontario Court of Justice in Hamilton on Tuesday.

Claiming party brass showed “bad faith” and contravened the PC constitution, Singh is demanding that he be declared the Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas nominee for the June 7, 2018 provincial election or that another nomination meeting be held.

His allegations, which have not been proven in court, include the claim that there was a “wrongful insertion of false ballots” at the six-hour candidate election and that problems at the meeting’s credentials desk hurt his candidacy. The nomination meeting was held at Ancaster High School.

“Singh was the true winner of the nomination contest ... if ... not for the wrongful electoral irregularities,” his suit alleges.

Jeff Peller, another runner-up in the May 7 vote, who is not part of the suit, has also expressed concern about what he called “a sideshow masquerading as a democratic process.”

At Queen’s Park, Brown, who has certified all nominated Tory candidates, said he couldn’t comment on the case, which will be heard in Hamilton June 20, because it is before the courts.

“The fact that so many people are coming forward in nomination — the fact, that so many new members are coming in — there will be times when there is acrimony, but there is certainly excitement in our nominations,” the Tory leader said.

Given the divisions over the “hotly contested nominations ... I have gone one step further than political parties have before, after hearing concerns that people were becoming overly competitive and overly aggressive. I actually went to the extent of bringing in PwC.”

Auditors at PwC have found no issues in the nominations they’ve observed since being hired in early May.

Brown also said he fully supports Levitt. “I think he’s a great candidate and he’ll make a great MPP.”

A PC vice-president quit in protest from the party executive two weeks ago after officials papered over a questionable nomination in Ottawa West-Nepean amid allegations of ballot-stuffing there.

Robert Elliott resigned as the Tories’ third vice-president and policy chair after the June 3 meeting where Brown was given the authority to sign off on all of the contentious candidates. Elliott, a nine-year PC vice-president and chief returning officer for the 2015 leadership contest, took a stand after a May 6 nomination race in Ottawa. In that nomination, Karma Macgregor won by 15 votes over runner-up Jeremy Roberts, even though there were 28 more ballots in the boxes than had registered. Roberts’ appeal of the result was rejected by the party executive.

There were similar problems at the PC nomination in Newmarket-Aurora.