Sudden end to Brown’s career

The calls started going out around 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Ontario Progressive Conservative officials were delivering a vague warning to their members of the provincial legislature: Something major would be happening that night involving their leader, Patrick Brown.

Clearly, it wasn’t going to be good news. But the calls gave little indication of what was to follow.

Interviews with three party insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed that the PC Members of Provincial Parliament largely learned about allegations of sexual misconduct against their party’s leader at the same time the rest of the public did: First on Twitter, then during Brown’s solitary news conference at 9:45 p.m., and finally in full detail on the CTV National News broadcast at 10 p.m.

The allegations came from two women who said Brown had provided them with alcohol in his Barrie, Ont., home and aggressively propositioned them. One of the women was still in high school when the incident allegedly occurred; the other women described her experience as sexual assault.

The allegations, which took place before Brown became Ontario PC leader in the spring of 2015, have not been proven in court and Brown has called them “categorically untrue.”

Brown held a hastily announced 9:45 p.m. news conference at Queen’s Park to defend himself.

But members of the party caucus decided to take matters into their own hands. The 29 MPPs were united and firm: Brown could not stay on as leader.

At 1:24 a.m., the Ontario PC Twitter account posted a link to Brown’s statement of resignation.