Rival campaign harassed supporters, Brown says
Tory leadership contender alleges Elliott team targeted his backers by telephone
Dirty tricks allegations are surfacing again in the Progressive Conservative leadership race, with Barrie MP Patrick Brown’s campaign accusing rival MPP Christine Elliott’s team of harassing his supporters by telephone.
The calls appear to have targeted Brown backers with “non-English names,” Mark Towhey, executive director of the Brown campaign, said Tuesday.
Brown’s campaign, which has made a point of courting new Canadians as PC members, has lodged a complaint with the party and is considering one to the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
“There are well over two dozen calls that I have examples of,” Towhey added, noting they started late last week within a couple days of PC officials releasing party membership lists with phone numbers.
The campaign for Elliott (Whitby— Oshawa) categorically denied any involvement in the calls as the campaign enters its final four weeks, with many observers saying the May 9 result is too close to call. “The claims made by Patrick Brown’s campaign are false,” MPP Todd Smith, one of the 17 Tory MPPs supporting Elliott, said in a statement.
“They are attempting to distract our party’s members from the real issue: defeating the Liberals and forming government in 2018.”
The calls appear to be from a call centre and have been made by both male and female voices, Towhey said.
Party members are asked which candidate they are backing. When they answer Patrick Brown, “the caller reportedly becomes abusive and demands personal financial information from the supporter, alleging something is wrong with the membership or they may have broken the law,” Brown’s campaign said in a statement.
“When asked, the callers reportedly identify themselves as calling on behalf of the Christine Elliott campaign,” added the statement, acknowledging there is “no independent verification.”
None of the calls has been recorded but complaints coming in to Brown’s campaign office are similar, particularly in the last 48 hours, Towhey said, noting calls have been mainly to South Asians. “A lot of people are screaming.” Brown’s lawyers are collecting more information with an eye to a CRTC complaint.
Smith said Elliott’s campaign is using call centres to reach out to members of a “diverse party” with members from “numerous communities who speak a number of languages.
“As is common among all leadership campaigns, to ensure we connect with as many members as possible and understand the issues that matter to them, our campaign is using multilingual calling services.”
The leadership race took an ugly turn in early March when Rida Ali, a one-time aide to third-place candidate MPP Monte McNaughton (Lambton—Kent—Middlesex), was charged with four counts of criminal harassment-communicate and one count of criminal harassment-threaten.
Toronto police laid the charges after workers for Elliott’s campaign received threatening text messages. McNaughton’s office said
Ali, 22, who in February was appointed director of events for the PC Youth Association, is free on $1,000 bail and has maintained her innocence. Details of the threats cannot be reported because of a publication ban. She had been working in McNaughton’s office and volunteering on his leadership campaign