PC party facing local uproar

Accused by members of rigging nomination for Cambridge riding

CAMBRIDGE — Ontario’s Progressive Conservative party is being accused by its own members of rigging the nomination process in Cambridge to favour a handpicked candidate parachuted in by the party leadership.

Local nominees were left scrambling Tuesday to get their applications submitted before a 5 p.m. deadline that was imposed with little notice by the central party in Toronto.

Riding association members say the PC head office hijacked the nomination process, pushing up the date to select a candidate by a full month — giving local nominees little time to register voters who could shore up their support, they say.

An emergency meeting has been planned this week as the riding association tries to respond to a decision that one former candidate says has already created a rift within the party. Two local nomination committee chairs have resigned in protest.

Party president Rick Dykstra, meanwhile, called the allegations of meddling in the Cambridge race “categorically false.” But local party members clearly feel the nomination process has been compromised.

“Quite honestly, I’m pissed off,” said Ron Dancey, a longtime party member who sits on the Cambridge riding association’s official confirmation nomination committee.

“The central party never talked to us. Now everybody is scrambling, and we’ve got good people who want to run. They were blindsided by this.”

Five people were able to register ahead of Tuesday’s deadline for the nomination contest. Those seeking the nomination are Bert Laranjo, Sandip Atwal, Paul Brown, Joshua Carron and Tanya Khattra. Khattra, a dentist from Calgary, is new to the community, while Laranjo lives in Dundas but works in Cambridge.

At least two other local candidates either dropped out or didn’t file their paperwork

because of the interference from PC headquarters, Dancy said.

“They saw that the fix was in,” he said.

Cambridge is held by Liberal MPP Kathryn McGarry, but many in the party feel it’s a winnable seat for the PCs. Some are concerned a so-called parachute candidate would squander that opportunity.

Others are blaming the party’s leader Patrick Brown for overriding the local association and angering the party’s grassroots supporters.

“I see this as a war by Patrick Brown on local party members. There’s no other way to explain it,” said Jim Karahalios, a conservative activist who had been seeking the provincial nomination in Cambridge, but dropped out.

“The people who did get their paperwork in early, they’re not even local residents. They think they can come in at the last minute, and carpetbag it … but I don’t think these outsiders would have a chance of winning against a local candidate.”

Karahalios is calling on party members to sign a protest petition and push for an emergency convention that would amend the party’s constitution — and prevent the party’s leader from picking local PC candidates.

Normally, the riding association’s nomination committee interviews the nominees, and makes a recommendation to the party leadership, Dancy said. Instead, the local committee was completely cut out of the process, he said.

Dykstra said the local committee is welcome to interview the nominees, now that the deadline has passed. The upcoming spring election shouldn’t have surprised anyone, so those interested in seeking the local nomination have had a long time to get their ducks in order, he said.

Some candidates have had their nomination papers filed since May, he added.

“Do you make someone unhappy with every single decision you make? Obviously there are some people who believe the date should be a little later, but why? So we can have nine or ten candidates?” he said.

“I’m not saying they all have to agree 100 per cent, but certainly there was nothing that led us to believe this wouldn’t be a good date to complete by.”

Nominees only found out last Friday that the deadline to get their paperwork filed was Tuesday. For people who were waiting for a timeline for the nomination process, that’s not enough notice to gather their 20 signatures, get party memberships renewed, and get their application in, Dancy said.

“We would have given them much more time to get their papers filed,” he said.

Dancy also says the local nomination committee had settled on Nov. 4 as the date for their nomination meeting — but that date was changed to Oct. 4 without explanation by the central party. That violates the rules that said the local association still had weeks to go before the central party could step in, he said.

“They haven’t followed their own rules, in my opinion,” he said.

Cambridge is only the most recent riding where PC party members are crying foul, accusing their own party of meddling in nomination races around the province. Those allegations include ballot-stuffing, falsified membership forms, fake and paid-for memberships and other irregularities.