Ford denies buying party memberships
Doug Ford just wanted to talk about how he would lower taxes, hydro rates and gas prices, and highlight an endorsement from a popular, nonagenarian ex-mayor. But the Progressive Conservative leader’s campaign was knocked off the rails Thursday by expanding allegations that he acted improperly to support a chosen candidate in his home riding, partly by shadowing the woman’s Tory rival to intimidate her. Ford denied that charge and the claim, first reported Wednesday by the National Post, that he paid for the memberships of new Conservatives who voted for Kinga Surma, helping her win the Etobicoke Centre candidacy in 2016. With the Liberals producing new revelations on the affair Thursday morning, Ford dismissed it as a last-ditch political attack by a party that trails far behind in the polls — though the original Post story was based solely on Conservative sources.
The PC party, he stressed, turned down a challenge of the nomination vote by losing candidate Pina Martino.
“This happened close to two years ago. It went through an appeals process. The appeal was totally dismissed,” Ford told reporters in Tillsonburg, Ont. “This is the Liberals two weeks before an election trying to change the channel on their mismanagement, scandal and waste.”
Polls suggest the Tories and NDP are deadlocked in the lead for the June 7 election, with the Liberals well back.
And though a string of disputed PC nominations has become a significant election issue, such controversies are not unique to the Tories. An alleged attempt by Liberal officials to bribe a wouldbe candidate they wanted to step aside in Sudbury, Ont., led to a criminal trial last year. Martino could not be reached for comment and the lawyer who represented her in the nomination challenge said he was not authorized to speak on Martino’s behalf. Surma’s campaign manager, Dan Jacobs, said she is out “working hard” and would not be commenting.
A former top Conservative official and a party member present at the November 2016 vote in Toronto told the Post that Ford paid for new Tories’ memberships — contrary to party rules — and bused many in to help Surma win the nomination.
On Thursday, the Liberal party released a recording of Ford and Surma and affidavits from Martino and two of her volunteers suggesting that numerous people had been signed up without their knowledge and/or without paying the $10 fee.
Martino also alleges, in what appears to be an email sent to then party lawyer Mike Richmond, that Ford tried to harass her.
“I have been subject to attempts to intimidate me by Doug Ford including him following me home after I had attended to personal business at 22 Division of the Toronto Police Service,” she says in the email, also released by the Liberals. “Further, he waited in the vicinity of my home and followed me a second time as I attended to other business.”
Ford denied the specific charges at the one campaign stop where he took reporters’ questions, though without going into detail. Asked if he had ever paid for someone’s party membership, he said simply “No.” When asked why he told people they didn’t have to pay for their memberships, he said again that an appeal of the nomination had been dismissed by the party.
Asked if he was trying to intimidate Martino by following her, he said “that never happened.” Ford said his focus is on winning the June 7 election and bringing in policies to reduce taxes, hydro rates and gas prices.
And for that kind of policy, he earned the videotaped endorsement Thursday of Hazel McCallion, the 97-year-old former mayor of Mississauga, an admired political figure in Ontario.
It was an oddly bipartisan gesture, though, as earlier in the day McCallion endorsed Charles Sousa, the Liberal finance minister, in his Mississauga riding. Etobicoke resident Anne Eastwood, who joined the party shortly before the nomination out of disillusionment with the Liberal government, told the Post she was appalled by what she saw at the meeting on Nov. 21, 2016, and by what some of Surma’s supporters told her there.
“They said, ‘Doug Ford came to our house, signed me up and paid,’” said Eastwood. “It is a swipe against democracy when you can just come in and buy memberships and then put people in, give people a (lapel) pin and tell them, ‘This is who you’re voting for.’ ”
The Liberals released a recording at a news conference Thursday they say was made by a customer at a Tim Horton’s coffee shop as Ford and Surma walked around and introduced themselves to diners. A woman who Liberal campaign co-chair Deb Matthews said is Surma asks someone if she would fill out a party membership form. A man with a voice that sounds like Ford’s interjects, saying: “You don’t have to fill that out. She’ll take your name, number; just sign it.”
Lengthy, detailed affidavits submitted to the party by Martino and two people who had done canvassing with her — Gordon Dawson and Doretta Wilson — documented more than 40 cases where recent party members indicated they had been solicited by Ford, Surma or both of them and did not have to pay for their memberships. Some said they didn’t even know they had been enrolled as Conservatives, according to the affidavits. National Post, with files from Sarah Krichel and Chris Funston, Brantford Expositor