Ontario Tories flirt with creative self destruction
Days after Patrick Brown’s flame-out as Progressive Conservative leader and a caucus vote installing MPP Vic Fedeli as interim leader, many Tories believe a cabal led by Fedeli might try to derail a leadership race prior to the June election. Then, on Sunday, party president Rick Dykstra resigned.
Say this for Ontario’s Tories: they know how to dream up creative losing scenarios. Patrick Brown’s sudden departure amidst sexual assault and coercion allegations last week made John Tory’s religious schools funding and Tim Hudak’s 100,000 public-sector job cut promise look like minor whoopsy-daisies.
And just days later, many Tories are convinced something even more spectacular and potentially damaging is taking shape.
On Friday, caucus voted North Bay MPP Vic Fedeli as their interim leader. Hours later, the party executive announced party members would elect a permanent replacement, who would carry their flag into the June 7 election. It seemed to many like the least bad option — a return to relative normalcy after Brown’s China Syndrome meltdown on Wednesday night.
Now, would you believe a cabal led by Fedeli might try to engineer the cancellation of that leadership race, on the premise that Brown left the party in such a shambles that it’s unable to fairly elect his successor?
It’s utterly absurd. But many Tories are convinced it’s afoot.
Over the weekend, longtime party fundraiser Thom Bennett fired off an email alleging that the PC Ontario Fund, under Brown, had been “bleeding — nay gushing ... hundreds of thousands of dollars” towards defending lawsuits by disgruntled candidates and enriching people with connections to party bigwigs. Bennett demanded an investigation; Fedeli supported the idea. Some believe those opposed to a leadership campaign will argue the financial irregularities mean they can’t spend what it would cost to hold a campaign. (The 2015 campaign cost the PCs around $500,000, according to a party source.) Others think they will point to long-alleged irregularities on the member rolls, or even IT problems, as precluding the vote.
Some, like Bennett, think caucus ought to choose the candidate on principle.
“I am at a total loss as to what the thinking could be that our executive would tell our elected MPPs — those soldiers who are putting their name in front of the electorate time after time — to screw off,” he wrote. “I fear that this executive decision spells the death knell of the PC Party of Ontario!”
From the beginning, Fedeli seemed to regard himself as more than a placeholder.
In his inaugural news conference he constantly referred to himself as “party leader,” never mentioning the I-word. He said it was in deference to the party constitution — but that document only says he is to “be recognized as the leader by the party,” and only “until the completion of the leadership election.” Win or lose on June 7, Fedeli would face a vote on his leadership by party members within 18 months.
Engineering this manoeuvre could involve sacking Brownappointed members of the board that manages the PC Ontario Fund, and/or forcing out party president Rick Dykstra and replacing him with someone more inclined to stick with Fedeli. (Dykstra has also been accused of enjoying the company of very young women in boozy environments; allegations he has denied.)
Dykstra tweeted his resignation Sunday evening, saying he would “take a step back for someone else to lead us through the hard work.”
There are countless scores to be settled in the wake of any transition, let alone one as dizzying as Brown’s. And unless some adults can regain control of the situation, the Tories now risk snatching catastrophe from the jaws of disaster.
There are risks in an open contest. Doug Ford might throw his grenade into the ring. Social conservative or anti-carbon tax candidates could reopen wounds that seemed to have at least been bandaged by the middle-of-theroad People’s Guarantee platform Brown unveiled. Centrists in the party would delight in extended media coverage of a relatively genteel battle between Fedeli and presumed candidates Rod Phillips and Caroline Mulroney. Media would delight in it all spinning out of control.
But there are risks in anything other than an open contest: restrict the race to current MPPs and nominated candidates, or force all candidates to endorse the People’s Guarantee, and you risk alienating non-centrists just as much. Nobody wants to vote for a party with an interim leader. And to say the party is too dysfunctional even to hold a onemember-one-vote leadership campaign is basically to invite people to vote for someone else.
Meanwhile, the party’s chief of staff, Alykhan Velshi, and director of communications, Nick Bergamini, two of the four who announced their resignations the night that Brown was ousted, have now returned to the fold, according to The Canadian Press.
The worst of all worlds, surely, is what’s being speculated about: tell the rank and file they’ll get a vote, yank the vote just a few days later, then ask them to go out knocking on doors for the party and enthusiastically mark their X beside the Tory candidate on June 7.
There have been a lot of crazy rumours since Wednesday; most have so far come to naught, and this still might. But if the party hasn’t dissolved into a toxic soup of recriminations, infighting, blind stupid ambition and terrible ideas, then a great many of the people within it certainly think it has. The best-case scenarios some of us dreamed up after Wednesday night’s melodrama already look pretty silly.
I fear that this executive decision spells the death knell of the PC Party of Ontario!