Ottawa West-Nepean among ridings to hold new PC nomination contests
Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives have decided to hold new nomination contests in two ridings — Ottawa West-Nepean and Scarborough Centre — after a party committee met to review disputed candidate selections.
The party’s provincial nominations committee met Friday evening to examine allegations of voting irregularities.
In a brief statement, committee co-chair Ken Zeise announced the committee decided unanimously to hold the two new contests, with further details to be provided later.
The decision came after Tory candidates in three ridings — Ottawa West-Nepean, Scarborough Centre and Newmarket Aurora — released a statement Friday asking for the review to be halted.
“We learned today that there are actions being taken against a number of candidates by certain individuals based on rumours and innuendoes,” the statement from Thenusha Parani, Karma Macgregor and Charity McGrath said. “What’s more, we have not been asked for or provided an opportunity to provide our perspective.”
Macgregor won the nomination in Ottawa West-Nepean on May 6 under suspicious circumstances that caused a rift among PCs in the riding, held by Liberal Bob Chiarelli. She defeated secondplace finisher Jeremy Roberts by a mere 15 votes but officials discovered there were 28 more total votes than there were registered voters.
Furthermore, a list of eligible voters included a large number from a Bayshore apartment tower but 71 voters had no unit number and 58 had phone numbers with Toronto area codes. Concern was so deep in the weeks following the vote that riding president Emma McLennan went so far as to call the process “cheating.”
The party has been dogged by controversial nomination battles in ridings across the province, including allegations of votestuffing. In the riding of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas, police are investigating the PC nomination.
The party eventually hired auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers to oversee their nomination contests after complaints began to emerge.
The candidates under review had asked PC leader Vic Fedeli and the party’s three leadership candidates to end the probe and focus on the provincial campaign.
Caroline Mulroney, one of the leadership candidates, said she would leave any decision about the nomination battles to Fedeli. But Doug Ford, another competitor, told CTV News he’d like to see the contests run again.
The review also came as the party deals with the discovery of a significant discrepancy in its membership numbers. An email recently sent to the Tory caucus and obtained by The Canadian Press showed the party has roughly 67,000 fewer members than the 200,000 claimed by former leader Patrick Brown.
Jim Karahalios, a former party member who clashed with Brown over the nomination process and other issues, said Friday that the Progressive Conservatives have no choice but to start from scratch in the contested ridings.
“I don’t think it helps our party or the next leader to go into an election campaign where people are questioning the legitimacy of the candidate in the race,” he said.