Poilievre accuses Brown of paying supporters
Campaign files complaint with party
Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre's campaign issued a formal complaint to the Conservative Party of Canada alleging paid-for party membership fees and other undeclared expenditures by opponent Patrick Brown's team, the National Post has learned.
Poilievre's national campaign co-chair and Conservative MP Tim Uppal sent a letter to Ian Brodie, chair of the Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC), on June 10 to inform the Conservative party of what Uppal calls “concerning membership sales practices” from the Brown campaign.
The Conservative party has confirmed that it has received the complaint and is investigating the allegations, but “will not have anything more to say” until the investigation is concluded.
None of the allegations the Poilievre campaign has made in the letter about Brown's campaign are proven. A spokesperson for the Brown campaign, Chisolm Pothier, said the claims were “manufactured by the Poilievre campaign” and maintains that they have no merit.
The sanctions laid out by LEOC'S rules and procedures for the leadership say that candidates violating the rules of the leadership race can be subject to a fine, a warning or possibly disqualification from the race.
In the complaint letter obtained by National Post, Uppal said that the Poilievre campaign received “repeated reports” that people claiming to be organizing for the Brown campaign were arranging to reimburse membership fees in cash to those who agreed to join the party using the Brown campaign's web portal.
“As described to us, the individual would join the party using his or her own credit card, and would be reimbursed by the organizer using funds supplied by the organizer,” wrote Uppal.
The letter adds that Arpan Khanna, Ontario co-chair of the Poilievre campaign, was “approached” by members of the South Asian community “who reported being offered reimbursement of membership fees and additional financial inducements” in return for joining the party.
Community members provided Khanna copies of messages sent via the social media app Whatsapp that allegedly showed Brown supporters offering to refund fees for those who signed up for memberships in support of Brown. Screenshots of the messages are attached to Uppal's complaint letter
The letter also references a call allegedly recorded by one of the members of the South Asian community with a Brown supporter, in which arrangements of providing money in exchange for signing up members were allegedly discussed. The conversation is in Urdu, a language spoken widely in Pakistan and India.
The National Post obtained a copy of the recording and shared it independently with two Urdu-speaking sources unaffiliated with either the Poilievre or Brown campaigns.
Both described the exchange as a conversation between two men discussing an apparent deal in order to sign up new members for Brown, with the man recording the conversation stressing he cannot afford to pay for so many memberships from his own pocket.
His interlocutor tells him not to worry and that he will be reimbursed for the memberships in cash. He also adds that he is not benefiting financially from the agreement.
“Based on reports we received, we believe that the practice described in the audio recording was being pervasively practised by the Brown campaign in an effort to drive membership sales,” writes Uppal in his complaint letter to the Conservative party.
“If you conclude, as we believe you should, that the Brown campaign has sanctioned this practice, we encourage the Party to take strong steps directed at Brown as a candidate.”
Pothier, director of communications for Brown's campaign, said no one on his team recognized the individuals in the recorded video as belonging to the Brown campaign, and that “no one on that call was acting with authority from the campaign.”
“There is no way this can legitimately be linked to the Brown campaign given the evidence provided,” Pothier wrote in an email to National Post.
“It seems like a set up to give the Poilievre campaign an issue. We have seen strange, over the top behaviour from the Poilievre campaign demonstrating a distinct lack of confidence for a supposed front-runner recently, so this is not shocking.”
Poilievre and Brown's teams have been butting heads since the start of the leadership race, with each one accusing each other of being dishonest.