True believer
City councillor working to help Brown regain leadership of Progressive Conservative party.
A St. Catharines city councillor is campaigning for embattled PC party leadership candidate Patrick Brown and says he’s not worried about blow back.
St. George’s Coun. Mike Britton says he volunteered for Brown’s first campaign a few years ago and jumped on board again a few days ago when Brown re-entered the race for leader.
“Patrick has come out and disproven the allegations,” Britton said in an interview by phone from Toronto. “I feel like he’s cleared his name. And that’s why I can stand behind him pretty confidently.”
Britton said the choice for him was simple.
The other PC leadership candidates have their own strengths, he said, but none of them are running on a costed platform.
Britton, who is vice chair of the city’s budget standing committee, said he’s concerned about dollars and cents and saving taxpayers money.
“I’ve chosen Patrick because he’s the one who has the plan — he built the plan with the grass roots,” he said, referring to The People’s Guarantee. “I was involved with that process where he reached out to more members than ever before in the party’s history to create a grass roots platform, and he’s the only one that’s sticking with it.”
Brown was chosen as party leader in May 2015 and filled the role until late last month, when he stepped down amid sexual misconduct allegations, which he has denied. The party then launched a short leadership race.
Britton was photographed by the press walking behind Brown as they left the Ontario PC Party head offices in Toronto on Tuesday, the day before the party approved Brown to run for the leadership. The photo was widely used by national media and Britton took criticism on Twitter from some Niagara residents who recognized him.
He said some of those comments were directed at him simply because he was helping the Progressive Conservative party and were made by people who are not Progressive Conservatives.
He said he’s ok with that criticism because he believes the party is the right one to get the province “back on track.”
But is he worried that supporting Brown despite the allegations will impact his own political career?
Britton said some of the allegations against Brown have proven to be completely false and some are in the process of being proven to be false.
“If I, if any of us, were just to let that go by and say ‘No, we don’t want to support Patrick or we don’t want to get behind Patrick because of these allegations’, that would mean that it could happen to anyone,” he said.
“I do have a vested interest in that as a young politician, as someone who’s involved with democracy and trying to better our community be it city or region or the province. If we just let these allegations go and we let these people get tried in the court of public opinion, that’s not good for democracy.”
Britton said the people chose Patrick the first time as leader as he’s confident they’ll choose him again.
“Do I worry that it’s going to affect me? No, I don’t, because from what I’ve heard on the street, I’ll be walking with Patrick downtown and people are stopping him and all we’ve heard is positivity, saying ‘what they did to you is wrong ’. ‘I’m with you Patrick’.”
“It’s really unified people that you wouldn’t have expected. Even people who didn’t support Patrick in the first leadership race are now supporting him in the second leadership race because they believe he was unjustly tried in the court of public opinion and now he’s a fighter.
“It’s the comeback story and I think people like that.”
Britton said he believes Brown will be able to get his platform message out despite what’s happened and will be able to unify the party before the fast approaching June provincial election.
He said Brown inspired him throughout his term as leader by building a team that is more diverse and more inclusive. He marched in the gay pride parade and brought in cultural communities from all across the province.
“I think that with the party he’s built, he needs to finish the job and that’s what he’s coming back to do.”