Veteran party organizer wins PC presidency
A veteran party organizer who enjoyed Premier Doug Ford’s support won the presidency of the Progressive Conservatives on Sunday, defeating a grassroots activist who made his name battling former leader Patrick Brown.
A majority of party delegates cast ballots for Brian Patterson at a weekend convention in Etobicoke, where members from across Ontario celebrated the PC victory in the wake of more recent sex scandals and controversial cuts in the government’s fall economic statement.
Patterson has worked with every leader dating to former premier Bill Davis in the early 1980s, played key roles in the governments of Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, then helped rebuild the party after its 2003 drubbing by Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals.
“I look forward to working with each of you to keep our party strong and ready to win again in 2022!” Ford said on Twitter, congratulating Patterson and the new party executive.
Patterson, who avoids the limelight and was elected to a two-year volunteer term, could not be reached for comment. His opponent was Jim Karahalios, a lawyer and husband of backbench Cambridge MPP Belinda Karahalios.
Instrumental in exposing problems in Tory candidate nomination votes under Brown and in fighting the former leader’s promise of a carbon tax, Karahalios campaigned on bringing “a higher standard of integrity” to the party.
The convention, which attracted more than 1,000 delegates to the Toronto Congress Centre, was rife with federal overtones as Conservatives took aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon pricing plan to fight climate change.
With a national election looming next fall, guest speaker federal Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer charged that the prime minister is treating card-riving commuters as the “enemy” while Ford told loyalists “I will not sit by and let Justin Trudeau make life more expensive for Ontario seniors and families.”
Trudeau fired back on another front, taking aim at Ford’s moves to cut Ontario’s French-languages services commissioner and to scrap plans for a francophone university in the province, which the PCs backed in the June election campaign.
“I was deeply disappointed by the decision of the Ontario government to cut services and protections for the francophone minorities in Ontario,” said the prime minister, suggesting the issue will have ramifications beyond the province’s borders.
“The protection of official language minorities across our country, the protection of the French language across our country and francophone communities, is something that is extremely important to me and to my government.”
New Quebec Premier François Legault said he will raise the issue when he meets with Ford at Queen’s Park on Monday. The cuts have been widely criticized in Quebec — a crucial battleground for the Conservatives in next fall’s election — as an assault on minority language rights.