the Walnut Diary

This week’s sudden departure of Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown left many viewers not knowing what to think.

From a historical perspective it was easy. The last two PC leaders scored own- goals during their election campaigns. John Tory promised full funding for religious schools in Ontario. Tim Hudak’s difficulties with basic mathematics led to an implied promise to fire 100,000 provincial public servants in order to balance the budget. So Patrick Brown’s alleged seduction efforts easily fit into an existing narrative of Progressive Conservative leaders shooting themselves in the foot to allow another Liberal victory.

I distrust political narratives. Considering that the sins brought forward in this case allegedly occurred about a decade ago while Brown was still a backbencher in the Harper Government, I find it hard to believe that the timing of this scandal does not have more to do with the preparation of some individual or group for the June provincial election campaign than any sense of moral indignation.

Patrick Brown is out, his career destroyed by rumours from two complainants and his sudden and utter repudiation by his own party. At what point does the initially positive energy of #MeToo degenerate into a witch-hunt mechanism available to cut-throat political operatives?

In a column two days ago The Toronto Star’s Rosie DiManno famously asked, “Show me a male over the age of 16 who hasn’t asked a female (or another male) to ‘Suck my d—.'”

But PC MPP Lynn McLeod created a tizzy Friday morning when she told a reporter that she had reported Brown’s womanizing to the party executive two or three times last fall. After a caucus meeting she hastily backtracked on that statement, explaining that she had told a friend, Dimitri Soudas, at that time a volunteer setting up a war room for the Brown campaign. This left in the clear the four executives who had resigned so abruptly when the scandal broke.

McLeod further credited ex-NHL star Eric Lindros with the initial source of the rumours. Intrepid reporters from competing media (CTV exclusive scoop, eh?) canvassed bars in Barrie and seemed to have little difficulty unearthing rumours about young women “going to Brown’s house” and one bartender’s comment about the non-drinking Brown’s “peacock behaviour” in the local bar scene.

This coup just doesn’t sound like something Kathleen Wynne would get up to. Her policies may have many Ontario voters on edge, but she has no history of going for the ad hominem cheap shot.

On the other hand columnists this week have had no difficulty finding sources to speak about the split in P.C. ranks over Brown’s win of the leadership. Hostile takeover, voting irregularities, “instant Progressive Conservatives” hinted at Brown’s machinations, while others commented about the leader’s enigmatic personality and lack of warmth.

To my mind the Progressive Conservative party were suspiciously well organized to deal with this crisis when it came up. Faced with the accusations, Brown looked around and discovered that his campaign executives had resigned en masse at the first mention of the complaint. Today caucus is calling for Brown’s expulsion, has unanimously appointed an interim leader, and are planning a leadership convention. The campaign platform is ready to go, though they’ll need to reprint the front cover with a new face.

Perhaps Brown’s fall because of his past behaviour was inevitable, and the closer to the election it occurred, the more damage it would do to Party fortunes. Perhaps Progressive Conservatives genuinely believed that he had stolen the leadership from more deserving candidates. Perhaps they had come to believe that Patrick Brown could not defeat Kathleen Wynne, despite polling numbers which showed him as the prohibitive favourite.

To conclude this column I looked through John Diefenbaker quotations for one on Conservatives eating their young, but only found this riddle: What is the difference between a cactus and a conservative caucus? On a cactus, the pricks are on the outside.