The committee organizing the Conservative Party leadership race says disqualified candidate Patrick Brown was well aware of the allegations against him, contrary to what he has stated in his defence.
In an email to party members on July 8, chair of the Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) Ian Brodie sought to reassure that the move to disqualify Brown earlier this week was justified.
“I would love to share all that we have. But we have legal restrictions of what we are to say when we are dealing with allegations of breaking federal law. That’s why we referred this case to Elections Canada,” Brodie wrote.
Brodie repeated that the party had “credible” and “verifiable” information about alleged wrongdoing by Brown, and that his campaign failed to properly address the allegations.
“Every opportunity” was given to the campaign to clarify the issue, he said.
“To be clear, the Brown campaign knew full well what the allegations were. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply incorrect.”
“It’s an anonymous allegation being made. How do you respond to a phantom allegation?” he said.
“All we know is there’s an anonymous allegation that a corporation was paying someone who worked on my campaign.”
Since then, the whistleblower from within Brown’s campaign, who worked as a regional organizer, has come forward.
“Mr. Brown told me that it was permissible for me to be employed by a company as a consultant, and then for that company to have me volunteer with the campaign,'' Debra Jodoin said via a statement by her lawyer on July 7.
“He connected me by text message with a third-party for that purpose. I trusted him, but as time went on I became increasingly concerned with the arrangement and suspected it was not OK.”
Brown’s campaign reacted to Jodoin stepping forward by saying it learned about the details of the issue through the media.
“They have failed to do so and instead, chose to use this for other obvious purposes—those purposes have nothing to do with the integrity of the Party or a genuine desire to hear out our campaign.”
The campaign says the goal was to remove Brown to “narrow the field.”
Brodie said the LEOC could not “afford the risk of having a leadership candidate under the investigation of Elections Canada for breaking federal law.”
“Our leadership race is to select a person to contend for the role of prime minister of Canada. The process must be beyond reproach and in full compliance with the law.”
Canada’s elections commissioner has confirmed it is reviewing the allegations made against Brown.
Brown has retained the services of counsel Marie Henein in a bid to appeal the disqualification decision, and warns of potential legal action.
