PC Patrick Brown describes himself as a pragmatist. Whatever it takes to get him elected as Premier is his major concern.
Since he was elected Party Leader in 2015, Brown has publicly rejected the conservative values for which he had voted, without exception, while serving as a federal Conservative MP in Parliament.
As PC Party Leader in Ontario, Brown has assumed many of the left-wing social policies of the provincial Liberal Party under Premier Kathleen Wynne. In effect, Brown has turned the Ontario PC Party into a “Liberal lite” political party, abandoning all social conservative values.
Brown’s Political Strategy
Brown’s strategy to win the 2018 Ontario provincial election is to pick up the thousands of votes from disaffected Liberals who had previously given Wynne her majority government in the 2014 election. Ms. Wynne’s popular support is currently at 16%.
Brown has proposed to pick up the vote of disaffected liberals by deliberately calculating that he no longer needed the support of social conservatives whose support he had sought and received during his leadership campaign. Brown’s strategy was instead, to widen the PC tent by adopting liberal social policies, although retaining fiscal conservative policies. His criticism of Wynne has only been on economic grounds since his election as Party Leader.
Once he was elected leader, in order to indicate his “big tent” approach, Brown marched in the Toronto Gay Pride Parade, the first time a Conservative leader has ever done so. He also supported Wynne’s controversial sex education curriculum, among other left-wing social policies. Brown sought to undermine Wynne’s (a known lesbian) support in the LGBT community by committing his party to support the Ontario school curriculum, promising not to remove the pro LGBT elements from the curriculum.
According to a document released by LGBTory on August 27, 2016, Brown also committed his support to their campaign to change the federal Conservative policy on marriage, and to use his influence to remove any obstacles to the federal Conservative recognition of same-sex marriages. Brown followed through on this commitment at the Conservative’s National Convention held in May 2016.
Brown committed his party to the LGBT community not only to undermine Wynne’s support, but also to protect his party from LGBT backlash during the 2018 election.
This strategy was working for Brown until a by-election in Scarborough-Rouge River riding was called for September 1st. The riding consists of large numbers of new Canadians, such as Tamils and Asians. They rejected Wynne’s sex education curriculum and regarded it as an election issue. All Candidates for the main three parties, Liberal, NDP and PC supported Wynne’s curriculum. Consequently, an independent candidate, pro-life and pro-family Queenie Yu, was picking up the votes of those opposed to the controversial sex education curriculum, and thereby endangering Brown’s chances of winning the riding, and harming his political momentum.
Brown then signed a letter, dated August 24, 2016, addressed to “parents” in the riding. The letter claimed his party would scrap the sex-ed curriculum, which contradicted his previous public statements and his commitment to the LGBT community which described Brown as “an ally on LGBT issues”. The letter was released to the voters in the riding only, but not to the press. The press, however, learned about Brown’s letter and it became public information.
Social conservatives, however, took Brown’s statement to change the sex-ed curriculum with a grain of salt, and mere political puffery, accusing Brown of unreliability and hypocrisy.
Since his alleged support for changing the curriculum clearly wasn’t working and was damaging his big tent strategy, ever the pragmatic, Brown reversed himself again on August 29th on the curriculum, stating that his decision to change it was a mistake, and that his party would, after all, be supporting Wynne’s curriculum. It is noteworthy that Brown blamed the letter on the campaign workers even though his signature was clearly on the letter.
Brown’s strategy is now back to providing policies imitating those of the Liberal Party. He is still obviously hoping to pick up the left-wing disaffected liberal votes in the province in the next election.
Brown is a party leader without principles. This can be hazardous for his career. Nobody trusts him, nor should they.
What to do Today?
Ms. Queenie Yu is pro-life, pro-family and pro-parental rights. She is running to give voice to the thousands of parents across the Scarborough-Rouge River riding who oppose the Ontario government and their anti-family agenda.
REAL Women of Canada is asking our Ontario supporters to help Queenie by:
- Praying that her campaign will be successful
- Making a donation. Political donations receive a sizeable tax credit. A $100 donation costs the donor only $25.
- Volunteering on her campaign
- Asking your friends and family to support Queenie’s campaign
- VOTING for Queenie on September 1 if you live in the riding of Scarborough-Rouge River
For more information and to make a donation, visit www.stopwynnesexed.com
