Tory insider says Brown’s exit raises questions about how ballots will be counted

Patrick Brown at a rally in Brampton, Ont., on Sunday, March 13, 2022. A Conservative party insider says Patrick Brown’s exit won’t likely change the outcome of the leadership vote, but it may encourage candidates to change their strategies as the race winds down.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young

OTTAWA — A Conservative party insider says Patrick Brown’s exit isn’t likely to change the outcome of the leadership race, but it may encourage candidates to change their strategies.

Cory Hann, who was the party’s director of communications until March, said the party needs to carefully consider how it will handle the vote-counting on Sept. 10 given that the ranked ballots already have Brown’s name on them.

This seems like familiar territory for the Conservatives: in 2017, Kevin O’Leary pulled out of the leadership race after ballots were printed, and the party chose to count his votes.

“They were kind of forced to still count his votes, so as not to upset that balance,” Hann said Thursday. “We actually had to announce the votes that Kevin O’Leary got, and it was a whole part of the reveal.”

But Hann said things are “a little more delicate” this time because the party has disqualified Brown from the race.

“If you’re going to just skip counting Patrick Brown votes altogether, and maybe move to people’s second and third choices down their ballot, that has some unintended consequences early on,” Hann said.

Party president Rob Batherson said the Conservatives are working with a contractor to determine the best path to ensure all ballots are appropriately counted.

Hann said the race is “Pierre Poilievre’s to win,” though he believes Brown’s removal may change how many rounds of ballots will be counted.

Process aside, he said other leadership hopefuls will be wise to start courting the support of the people Brown’s team signed up. He thinks most of those new members will go ahead and vote, given that they’ve already paid for a membership.

Candidates had until June 3 to encourage people to sign up as party members and be eligible to vote. Brown made it his strategy to reach mainly diverse communities, including new Canadians. His team claims to have signed up more than 150,000 people.

He previously said he campaigned in the Sikh, Muslim, Tamil and Chinese communities “that have all felt mistreated by the party.”

A video shared on Facebook from a meeting Brown had with Muslim community members in British Columbia on April 1 captured him saying his “path to victory is bringing new people in and having a decent level of support within the party.”

“In the existing Conservative membership, Pierre is more popular. The existing Conservative membership wants someone who is more hard-right,” Brown said in the livestream.

Akolisa Ufodike, the national chair of the Association of Black Conservatives, said the other candidates have to “learn a thing or two” from Brown’s campaign.

“He’s got a verifiable record when it comes to making inroads into diverse cultural communities,” he said.

“The party runs the risk here of leaving about a quarter of our registered members upset at the whole situation.”

While Ufodike called himself an outsider in the race, he said he feels Brown’s campaign put in the work to expand the “big tent” Conservatives have been talking about for years.

“The demographics of our country are changing. This party — and all the candidates — need to be more intentional about broadening the base,” he said.

Hann said would-be Brown voters may look to Jean Charest or Scott Aitchison, but he’s not ruling out the possibility that Leslyn Lewis or Poilievre could win them over in the next couple of months.

“I think each candidate is probably analyzing that right now, seeing how they go about that,” he said.

Lewis released a statement on her website Thursday evening, saying it’s her intent to build a party that has room for all conservatives.

“Like Patrick, I believe that our party’s tent needs to expand to include many new Canadians who have settled in large urban centres like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal,” the statement said.

Poilievre has been a supporter of the “Freedom Convoy” and recently joined soldier James Topp in the final leg of a march in opposition to vaccine mandates in the military. Critics — including Brown — have pointed out that convoy organizer Pat King has spread the racist “white replacement theory.”

That prompted Poilievre to issue a statement denouncing the “white replacement theory” as ugly disgusting hate-mongering and condemning King.

Hann acknowledged the campaign has attracted a lot of attention for its “appeal to those that have problems with the vaccine mandates, and all the other hangers-on of that movement that drag it towards darker spaces.”

He said he believes Poilievre knows the party needs to attract new members to win a general election.

Ufodike’s advice to the front-runner in the last two months of the race: “Stick to the Poilievre who did a good job of holding (former finance minister Bill Morneau) to account.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 7, 2022.

Sarah Ritchie, The Canadian Press