Patrick Brown disqualified from Conservative leadership race

With two months to go before the Conservative Party chooses its next leader, one of the main contenders has been ejected from the race.

In a statement released late Tuesday night, the party’s leadership election organizing committee said Brown is being disqualified after “serious allegations of wrongdoing” related to financing rules.

The statement did not offer specific details of those allegations but said Brown’s campaign was given a chance to address the concerns.

 According to the statement from leadership committee chair Ian Brodie, the information offered by Brown’s campaign “did not satisfy concerns” and the decision was made Tuesday night to disqualify him.

“We regret having to take these steps but we have an obligation to ensure that both our party’s rules and federal law are respected by all candidates and campaign teams,” said the statement from Ian Brodie, head of the Conservative Party’s Leadership Election Organizing Committee, which oversees the race.

Those involved did their best to be fair to Brown and his campaign and give them time to substantively refute the allegations, he added.

“None of these problems has any impact on the integrity of the vote itself,” said Brodie.

The party will share the information it has with Elections Canada.

CBC News has contacted the Brown campaign seeking comment on the allegations.

A Conservative source familiar with leadership election organizing committee, who is not authorized to speak publicly about internal party matters, told CBC News late Tuesday that Brown’s name will still be on the ballot.

The source said that the hundreds of thousands of ballots required to carry out this race have already been printed and stuffed into envelopes, ready to be sent out to party members ahead of the September vote.

The source said the party will likely follow the same process it did in 2017 when Kevin O’Leary pulled out of that leadership race after the ballots had already been sent out. On the ballots where people marked Brown as their first choice, party officials will instead only count the candidates from their second choices onwards.

The source said the party is confident that, even with this late elimination, there is no threat to the integrity of the vote. The party already conducted an extensive review of the membership list and weeded out several thousand would-be voters late last month, the source said.

The news is a bombshell in an already tumultuous race filled with personal barbs. Brown, who is currently the mayor of Brampton, Ont, has run under the slogan “fighter, leader, winner” and relentlessly attacked the presumed frontrunner in the race, Pierre Poilievre.

Brown was one of six contenders for the leadership.