Former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown’s dramatic late-night resignation early Thursday hands his party some excruciating dilemmas, and little time to solve them.
The central problem is Ontario’s looming election.
Under new Ontario laws setting fixed election dates, the province will vote on June 7, just 133 days from the date Brown quit. The campaign will begin 28 days before the vote, on May 10. The gap between Brown’s exit and the official launch of the campaign is only 15 weeks.
Under the party’s constitution, the party’s executive must, sooner or later, call a leadership election if the post is vacant. It sets limits on how slowly the process can happen. A date for a vote must be set within 18 months of the leadership becoming vacant, and the vote itself must happen within six months of the date being set.
At least on paper, there are no limits on how quickly it can happen, though the practicalities of the process impose their own limits.
The 2015 PC leadership campaign formally took about 100 days, from the cutoff for candidates’ nominations to the actual vote. But end to end, the full leadership process took the better part of a year — it began unofficially when Tim Hudak resigned in June of 2014, and ended with Brown’s election the following May.
The party claims 200,000 members, all of whom are entitled to vote in a leadership election.
When the party’s leadership becomes vacant, its caucus chooses an interim leader.
Unlike other parties (like the federal Conservatives), the Ontario PCs don’t forbid an interim leader from running for the permanent leadership. But political convention discourages this. It simplifies the process of quickly choosing an interim leader if that decision is disconnected from a decision about the permanent leadership.
So the PCs face three unappetizing choices:
- Commit to a rushed and possibly chaotic leadership process right now with a vote in early May at the latest, and try to find a way to deal with the inevitable disputes
- Go into the election with an interim leader selected on the understanding that they won’t run for the leadership. This means that the party couldn’t present their leader as a premier-in-waiting, though the interim might in fact become premier. (Before Brown’s resignation, the party seemed on track to win the election.)
- Allow caucus to select an interim leader who may run for the permanent leadership after the election, risking a high-conflict process this week to select the interim leader, and alienating the party’s rank and file, who will expect to help choose a leader and resent the impression that one is being imposed from behind closed doors
“The party could elect an interim leader, and then decide to have an actual leadership contest after the election,” says Michele Austin of Summa Strategies. “If they decide to elect an interim leader over the next 24 hours, that person could be who we see on the podium debating against Kathleen Wynne and Andrea Horwath during the election.”
“On the other hand, the party could decide to have a snap leadership contest.”
“So because this is so fresh and because it’s such a shock, I think every option is in the air right now. The party realistically doesn’t have a lot of time to make this decision.”
WATCH: Ontario Progressive Conservative Deputy Leaders Sylvia Jones and Steve Clark had a message for supporters on Thursday after former leader Patrick Brown resigned amid sexual misconduct allegations.
On Thursday, the PC’s said that they will choose an interim leader Friday.
However, deputy leaders Sylvia Jones and Steve Clark would not say whether the person they choose would lead them in the scheduled June election or if a leadership race would be held before then, saying only that caucus members would need to have those discussions.
With files from The Canadian Press
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