{"id":10751,"date":"2015-05-20T15:17:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-20T19:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10751"},"modified":"2015-06-17T19:09:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T23:09:53","slug":"front-porch-perspective-patrick-brown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/front-porch-perspective-patrick-brown\/","title":{"rendered":"FRONT PORCH PERSPECTIVE: Patrick Brown"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cJoe Who?\u201d read the headline in one of the national newspapers the morning after Joe Clark won the Leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative Party in 1976.
\nAlthough this writer did not see any \u201cPatrick Who?\u201d headlines in any of the newspapers, a lot of people don\u2019t know who Patrick Brown was before winning the leadership of the provincial PC Party two weekends ago.
\nHe is a lawyer, who has been a Federal Conservative MP representing the Barrie riding since 2006. Previous to this, he had been an elected local councilor in Barrie. His party affiliation goes back even further; he was the national youth president of the PC Party of Canada back in the early 2000s.
\nAs a longtime volunteer with both the federal and provincial Tories, I have known Mr. Brown for about 17 years or so and I think he is a good choice for the party at this time.
\nHis efforts in reaching out to non-traditional Tories are to be commended. He is an intelligent person with energy to burn; which he will need over the next three years as he prepares himself and the party for the opportunity to govern.
\nDuring the leadership campaign he spoke of three priorities \u2013 energy costs, transportation and red tape.
\nAddressing energy affordability in Ontario is so important. As we know, energy is inextricably intertwined with economic policy and the decisions made by our public officials affect our provinces\u2019 competitiveness and productivity, and ultimately our standard of living. We need to get this right.
\nNow that provincial PC members have chosen Patrick Brown as party leader, what\u2019s in store for the PC Party?
\nThe party can get on with the very hard work of strengthening itself; recruiting new party members, raising funds and developing policy alternatives for the next election.
\nSpeaking of policy, I am also very interested to see how the Party develops policy alternatives going forward.
\nMuch has been written about former leader Tim Hudak\u2019s \u201cMillion Jobs Plan\u201d and the proposed reduction of 100,000 jobs to the public service jobs that he campaigned on during the last provincial election.
\nBut what had not received much mention is that how neither elected PC MPP\u2019s or rank and file party members such as myself had any input into this very divisive party electoral plank.
\nThe policy development process and how volunteers are engaged is very important.
\nPrior to the last election various \u201cwhite paper\u201d were released, which dealt with a number of policy areas. However, this document was not the product of formal party member debate.
\nPatrick Brown and the Party need to go back to the future.
\nMy hope is that all party members will have the opportunity for their say on policy going forward and that we have learned our lesson from this recent electoral setback.
\nBack in the early 1990\u2019s the party developed a plan that was discussed and debated within the various riding associations, and then at regional policy workshops before final resolutions were adopted after rigorous debates at a provincial wide policy meeting. These final policy resolutions became part of the party\u2019s platform
\nParty volunteers were energized, as they had the opportunity to make and influence party policy. This certainly did not mean that they won everything that they wanted – as the Leader and his campaign team craft a campaign strategy and theme out of the policy resolutions – but the grass roots were consulted, and listened to.
\nIt was one of the reasons that lead to the PC Party winning a majority in 1995.
\nSo, why is all this important to me here in Aurora in the late spring of 2015 as Ms. Wynne\u2019s Liberals will be holding power with a good sized majority until June 2018?
\nIt is important for the simple reason that a democracy best functions when you have Opposition parties that are ready and able to potentially govern.
\nKnowing that the other guy can do the job is a great way to keep the incumbents on their toes.
\nThis is especially important now, given the state and the challenges in our economy.<\/p>\n

Stephen can be contacted at stephengsomerville@yahoo.com<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephen Somerville \u201cJoe Who?\u201d read the headline in one of the national newspapers the morning after Joe Clark won the Leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative Party in 1976. Although this writer did not see any \u201cPatrick Who?\u201d headlines in any of the newspapers, a lot of people don\u2019t know who Patrick Brown was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Np","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 08:27:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}