{"id":14820,"date":"2016-07-27T10:14:34","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T14:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14820"},"modified":"2016-08-02T19:34:29","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T23:34:29","slug":"pc-leader-brown-sees-positive-change-after-last-elections-unmitigated-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/pc-leader-brown-sees-positive-change-after-last-elections-unmitigated-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"PC leader Brown sees positive change after last election\u2019s \u201cunmitigated disaster\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be an election in two years,\u201d said The Auroran as we sat down with Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown at the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market on Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne year and 10 months,\u201d replied Mr. Brown as he zeroed in on the task at hand \u2013 not like he was counting or anything.<\/p>\n

Mr. Brown spent the morning with Mayor Geoff Dawe and Councillor John Abel as they toured some of the points of interest in Aurora\u2019s Downtown Core, including the Aurora Cultural Centre, Aurora Public Library, and the Farmers\u2019 Market.<\/p>\n

After meeting with area residents, he sat down with The Auroran for a wide-ranging interview on where he would like Ontario to be two years \u2013 or one year and 10 months \u2013 from now. In the short term, however, Aurora\u2019s provincial riding boundaries are set to follow the lead of the Feds in splitting Aurora into two ridings at Wellington Street.<\/p>\n

That means there will be two candidates to pick, and the field is already starting to take shape, said Mr. Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to see a candidate in these ridings who are rooted in their communities, who have a history of public service and involvement,\u201d said Mr. Brown. \u201cI know there are a number of high profile candidates who have expressed interest and I am sure there will be large, active nominations here that will be fair, transparent and democratic. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo candidates will be picked. It will be up to the membership, but we fully intend to win these ridings and we want community champions who will continue to build Newmarket and Aurora and help these communities with any challenges that we have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Brown said he was optimistic about the Progressive Conservative\u2019s chances of winning back Aurora, after Newmarket-Aurora was won by Liberal MPP \u2013 and former Aurora Councillor \u2013 Chris Ballard, who beat PC candidate \u2013 and incumbent Newmarket Councillor \u2013 Jane Twinney the last time around.
\nAccording to Mr. Brown, Ontarians have an appetite for change, a sense he says is bolstered by \u201c18 public opinion polls that have us across Ontario with significant leads in the 905.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is in stark contrast, he added, to where the Ontario PC Party was the last time around under the leadership of Tim Hudak.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think generally this riding is historically more conservative,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it is only in a complete, unmitigated disaster that the Conservatives have lost here \u2013 and the last election was an unmitigated disaster. The party ran on a ridiculous policy to cut 100,000 jobs. I think we were too narrow-cast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the reason we are in a better light today is we are building a more modern, inclusive PC party. I don\u2019t care who you love, where you\u2019re born, the colour of your skin, how much money you have, if you belong to a union or not, you have a home in our party.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople want to be fiscally responsible. They want an honest, transparent government. They don\u2019t want something rabid and ideological. The public is fed up. They are fed up with a government with five OPP investigations, they are sick and tired of the hydro rates. They want a reasonable and pragmatic alternative and I think we\u2019re offering that now.\u201d<\/p>\n

To maintain the momentum, Mr. Brown said he and the party are going to \u201ccontinue working hard\u201d to craft and present policies focused on becoming the \u201cbuilding blocks\u201d to return Ontario to prosperity and create a climate where Ontario is not a \u201chave-not province\u201d and turn fortunes to bolster Ontario as a leader in Canada. <\/p>\n

But, it is also about framing the Progressive Conservative as a more compassionate party, something that had been lost over time, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought the party before was out of touch,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t run to say nice things and say it wasn\u2019t our fault we lost. It was our fault. The party only had 10,000 members. It needed a complete overhaul. We had become almost Republican in our positions, always voting against everything the Liberals did. I say there is no monopoly on a good idea. We will vote for anything if it makes sense for Ontario.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care if it is a Liberal idea or an NDP idea, if it makes sense for Ontario we will vote for it. I am not going to be blindly ideological or blindly partisan. Today, the party has over 80,000 members, of which I can tell you half of the membership is visible minorities. This is a very different PC party. I think what you\u2019re seeing is the PC party is very much reflective of Ontario today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the next installment of The Auroran\u2019s interview with Patrick Brown, the PC leader weighs in on proposals to reform the Ontario Municipal Board, and Ontario\u2019s Places to Grow legislation.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir \u201cThere will be an election in two years,\u201d said The Auroran as we sat down with Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown at the Aurora Farmers\u2019 Market on Saturday morning. \u201cOne year and 10 months,\u201d replied Mr. Brown as he zeroed in on the task at hand \u2013 not like he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14808,"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":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/2016-07-28-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3R2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 00:03:49","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\/14820","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=14820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}