{"id":20149,"date":"2018-03-21T15:24:19","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T19:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20149"},"modified":"2018-03-28T23:20:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-29T03:20:09","slug":"progressive-conservatives-re-open-newmarket-aurora-nomination-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/progressive-conservatives-re-open-newmarket-aurora-nomination-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Conservatives re-open Newmarket-Aurora nomination"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Progressive Conservative Party has re-opened nominations in Newmarket-Aurora.
\nThe party announced Thursday night that nominations would be re-opened in the ridings of Newmarket-Aurora, Mississauga Centre and Brampton North.
\nIn the process, the party has also deemed Charity McGrath, who was named the party\u2019s candidate last April, unable to seek the position again, according to riding officials.
\n\u201cDoug Ford has been clear, the membership of our Party must be respected and heard,\u201d said PC President Jag Badwal in a statement on Thursday evening. \u201cEarlier today, the Ontario PC Party\u2019s Provincial Nominations Committee (PNC) met. The unanimous decision of the PNC was to reopen nominations in\u2026Brampton North, Mississauga Centre and Newmarket-Aurora. The PNC has set aside the nomination in Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas as a result of the flawed process.\u201d
\nLast April, Charity McGrath secured Newmarket-Aurora\u2019s Progressive Conservative nomination for this spring\u2019s Provincial election, narrowly beating former Aurora councillor Bill Hogg to the post. Incumbent Newmarket Councillor Tom Vegh placed third in the race.
\nIt was a contentious nomination and the results led to the local Progressive Conservative riding association resigning en masse citing irregularities in the process.
\nTheir appeals were dismissed by former PC leader Patrick Brown.
\nOutlining the appeal, former riding association president Derek Murray said there were \u201cclear and substantial evidence indicating the campaign team for Charity McGrath Di Paola blatantly breached party rules in their membership drive when members did not pay their own fees and their signature was falsified on the membership form, and fraudulent members were knowingly allowed to vote at the nomination meeting in which Charity McGrath Di Paola was declared the winning candidate.
\n\u201cThe riding association initiated an investigation and 100 per cent of the membership list was called.\u201d
\nReceiving a 22 per cent response rate, the Riding Association said 89.89 per cent of respondents had been contacted by a candidate to attend the April 2017 nomination meeting, 50.17 per cent signed an application to be a party member, and 40.06 either paid or had an immediate family member pay for their membership.
\nIn all, they challenged 358 voters on the rolls over both Aurora and Newmarket.
\nThis information was passed on to the then PC party brass, they said, who replied the Party reviewed the submission and determined it did \u201cnot raise a question that merits hearing.\u201d
\n\u201cI am pleased to learn of the decisions made by the Provincial Nomination Committee,\u201d said Ford in a statement Thursday evening.
\nThe process for this re-opened nomination was not fleshed out by the party at the time of the announcement, with Badwal noting, \u201cfurther details will be provided at a later date.\u201d
\nThose details were not forthcoming by press time.
\nLocal PCs, however, spent the intervening week looking forward to learning just what those details might be, including Aurora resident Murray.
\nOne of the most vocal critics of the results, and an equal proponent of a full review and audit of the results, he led the mass resignation of association directors.
\n\u201cIn order to have another nomination period, I am not sure how much time we have,\u201d said Mr. Murray. \u201cThe election is June 7, and it will be in the hands of the party how we handle this. We can have a nomination process, but it takes time: first, you have to get the candidates. Second, you have to get the people to vote for them. Normally it is up to the riding association to find the people. The party could appoint somebody, but no decision has been made on it at this stage. The nomination meeting is one day, but it takes five or six weeks [to get to that point].\u201d
\nNevertheless, Mr. Murray said he was \u201cvery happy\u201d to learn of the Party\u2019s decision to re-open the nomination process.
\n\u201cEven if it took eleven months,\u201d he said. \u201cMy opinion of what I thought of what happened everybody knows, but I am happy about it. We have a new leader as of last Saturday night and one of his promises was he would look over the whole riding associations where there was still a dispute and make a decision. Interestingly enough, he has been in his job less than a week and he has already overturned four of them. That is a pretty good indication that we have a new leader and he means what he says. He said he was going to do it, and he has done something.
\n\u201cThat, to me, is a plus. With a new leader we all have to learn how to deal with him. Doug Ford has not been part of the party. I don\u2019t know him well, I have met him on a few occasions, but I can\u2019t tell you I know him well. He is a person who gets things done and if we\u2019re going to beat Kathleen Wynne, that is what we need.\u201d
\nFinding the right candidate is essential in building trust in the PC brand for those who may have been left disappointed by the last nomination process, he added.
\n\u201cWhen this gets settled down and I go back and organize the riding association the way it was, which I would do, I would get most of my Board back and I\u2019ll get most of the people who said they weren\u2019t going to vote this time in the general election, I\u2019ll get them on side and they\u2019ll vote Conservative. It wasn\u2019t the policy they were arguing, they were arguing about how the candidate was selected the last time.\u201d
\nMs. McGrath told The Auroran she would provide comment \u201conce she understood things.\u201d However, a quote had not been received by press time.
\nMr. Hogg, who was travelling overseas when this decision was made, said he would comment further upon his return.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supporters in Aurora’s north riding await confirmation on how party will fill nomination slot. <\/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_feature_clip_id":0,"_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-20149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5eZ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-29 22:45:06","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\/20149","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=20149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}