OTTAWA—Taking aim at climate change, Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown is signalling his party will propose a “sensible” price on carbon emissions.

“We have to do something about it,” he told about 1,700 delegates Saturday evening at the first PC annual meeting since taking the party’s helm in May.

“Sensible carbon pricing doesn’t have to be a contribution in terms. But it cannot be a cash grab,” he added in a reference to Premier Kathleen Wynne’s cap and trade plan, which will add an average 4.3 cents to a litre of gasoline and $5 to homeowners’ monthly natural gas bills.

The line drew lukewarm applause and a shout of “no” from one vocal skeptic and some groans in a crowd that came to its feet several times during the 26-minute address.

“I spoke from the heart,” Brown told reporters later, noting he had briefed his MPPs about the stance and got “practically universal” support.

“We have a grassroots party. People are entitled to have divergent opinions. ... It’s healthy.”

Although Brown did not detail how his plan would work as the party begins deliberations on an election platform for 2018 and freshens its face with a new logo, he promised a carbon tax that is “revenue neutral” to the government and will come with “corresponding tax cuts for individuals and businesses.”

Promoting himself as a “pragmatic” Progressive Conservative, Brown said the Liberals, who have trounced his party in four elections since 2003, are not expecting a more nimble and canny rival than in years past, when Tory campaigns were scuppered by ideas that flopped.

“There is one thing that Kathleen Wynne fears more than anything else: a Progressive Conservative Party that has the courage to change,” he said to a standing ovation at a downtown convention centre.

In a reference to the ill-fated Tim Hudak PC election promise in 2014 to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, Brown said, “The public sector should be seen as a partner, not an adversary” and insisted that “never again” would candidates have to defend a promise like former leader John Tory’s 2007 push to fund faith-based schools.‎

The first PC leader to lead an official delegation of his party in Toronto’s Pride parade also sent a message of inclusivity.

“It doesn’t matter who you are … it doesn’t matter who you love, it doesn’t matter if you belong to a union … it doesn’t matter where you worship, you have a home in the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.”

But voters eager to see where Brown stands on a wider variety of issues will have to wait until a policy convention next spring.

His push for a more compassionate party got an assist from former Toronto Argonauts football star Mike “Pinball” Clemons, who urged PC members to put on a friendlier face for a pathway back to power.

“We don’t have the luxury of representing just the people who think like we do,” Clemons said during a 45-minute motivational speech, frequently wading into the crowd and pausing to hug audience members.

“Real respect means this party has to make room for Liberals.”

The new, more colourful PC logo, which got a mixed reaction on social media, is intended to convey “inclusion, renewal, openness and change” as the party seeks to broaden its base, said designer Dan Robertson of Indent Communications, who served as a senior communications adviser to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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Brown’s campaign chair for 2018, Bay Street lawyer Walied Soliman, reinforced Brown’s tack that the party will reach out to unions and others that typically support Wynne.

“Patrick Brown . . . will not cede any community or group‎ to the Liberals,” Soliman said. “They’ve had a free pass.”

Next January, the party will open nominations for candidates in the fall 2018 election, with Soliman vowing “we’re going to be ready in every goddamn riding in this province.”

To accomplish all this, he noted, “we need to raise a lot of money.”

The party is $5 million in debt and needs to pay that back and amass a war chest.

Liberal MPP Marie-France Lalonde warned that the Tories are breaking the rules with a scheme to charge $5,000 to donors in a “Victory Club” with a promise they can meet with Brown and his MPPs in their legislative lounge.

“They’re using this to sell access to a members’ lounge that is, ultimately, the people’s place,” said Lalonde, who is filing a complaint with the speaker of the legislature and the integrity commissioner.

For the next election platform, all Ontarians – not just PC party members – will be welcome to put forward ideas in person and online, Brown said.

“We don’t have a monopoly on good ideas.”

Policy consultation director Kaydee Richmond said the party has failed in recent elections by ignoring its grassroots.

The 2014 job-cut promise from Hudak, who is not at the convention, is widely blamed for the loss of nine PC seats that handed Wynne a majority despite a spate of Liberal scandals.

That idea, the brainchild of party strategists, means it’s time to “knock the backroom wall down,” Richmond said.

“The way we have strayed from the wisdom of our grassroots has been painful and it ends now.”

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