Do the right thing.

That’s the advice from Premier Kathleen Wynne to Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown on the need for transparency when police are investigating your political party.

Brown is refusing to say whether Tory officials would be forced to step down if they are charged following a criminal probe into a Hamilton-area PC nomination.

“We’ve been fully co-operative in everything the investigation requires,” the Tory leader said Tuesday in Scarborough, deflecting questions about anyone potentially being asked to resign.

Hamilton police detectives are looking into unnamed Conservatives in connection with the party’s May 7 candidate nomination in the riding of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas.

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Wynne noted she accepted the resignation of key Liberal Patricia Sorbara, after she was charged with an Election Act violation related to a 2015 byelection in Sudbury. Sorbara was exonerated at trial last month and has rejoined the Liberal campaign.

“He’s got to look to his own conscience on this,” the premier told the Star from Nanjing, China, where she is on a trade mission.

“Throughout the whole process I did what I believed was the right thing to do — to do what I said I was going to do — and I answered a million questions about every aspect of this. A million,” said Wynne, who waived parliamentary privilege to testify as a Crown witness in the Sudbury trial.

“I would do the same again. I would do it exactly the same way that I did it. He’ll have to look to his own integrity on this. It’s important to be transparent.”

Over the past two years Brown repeatedly urged Wynne to “remove Pat Sorbara from her office” — even before she was charged.

Brown said it’s “an unfair comparison” to liken the Tories’ current troubles with past Liberal imbroglios.

“There was a nomination there that was overheated,” he said about the Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas controversy.

“Here in Toronto, you’ve got criminal charges that are actually laid.”

That was a reference to the trial of David Livingston and Laura Miller, two top aides to former premier Dalton McGuinty. A verdict in that trial is expected to happen on Jan. 19.

Livingston and Miller have pleaded not guilty to attempted mischief to a computer and unauthorized use of a computer. Those charges stemmed from the Liberals’ cancellation of gas-fired power plants in Oakville and Mississauga before the 2011 election.

In the Tories’ nomination controversy, Vikram Singh, a Hamilton lawyer and runner-up in the four-contestant Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas nomination, launched a civil suit against the PC party alleging “wrongful insertion of false ballots.”

Singh’s action — which names Brown, Tory president Rick Dykstra, party executive director Bob Stanley and senior Brown aide Logan Bugeja — is separate from the criminal fraud probe.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said it is “disappointing and worrisome” that the Tory leader appears unwilling to follow the established precedent at Queen’s Park should criminal charges be laid.

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“He’s having a bit of trouble in terms of his leadership and the way he organizes his party,” Horwath said.

“If there’s a scandal or wrongdoing that’s being investigated and charges are being laid then it’s time for people to withdraw and remove themselves from the . . . activities of the party,” she said.

“It’s about trying to maintain a sense of public trust and integrity. When these kinds of things occur, you’ve got to do the right thing.”

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