Article content

Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown resigned early Thursday morning after denying allegations of sexual impropriety dating back years.

He’d called a sudden press conference at Queen’s Park Wednesday night, just ahead of a report on CTV’s national news, which reported allegations from two unnamed women. One said he’d asked her for oral sex when she was still in high school and he was a Barrie city councillor, by dropping his pants. The other said he’d assaulted her when she worked for him when he was a federal MP, at a time when she was extremely drunk.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown resigns over sexual allegations Back to video

None filed a complaint at the time, CTV reported.

“These allegations are false,” a tearful Brown said. “Every one of them. I will defend myself as hard as I can, with all the means at my disposal. I can’t speculate on the motive of my accusers, I can only say they what they are saying is categorically untrue.”

He spoke for about a minute and walked out without taking questions.

Rapidly, six of his top aides — chief of staff Alykhan Velshi, campaign manager Andrew Boddington, deputy campaign manager Joshua Workman, strategist Dan Robertson, press secretary Nick Bergamini, and policy adviser Ken Boessenkool, many of them veterans of Stephen Harper’s federal government — resigned. They said they’d urged Brown to quit as party leader but he’d refused.