Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown insists he has done enough to punish rogue MPP Jack MacLaren.

“Obviously, I was upset,” Brown said of MacLaren, who in the past week has been forced to apologize for making a sexist joke about a female Liberal MP at a charity fundraiser, and for posting testimonials from fake constituents on his official website.

“It was the totality of events, not one single (thing),” said the Tory leader, who removed the Carleton-Mississippi MPP from his largely ceremonial post as chair of the Tories’ Eastern Ontario caucus.

“This is a post just like a regional minister would be. It’s speaking to the riding associations. It’s a leadership position in the party,” said Brown, who has handed the symbolic title to MPP Jim McDonell (Stormont-Dundas-South Glengarry).

“It was important to express that I wasn’t happy and there’s consequences, and that’s why he was demoted from that position. The demotion speaks for itself,” he said.

MacLaren, who brushed past reporters Wednesday after uttering a terse apology for the website ruse, wasn’t seen at Queen’s Park on Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

But, privately, his caucus colleagues are fuming that he hasn’t been sanctioned more severely.

“This is basically meaningless,” said one senior Tory, noting MacLaren never once chaired a meeting of the Eastern Ontario caucus.

“Jack made Patrick look bad and he made all of us look bad.”

The Tory caucus got a much-needed morale boost Thursday afternoon when former prime minister Brian Mulroney dropped by Queen’s Park to give them a pep talk.

“I’m in town to do an event tonight and Patrick, who’s an old friend of mine, asked me to come by and say hello to the caucus. We had a great meeting,” Mulroney told the Star.

The man who governed the country from 1984 until 1993, who delivered back-to-back Conservative majority election wins, and drove major policy changes at home and abroad, gave Brown some counsel on being a leader.

“I guess the only advice is obvious advice: if you’re the leader of the opposition it’s a very difficult job and you depend on the support and loyalty of your colleagues,” said Mulroney.

“If that is provided, big things can happen; if it’s absent, there’s going to be trouble,” he said, adding he implored Brown’s confreres to rally behind their rookie chief.

“So I certainly urged them to do what happened to me when I was leader of the opposition; I got tremendous support from my caucus throughout my 10 years there and I hope the same thing is ongoing here.”

MacLaren’s transgressions have had a debilitating effect on the Tories at Queen’s Park since the Star revealed last week that he told a vulgar joke about Liberal MP Karen McCrimmon (Kanata-Carleton) at a March 24 charity event in Carp, Ont., that both were attending along with 350 people.

On Tuesday, the Ottawa Citizen disclosed the MPP’s official website, which has since been taken offline, boasted six fake testimonials accompanied by photos lifted from the Internet.

“Thanks for everything you did to help me resolve my problem with the Ministry of Transportation,” said “Darren,” from Mississippi Mills, Ont., beside a photograph of Sam Muirhead, a New Zealand-born software developer who lives in Germany.

Muirhead told the Citizen that “unless I have a secret evil Canadian twin, Darren does not exist.”

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When the story was first published, a message was added to MacLaren’s website: “Disclaimer: In order to maintain the privacy of constituents, stock photos and generic names have been used.”

Later, the page was removed, then the entire website was finally shut down Thursday afternoon.

“I apologize and we have removed it from my website and we’re sorry it happened,” MacLaren said at the time.

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