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Photo by Manish Swarup/AP

It must be said that the run-up to the next election in the largest province, Ontario, with 37 per cent of Canadians, is not a majestic progress to dignified popular consultation either. I was one of those who was outraged by the putsch against Patrick Brown, then leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, over the allegations of two youngish women who claimed that he had made inappropriate advances on them, stopping well short of the imputation of crimes. The accusations have changed, the journalism is suspect; and one of the aggrieved has vanished for a prolonged vacation in an exotic and distant place where she is more likely to encounter an astonishingly accoutred Justin Trudeau than anyone self-describing as an Ontario Progressive Conservative. (It’s about time to drop the antiquarian Progressive, as it is for the NDP to stop claiming to be New, after nearly 60 years.)

Everything about the abrupt exit of Patrick Brown is fishy

Everything about the abrupt exit of Patrick Brown is fishy, including his apparent acquiescence in it. And as he tries to resurrect his career and run to succeed himself, he is facing a barrage of improvised piety from his acting successor and a defeated former rival (Mr. Vic Fedeli), and a hail of integrity questions about his acquisition of a home with a large mortgage on it. The vague insinuation is abroad that he might have received a loan for the down payment from someone who then became a nominated Progressive Conservative candidate by suborned favouritism. The integrity commissioner (a title that could have been devised by George Orwell), in the circumstances, will have to deal with this very quickly. Unless there is a serious problem and not just the conjuration of lateral suspicion-innuendo piled on hearsay and topped up by malicious hypotheses, another uncorroborated taint-and-flee operation, Brown should be welcomed to the race and as a candidate for re-election as an MPP. Given the questionable nature of his removal as leader, it is the best way to heal the party’s divisions and score a public relations coup for the official opposition just about 10 weeks before the election writ comes down. Preventing him from standing for election on the basis of the pastiche of tepid suppositions that has come to (first) light so far would be a monstrous injustice, compounding the unworthy schemings and writhings that have already occurred.