If a man is known by the company he keeps, in politics and especially before an election, said company has been known to make or break the man’s chances.

But in the past 18 months, thanks to the outsized influence of our southern neighbour, politicians have slid from contrition to shamelessness in their associations. Where mere months ago, a Canadian conservative could be damned for trying to divide the country by blowing the dog whistle of “Canadian values,” today a Canadian conservative can court far more overt divisiveness without fear of consequence.

And so Doug Ford, pitching himself as worthy of leading Ontario and careful not to say anything openly discriminatory himself, appears to feel no compunction being surrounded by those who do.

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The latest in the list of dubious people who want to be part of Ford’s team is Merrilee Fullerton, the PC candidate for Kanata-Carleton.

According to her website, Fullerton is a doctor who stands for “values of responsibility, compassion, integrity and accountability.”

A look at her past writings provides some guidance regarding these values. A tweet in November 2015 pulled out a quote from a story on Islamic radicalism: “Usually it is not the first generation (of refugees or immigrants) that is the most dangerous, it’s the second.”

Before that was a tweet referencing Breitbart News exhorting people to watch a march by thousands of supporters of the anti-Islam group PEGIDA in Dresden, Germany.

Another tweet reads: “the ghetto.” And it goes on to define that as “home to almost 20,000 immigrants, overwhelmingly Muslim, almost half of them jobless.” This tweet, which appears to refer to the Rosengard housing scheme in Sweden, is taken out of context from a story in the Guardian five years prior about a Swedish backlash against immigration.

In others tweets, she rails against a “wear-a-hijab” day in Ottawa in 2016.

But well before all this, an obscure little blog on Squarespace from 2007 offers a gem of insight into her thinking. “Doctors as terrorists,” reads the title, written soon after two bungled car bombings in the U.K. after which eight people said to be linked to Al Qaeda, seven of whom were physicians, were arrested.

“In Canada,” she writes, “we may want to be looking at how much surveillance of foreign medical graduates will cost and if the potential benefit outweighs the potential harm … because the potential for harm now seems to be very real.”

Here’s a more apt title for the blog: 7 Muslim doctors (at one point in time) = all foreign doctors (forever).

Kanata-Carleton, the riding Fullerton is running in, has about 5,000 Muslim residents.

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“This whole community has a great deal of respect for Merrilee. We appreciate her running,” Ford said on Wednesday at a campaign stop.

A newly formed group named the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Committee is asking Ford to denounce Fullerton’s apparent bigotry.

Another PC candidate in London West, Andrew Lawton, a former Rebel Media host hand-picked by Ford, had social media posts that ranged from “Apparently women at the department store don’t appreciate unsolicited bra recommendations” to “I left the Anglican church when they made the decision to allow gay marriage.”

He mocked burkas as Halloween costumes. In another tweet, he wrote: “Covered in wires from a portable heart monitor. The Muslim gents nearby seem to think I’m one of them.”

Last week, Lawton released a statement saying he doesn’t support those views he stated between 2005 and 2013 and blamed those posts (which have now been deleted) on — you guessed it — mental illness.

Ford was recently forced to oust Tanya Granic Allen as a PC candidate after the Liberal party released a video of her making inflammatory statements on same-sex marriage.

It’s not just the openly stated views of his supporters, such as Kevin Johnston of Mississauga, charged with a hate crime last year, that suggest the racial indifference of the Progressive Conservative party.

Ford himself has said he would overturn police oversight rules by reining in parts of Bill 175, including bits that focus on de-escalation, which is critical in the context of racial profiling, institutional racism and race-based police violence. Last month, Ford declined to participate in a provincial leaders debate organized by the Black community. The most optimistic assessment of his comments during Friday’s northern debate about “taking care of our own first” would suggest a misinformed suspicion of outsiders, especially given declining populations in Ontario’s rural north.

None of this will deter Ford’s base, of course. But those who sneeringly distance themselves from that base, the ones who are done with Liberals but won’t consider NDP, don’t get to claim racial innocence.

Not after all this. If he wins, this will be on them.

Shree Paradkar writes about discrimination and identity. You can follow her@shreeparadkar

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