The six members of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Kanata–Carleton riding executive are quitting over what they say has become a “toxic and destructive” environment.

Kanata–Carleton President Tim Broschuk, Vice President Richard Bonato, CFO Carl Arsenault, Secretary Vel Velauthapillai, Ed McAllister (membership) and Richard Lane (policy) wrote a joint email to Ontario PC President Rick Dykstra and Executive Director Bob Stanley on Sunday, laying out the reasons why they are quitting.

“After almost a decade of volunteering — first as donors, then as door knockers and later as riding executives — we believe that we’ve been here long enough to understand the trajectory of the Party’s culture, its people and its identity. We can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as we have ever seen it,” reads the email which was obtained by iPolitics.

The former executive members write that the problem is that members continue to be “sidelined by the way the Party operates and thinks about getting elected.

“The Party has veered so far from the place we joined that we can no longer in good conscience say that we identify with what it stands for.”

The email says that the party’s success revolved around teamwork, integrity, humility and always doing right by its members and the community. But while that culture allowed the executive to earn the trust of Ontarians for many years, the email states, it has been declining of late.

“I am sad to say that we see virtually no trace of that culture when we look around us today. We no longer have the pride or the belief. We knew it was time to leave when we realized that we could no longer look our members in the eye and tell them what a great party we had. How did we get here?”

The former executive members accuse the party’s leadership of watering down “Conservative culture.”

“If you make enough money for the Party or agree to abandon what’s important to your constituents you will advance in the Party.

“Today, many of the leadership in our Party don’t display a Conservative culture. If you were from another planet and sat in on some of the meetings, you wouldn’t believe that the wellbeing of our members or the progress of our community was part of the thought process at all.

“It astounds me how little the party’s leadership gets a basic truth; if members don’t trust you they will eventually stop supporting you. It doesn’t matter how clever you are. I hope this can be a wake-up call for you.”

There have multiple reports of controversial nomination battles involving the Ontario PCs and grassroots nomination battles which end in accusations against Brown’s staff.

Most recently there’s been a controversial nomination contest in Ottawa West-Nepean. In early May, Karma Macgregor, the mother of Patrick Brown’s deputy chief of staff Tamara Macgregor, defeated Jeremy Roberts, who recently appealed the results of his nomination contest. The Ontario PC’s decided not to order a re-vote in the nomination contest. Some of those who voted allege that serious vote-rigging took place and that the number of people who actually signed up to vote was smaller than the number of ballots counted.

The president of the Ottawa West-Nepean Progressive Conservative riding association, Emma McLennan, said party supporters are feeling “disillusioned and disenfranchised” after Brown supported the contentious nomination results in the provincial riding.

In January, former federal Conservative MP Bob Dechert dropped out of a nomination race and, at the time, alleged that the process allows candidates to cheat.

In December, Ontario PC nomination candidate Jane Michael, who lost her bid for a nomination in Burlington, compared the whole process to the “Wild West.”