Patrick Walter Brown (born May 26, 1978) is a Canadian politician who has served as the 51st and current mayor of Brampton since 2018. He served as leader of the Official Opposition in Ontario and leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative (PC) Party from 2015 to 2018. Brown also represented the riding Barrie in the House of Commons as a Conservative from 2006 to 2015.
Brown entered politics when he won a seat on the Barrie City Council in 2000. He later joined the Conservative Party and became a member of Parliament (MP) in 2006. He represented Barrie in the House of Commons until 2015, when he was elected as leader of the Ontario PC Party and resigned his seat in Parliament. Brown was subsequently elected to represent Simcoe North in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and became the leader of the Opposition. He served as leader until 2018, after his resignation and expulsion from the caucus due to sexual misconduct allegations. He later returned to municipal politics and was elected mayor of Brampton the same year.
In 2022, Brown contested for the federal Conservative leadership election, but was disqualified following claims that his campaign violated the Canada Elections Act. He was subsequently re-elected as mayor of Brampton.
Early life and career Brown was born in Toronto, to Judy (née Tascona) and lawyer Edmond Brown. His father moved to Canada from the British Isles and worked as a criminal lawyer. Edmond was a former federal New Democratic Party candidate for the riding of Davenport in 1979 and 1980. His mother, Judy, is of partial Italian descent, and an educator (teacher and principal) from Barrie. He was raised in the Roman Catholic faith.
He graduated from St. Michael's College School, a private Catholic school in Toronto. He studied political science at the University of Toronto, and graduated with a law degree from the University of Windsor. During his second year at law school, he was one of 10 recipients of the As Prime Minister Award. He worked for Magna International in their legal department for four years.
Brown served two terms as president of the Progressive Conservative Youth Federation (PCYF), a position he held from 1998 to 2002. He also served on the executive of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, as a vice president. As PCYF President, Brown was one of the early supporters of a united right and was criticized for his decision to support a united right from party leader Joe Clark and Member of Parliament Scott Brison. Brown was later re-elected as PCYF president with 81 per cent of the vote against Jonathan Frate of Manitoba. Brown was the Deputy Chairman of the International Young Democrat Union (IYDU). He has also represented Canada on a number of international assistance projects hosted by the IYDU.
Early political career
Barrie City Council Brown was elected to the Barrie City Council in 2000 at age 22, and was re-elected in 2003. He served on various committees, including the Budget Committee. Brown's primary focus while on council was health care, despite it being a provincial responsibility. In response to a shortage of doctors, Brown founded the Physician Recruitment Task Force with the Royal Victoria Hospital to help attract more doctors to Barrie.
Member of Parliament (2006–2015) In the lead up to the 2004 federal election, Brown put his name forward as a candidate for the Conservative Party nomination race for the riding of Barrie. Brown defeated Rod Jackson and Douglas Edwards to win the party nomination in what Jackson considered a nasty race. In the election, he lost to Liberal incumbent Aileen Carroll by 1,295 votes. Brown ran again in 2006, this time defeating Carroll by 1,543 votes.
He was re-elected in the 2008 election by 15,195 votes over Liberal candidate Rick Jones.
In November 2010, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation expressed concern about how Patrick Brown used his House of Commons of Canada account. He sent flyers to his riding which included a letter of support and a flyer from Barrie City Councillor Michael Prowse. Brown used his House of Commons account to pay for the mailing because Michael Prowse could not afford to send the flyer out himself.
In the 2011 election, Brown was elected to his third term in office. In 2012, it was reported that Brown had the highest publicly funded expenditures on public service announcement flyers with $81,159.97.
In September 2014, he announced his intention to run in the 2015 Ontario PC party leadership election. He registered as a leadership candidate on November 20, 2014. He said that, unlike the other candidates, he was not involved in the four consecutive losses that have kept the Ontario PCs out of power since 2003. At the time of his jump to provincial politics, he chaired the Conservative Party of Canada's Greater Toronto Area caucus and the Canada-India Parliamentary Association.
Hockey Night in Barrie
In 2007, Brown founded a charity hockey game known as Hockey Night in Barrie. Hockey Night in Barrie was a yearly summer event hosted at the Barrie Molson Centre that had participation from current and former NHLers, known personalities from across Canada, and locals from the police department, fire department, and hospitals in Simcoe County. All funds raised from each game contributed to local hospitals and charities in the Simcoe County region. Hockey Night in Barrie raised $2 million, with the majority of proceeds going towards the development of the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre's Cancer Centre and a new eight-bed youth mental health inpatient unit. In addition to the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, the game also supported for the Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital and Georgian Bay General Hospital for the 9th annual charity game in 2016. Money raised from the game contributed to the Orillia Soldiers' Memorial Hospital's new Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. The game has featured NHL players like Connor McDavid, Aaron Ekblad, Steven Stamkos, Rick Nash, Brian Little, Mark Scheifele, and Andrew Mangiapane, former NHLers such as Wendell Clark, Darcy Tucker, Mike Gartner, Dale Hawerchuk, Bernie Nicholls, Gary Roberts, and Shane Corson, and has featured personalities like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Hockey Night in Canada's Don Cherry and Ron Maclean, Ontario journalist Steve Paikin, Alan Thicke, Walter Gretzky and Jennifer Robinson, among others. In 2018, Brown passed on organizational leadership to Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MP Alex Nuttall for its eleventh annual charity hockey game.
Provincial politics (2014–2018)
On September 28, 2014, Brown announced his intention to run in the contest to replace Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak. From the outset of his campaign, Brown positioned himself as an outsider, challenging the leadership of the PC Party, which had been defeated in the last four provincial elections. In the most recent election campaign, in 2014, the party election platform included a commitment to cut 100,000 public service jobs over 4 years through attrition. As the only one of the original five leadership candidates who was not a member of the Ontario legislature, Brown was not involved in the promise, which he considered ill-advised, Brown's rivals attempted to use this same lack of previous involvement in provincial politics as an argument against his leadership bid.
In March, Brown emerged as the front-runner in the leadership election, having sold over 40,000 of the 70,000 memberships in the party. During the campaign, Brown was successful in bringing many new members to the party, many of whom came from ethnic communities. The past four leadership contests had been won by those who sold the most memberships.
Brown was endorsed by the Campaign Life Coalition and the Ontario Landowners Association. During Brown's leadership bid both special interest groups actively supported him by selling Ontario PC Party memberships amongst their members.
Brown was criticized by his main rival, Christine Elliott, for not resigning his federal seat during the leadership campaign. Brown was absent from the House of Commons for some votes during the leadership campaign, attending 56 per cent of the votes from September to December in 2014. However, his overall attendance for votes in 2014 was 83 per cent. A spokesperson for Prime Minister Stephen Harper confirmed that members are not expected to step down but are expected to "continue to fulfill their parliamentary responsibilities, including membership on committees and attendance at votes."
Progressive Conservative leader (2015–2018) The campaign started with five candidates including Vic Fedeli, Lisa MacLeod, and Monte McNaughton. All three withdrew in early 2015 citing membership recruitment or financial reasons.
On May 9, 2015, Brown was elected leader, defeating his only remaining opponent, Christine Elliott, winning with 61.8 per cent of the membership vote.
Brown resigned his seat in the House of Commons on May 13, 2015, after winning the leadership and led the Progressive Conservative party from outside the legislature during most of the summer. On July 22, 2015, Garfield Dunlop agreed to step down as MPP for Simcoe North on August 1 in order to open up a seat for Brown. A provincial by-election, called for September 3, 2015, was won by Brown.
Under his leadership, the Ontario PC Party won five by-elections, including Sault Ste. Marie and Scarborough-Rouge River, two seats which had been previously held by the governing Liberals. Despite his record, Brown faced accusations of corruption and favouritism over hand picked candidates and unfair nomination contests.
Sexual misconduct allegations and resignation On January 24, 2018, Brown was accused by two women of engaging in sexual misconduct, which dated back to the time he was a federal MP. Brown denied the allegations and initially refused to step down. Four senior staffers from Brown's campaign had advised him that he should resign as party leader; he did not accept their advice. In consequence all four staffers resigned from his campaign team. After pressure from within the party, he resigned as leader in the early hours of January 25. A day later, fellow MPP, Lisa MacLeod revealed that she heard rumours about similar allegations from former National Hockey League player Eric Lindros. Dimitri Soudas, former director of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and volunteer for the campaign, suggested the allegations were baseless, saying, “All media organizations were turning over every single stone that they could find, and they couldn’t find anything.” A Globe and Mail article revealed that Brown's staff had expressed similar concern with Brown's past relationships after he became leader. One of these was with Tamara Macgregor, a former staffer within Brown's office and daughter of Karma Macgregor, a former PC candidate.
The day after he resigned, Brown was succeeded on an interim basis by Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli. Fedeli, who was unanimously elected by caucus, asked Brown to take a leave of absence from Queen's Park while he defended himself against the allegations. In addition, Fedeli announced that he would not sign Brown's nomination papers if he attempted to run in a Barrie riding at the June 7 provincial election. Brown had intended on running in Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte in that election, but Fedeli's announcement would mean that he would have to run as an independent.