Ottawa-
A longtime Tory organizer says Patrick Brown was personally involved in a deal that saw her paid by a third-party company for work she did on his leadership campaign.
Debra Jodoin, through her attorney, released a statement late Thursday after the party spent the past two days dealing with the fallout from Brown’s disqualification from the race.
The chairman of the party’s leadership election organizing committee said on Tuesday that its members had voted 11 to six to disqualify him from the campaign due to “serious allegations of wrongdoing”.
Brown maintained that he had not received details from the party about the charge against him. He said what the committee was presented with was an anonymous allegation that someone working on his campaign was being paid by a corporation.
While the party did not release details of the allegation, it said it appeared to violate fundraising rules under the Canada Elections Act and came from Brown’s own campaign.
On Thursday, Jodoin, who describes herself as an experienced organizer who has been involved in the party and her predecessor for more than 20 years, emerged as the whistleblower.
Jodoin said that in April 2022, the month after Brown announced he would enter the contest to replace former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, she joined the campaign “at his request” to help him as as regional organizer.
“Mr. Brown told me it was okay for me to be employed by a company as a consultant and then have that company have me volunteer for the campaign,” she said.
“He put me in touch by text message with a third party for this purpose. I trusted him, but over time I became more and more concerned about the arrangement and suspected that it was not OK.”
According to the statement, in June she asked Brown to have the campaign cover her expenses, saying he expressed surprise and communicated that he was “on it.”
“A corporation paid me and paid for my expenses, not the Brown campaign,” she said.
His lawyer Jason Beitchman said Jodoin shared his concerns with the party and asked that his identity be kept confidential.
“Based on this, she felt it was her duty to raise her concerns and leave it to others to determine what further action, if any, to take,” Beitchman said.
“Ms. Jodoin expressly rejects any suggestion that she was coerced or coerced by others into coming forward and did so of her own free will.”
After Jodoin released his statement on Thursday, Brown’s campaign responded, reiterating that the party had an obligation to provide them with full details of the case, and said they only learned about them from the media.
“Once Ms. Jodoin provided information, it was the obligation of the Conservative Party to conduct itself fairly and transparently,” read a statement released by campaign spokesman Chisholm Pothier.
He said what usually happens during a campaign, where thousands of people are involved, is that issues arise that are directed to the campaign in question to be resolved.
“Unfortunately that didn’t happen in this case because that was of course not the purpose. The purpose was to disqualify Patrick Brown from the leadership race and narrow the field.”
Brown himself has accused senior party officials of pushing him out of the race to benefit his main rival, longtime Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre.
Poilievre’s campaign had said the allegation did not come from them.
The allegation that led to Brown’s ousting was presented to them last week and was the subject of correspondence between him and the party.
Pothier released a section of a letter he said the campaign sent to the party’s election organizing committee last week in response to concerns he had. He said this identified the situation involving Jodoin.
The letter says it was Jodoin who approached Brown asking for work on his campaign. He says there were none at the time and Brown referred her to a friend of his, who was also a supporter.
The campaign said Brown understood Jodoin was volunteering for him outside of the work she was doing for his friend.
The campaign said if that hadn’t happened, it was ready to refund the amount, which it believed to be less than $10,000. The campaign said it was not aware of any similar cases.
Canada’s electoral commissioner confirmed Thursday that he was reviewing information about the allegations against Brown, but a spokesperson, citing confidentiality, did not disclose the nature or details of what he had received.
According to sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity, the allegation against Brown included documents and text messages.
Since stepping down, Brown has hired high-profile attorney Marie Henein as legal counsel, who has called on the party and those involved in the decision to remove him from the campaign to prepare for anticipated legal action.
This report from The Canadian Press was first published on July 7, 2022.