Elections Ontario receives complaint from Cambridge PC Riding Association

The Cambridge PC riding association has filed a complaint with Elections Ontario against the Ontario PC Party. 

This comes almost a month after independent MPP Belinda Karahalios was removed from the PC caucus for not voting in line with the party on Bill 195. 

Karahalios was the only member that voted against the PC's bill that allows the Ontario government to extend or amend some emergency orders a month at a time for up to two years. 

At the time of the vote, Karahalios said that it was an “unnecessary overreach on our parliamentary democracy.”

“At its core, Bill 195 takes away the legislature’s ability to vote on the use of extraordinary emergency powers on Ontarians for the next year,” said Karahalios in a release. “By transferring away the ability for Ontario MPPs to consider, debate, and vote on how emergency powers are used on Ontarians, Bill 195 essentially silences every single Ontario MPP on the most important issue facing our legislature today.”

Paul Robertson is a board member of the Cambridge PC riding association and he says that Premier Ford has made a mistake for throwing the MPP out of caucus.

“Initially, we sat back and we expected that Ford would correct his error,” said Robertson, “Instead we started to get threatening letters from the party.” 

The complaint letter also outlines that the riding president resigned after the party allegedly used bullying, intimidation tactics and threats against the Cambridge PC riding association.

Robertson says that the PC party has derecognized the association. 

“Under the Elections Ontario Act, the only provisions that I know of is that Elections Ontario could deregister the board but only from financial wrongdoings but our books are in order.” 

The letter also alleges that unelected PC party members are trying to name a new president and CFO without holding a vote from the members of the association. 

“All we hear from is party staffers”, said Robertson, “party staffers by our constitution have to remain neutral in their dealings with the riding associations. We fully expect the party executive is just using the staffers in order to isolate themselves to give them a little distance from the issue so nobody can look to them. All we get is threatening emails and phone calls.” 

Robertson adds that the PC Party has already said they would not allow MPP Karahalios run for the party in the next election despite having the support of the riding association. 

“The member we elected represented our views and the member elected was removed from caucus as a result of representing the Cambridge association views,” said Robertson, “the PC party has made it very clear that they don't intend to let Belinda back into the caucus and they've also made it very clear that they will not allow her to run as a candidate in the next election.”

Elections Ontario says they are looking into the matter and it is under review. 

With files from Ben Eppel and the Canadian Press