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PC Leadership race down to two candidates

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Members of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party will start casting ballots for their new leader this Sunday.
The choice is down to two candidates, Tory MPP Christine Elliott had been considered the party favourite, but Federal MP Patrick Brown has made a surprise surge from behind, out-selling his rival by signing up more than 40-thousand members.
Whitby- Oshawa MPP Christine Elliot says she want to bring the PC Party back to its roots. She says the key is to be fiscally responsible first, to make it possible to be socially compassionate.
“So that we can help the families that have children with autism and other special needs to get the services that they require. So that our frail elderly seniors can get the homecare and longterm care services they need.”
The 60 year old lawyer has been a member of the Provinical Parliament since 2006. She says she’s not worried that her opponent, Patrick Brown, has come from behind to sell more memberships.
“That doesn’t really matter in a race like we have right now. But I can tell you the support we’ve been getting from our grassroots members is rock solid.”
Former PC MPP Peter Shurman says it remains to be seen how those memberships are distributed. That will make the difference in the ballot counting process.
“He maintains they’re across the board which would make him the winner. She maintains they’re concentrated in the east side and west side of the GTA and that she is much more evenly distributed across the province.”
“We’re continuing to bleed jobs. We’ve lost 300-thousand manufacturing jobs and I want to reverse that by making this the easiest province to do business. The easiest place to get product to marketplace the easiest place to get cheap power.”
A law school grad, 36 year old Brown has spent most of his career in politics. Now in his third term as a Federal MP for Barrie, Brown is able to distance himself from the Pc’s failure to win an election under former leader Tim Hudak.
“We need someone with no baggage. And the last campaign was quite a loss and we alienated a lot of supporters.”
“Patrick Brown, a bit of an unknown quantity because no I haven’t worked with him and neither has anybody else in that caucus but he sees dramatic changes to be made to that party in order for it to develop the mass appeal.”
Shurman says Brown’s leadership style would be quite different from Elliot’s. He says her attitude is informed by nearly a decade of opposition experience.
“But she is also an individual. And that individual is lets say a softer one than what I am used to on the rural side of the caucus I was a member of.”
More than 76 thousand members will start casting their ballots this Sunday.