Ontario MPP and Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Patrick Brown appealed directly to his grassroots supporters at a campaign event Sunday, saying abandoning his platform could destroy the party. "We can't win by walking away from the platform that our party members worked so hard to build," said Brown, referring to the People's Guarantee, which the PCs rolled out last November. The former Ontario PC leader registered to run in the party's snap leadership race on Friday, hours before the deadline to enter the contest expired. That move came shortly after PC interim leader Vic Fedeli announced that Brown, who represents Simcoe North, had been booted from caucus. He repeated his team's assertion that, under Brown, party membership swelled from some 12,000 to more than 200,000 members.

Source: CBC News February 18, 2018 16:54 UTC