A woman who identifies herself as a whistleblower in Patrick Brown’s campaign says she personally discussed with the Conservative leadership candidate an agreement for her to be paid by a private company.
“Mr. Brown told me it was allowed for me to be employed by a company as a consultant, and after that company volunteered me with the campaign,” says a statement released by Debbie Jodoin’s lawyers.
“He connected me by text message with a third party for this purpose. I trusted him, but as time went on I became more and more concerned about the deal and suspected it wasn’t right.”
Jodoin says she began working as a regional organizer of Brown’s campaign in May at his request and has more than two decades of experience with the Conservative Party.
Jodoin shared his concerns with the Conservative Party through his legal adviser, the statement said.
On Tuesday, the Conservative Party’s Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) disqualified Brown from the leadership race, citing “serious allegations of irregularity” related to funding rules.
Brown has rejected any suggestions of crime and said the party did not give him details of those allegations before he was rejected.
A campaign is offered to reimburse the company
In response to Jodoin’s statement, Brown’s campaign maintains its claim that the leadership committee did not provide specific information about the allegation.
But now Brown’s campaign says they had identified Jodoin to LEOC as the possible source of the allegation and claims the committee never responded.
“Now the details are being made public, long after the investigation and disqualification, in a clearly orchestrated effort,” Brown campaign spokesman Chisholm Pothier said in an email.
“This party is a clown car,” Pothier wrote.
A letter from Brown’s campaign sent to LEOC about Jodoin and obtained by CBC says he had approached Brown to ask for work with his campaign. The letter says Brown referred her to his friend for a job, but that Brown assumed that volunteer work for his campaign would not be done at company time.
Brown’s campaign offered to reimburse the company that had paid Jodoin, according to the letter.
Brown initially blamed members of the Conservative Party establishment and supporters of leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre for his expulsion from the race, saying he worked to disqualify him from the leadership race because they feared his progressive approach to conservatism would win.