Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives will hold a leadership race to replace Patrick Brown, who resigned this week in the face of sexual misconduct allegations.
The party’s executive voted today to hold the race and select a new leader sometime before March, ahead of the spring election.
Party president Rick Dykstra says the executive has not yet established a firm time frame for the race.
The executive’s decision runs contrary to the wishes of the party’s caucus, which named Tory finance critic and Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli as interim leader earlier in the day and wanted him to serve as permanent party leader through the upcoming election.

Fedeli who is eligible to run for the leadership says he’s ready to lead.

“We need to be decisive and we have one opponent here, it’s not ourselves, the opponent is Kathleen Wynne and the damage she’s done to Ontario,” he says.

Fedeli says the grassroots of the party is represented in their platform, ‘The People’s Guarantee’.

“The people in our party, the 200,000 members have spoken loud and clear in developing our platform and that’s what we’re going door to door, with that platform,” he says.

Fedeli takes over as leader from Patrick Brown, who resigned this week amid sexual misconduct allegations.

“Together with caucus, I am asking Mr. Brown to take a leave of absence from the Ontario PC Caucus while he has a chance to defend himself,” Fedeli said.

He went on to say he’ll work with their Human Resources staff to strengthen their workplace violence and harassment policies.

“I believe we should have a conducive workplace for all employees, we’ll be looking at all our policies,” he added.

In a statement, Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Patrick Madahbee congratulates Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli on becoming the interim PC leader.

“As former mayor of North Bay, Fedeli had a good, open relationship with First Nations,” says Grand Chief Madahbee.

Fedeli entered politics in 2003 when he was elected mayor of North Bay.

He served two terms as mayor before running, and winning a seat, for Ontario’s PCs in 2011 and has been the party’s Finance Critic for the past five years.