On November 25, about a week before a nomination meeting was scheduled in Vankleek Hill, Derek Duval, a would-be candidate for Ontario’s PC party, quoted Colin Powell on Facebook: “A dream doesn’t become reality through magic. It takes sweat, determination and hard work,” he wrote. But as Duval and his supporters saw last week, sometimes all that isn’t enough.

Duval’s candidacy was rejected by the party on December 1, just a few days before the nomination meeting, without any public explanation. Duval said in a statement it is because the party preferred his competitor, Amanda Simard, and because of a years-old video. The video, which Duval helped edit and shoot, features hockey, satire and supposed drinking antics at Vankleek Hill’s 2012 Pond Rocket hockey tournament, and Duval says one party employee accused him of filming a man eating a hamster, which is ostensibly why Duval’s nomination bid was disqualified. The video might be somewhat embarrassing for someone running for office, but it’s not scandalous, and at no point does anyone eat a hamster – just poutine.

The real reason for Duval’s disqualification, he claimed in a statement, was his impending success: Duval says he signed up 1,200 new party members and was poised to win Saturday’s vote. We don’t know how many members Simard signed up or how many would have cast votes for her. But, back in 2012, Roxane Villeneuve-Robertson won the PC nomination at an event attended by only about 300 people, according to media reports – so if Duval had 1,200 supporters, he likely had at least a chance of winning.

The party has not given an explanation for Duval’s disqualification, citing privacy, but on Monday, PC party leader Patrick Brown told the Canadian Press, “I heard the reasons for the disqualification, and the alleged hamster had nothing to do with it.” It would be nice to know the reasons Brown says he’s heard, but no luck there.
The PC party has the right to vet potential candidates, but the way Duval was disqualified is disrespectful. Whatever the “real” reason for it, waiting until the very last minute to kick him out of the race means his supporters wasted time, effort and money. Duval himself who was, after all, looking for an opportunity to serve the party, was allowed to waste his time and effort – more than a year of it. The circumstances of Duval’s disqualfication also cast a pall over the nomination of Amanda Simard, a qualified and experienced candidate.

At a time when local people seem to be looking for a way to engage with provincial issues – whether it’s hydro rates or wind turbines – it’s disheartening to see an attempt to get involved squashed. The message sent by the event is that the party is not interested in knowing what the local people in this riding want. The lack of explanation after the fact adds insult to injury. Local people deserve better than “It’s none of your business.”

Now, we can only guess what really happened. Simard was the party’s choice and was going to be the choice no matter what. The party doesn’t care about the support and awareness that Duval, as a young potential candidate, brought along with his enthusiasm and his belief that change, even at the level of provincial politics, is possible.

We’ll just have to guess that the PC political machine went online three days before the nomination vote and found a small-town video that scandalized them.

Earlier this year, Patrick Brown told delegates at a convention that the party must change if it wants to form a government in 2018.
We couldn’t agree more.

By Theresa Ketterling
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