Vic Fedeli to back Christine Elliott in PC leadership bid

The race for leader of Ontario's Progressive Conservatives was shaken up Wednesday when former North Bay mayor Vic Fedeli dropped out and threw his support behind perceived front-runner Christine Elliott.

Fedeli, the PC's finance critic, was a distant second to Elliott in donations posted with Elections Ontario when nominations for the leadership race closed last week, raising $156,000 compared with her $515,000.

The number of $10-party memberships that each candidate can sell and the amount of donations they raise are the numbers that count the most, said Fedeli.

"I'm a numbers guy, and I'm a pragmatist," he told a small crowd of supporters at Elliott's Toronto campaign headquarters.

"I've added up the numbers, and simply put, I don't see them being there for me to win this leadership race."

Elliott, the widow of former finance minister Jim Flaherty, said she and Fedeli believe that "fiscal responsibility and social compassion must go hand in hand," but rejected suggestions the race is splitting Tories along right and left lines.

"It's no longer a time for red Tory, blue Tory, social conservative (or) whatever," she said. "We are Progressive Conservatives and we need to pull ourselves together, which Vic and I are committed to doing."

Rival candidates Patrick Brown, a Barrie MP, and Monte McNaughton, an MPP from the London-area, are considered on the right wing of the party, with both speaking out against proposed changes to the sex education curriculum.

Elliott, the deputy PC leader and MPP for Whitby-Oshawa, said Brown had a different view of the party than her, but insisted she too has concerns with the changes being contemplated for the updated sex ed curriculum.

"I don't think we need to be afraid (but) I am very concerned that the Liberals are not being forthcoming with what the sex ed curriculum has to say," she said. "Parents have the right to know what their children are being taught in school and to have their say in what that should be."

Brown, the only one of the four remaining leadership contenders not to have a seat in the Ontario legislature, has posted $105,000 in donations so far.

Fedeli is well known and respected in northern Ontario, but many northerners "still feel excluded from the decision-making process" in the PC party," Brown said in a release.

"They want a party that consults with and listens to its members, not a party whose leaders arbitrarily proposed to cut 100,000 jobs," Brown added in a reference to former party leader Tim Hudak's pledge that many believe cost the Tories the 2014 election.

A spokeswoman for Nepean-Carleton MPP Lisa MacLeod said her campaign has raised about $105,000 so far, while McNaughton posted just under $20,000 in donations.

Hudak resigned as party leader shortly after the Conservatives' fourth consecutive election defeat last June, when the Liberals were returned with a majority government.