UPDATE, May 29: MPP Jack MacLaren was quitting before PC Leader Patrick Brown fired him
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Several news outlets today reporting that Carleton-Mississippi Mills MPP Jack MacLaren has been kicked out of the PC caucus for remarks made about Franco-Ontarians during the 2012 election campaign. MacLaren’s riding includes Stittsville.
BREAKING: CFRA has learned MPP Jack MacLaren has been removed from Tory caucus, over alleged comments about Franco-Ontarians in 2012 video
— Kristy Cameron (@radioKristy) May 28, 2017
Jack MacLaren is out of the PC party for good, Brown says. pic.twitter.com/tfpyWSFR7H
— David Reevely (@davidreevely) May 28, 2017
Statement from PC leader's office says the @jackmaclaren1 video is "the last straw" and the MPP's expulsion is "indefinite." pic.twitter.com/0JjuSHdslk
— CBC Ottawa (@CBCOttawa) May 28, 2017
David Reevely reports in the Ottawa Citizen:
Kanata MPP Jack MacLaren’s been kicked out of the provincial Progressive Conservative caucus and won’t be allowed to run for the party in the next election, leader Patrick Brown says.
The “final straw” was an old video of MacLaren answering a question at a public event, implying that a Tory government would do something — it’s not clear what — about preferential treatment for Ontarians who speak French.
“We have lots of things that we’re going to do that we won’t say before the election because we want to get elected,” MacLaren said on the recording, which is purportedly from 2012 and was first posted by radio station CFRA.
He doesn’t denigrate Franco-Ontarians on the recording but does sympathetically respond to a questioner who, off-camera, asks for something to be done about the supposed ill-treatment of unilingual anglophones in the job market.
“You don’t have to convince me what’s wrong with the French language in Eastern Ontario,” MacLaren begins, before the questioner cuts him off to ask why the Tories aren’t talking about it.
“You’re right, but you won’t hear it, because we’re trying to get elected, and it’ll always get twisted and turned by the Liberal —” he continues, before being cut off again.