Mulroney, Ford not ready to lead Ont. PC party: Elliott

Ontario PC leadership candidate Christine Elliott speaks with CTV Question Period host Evan Solomon in an interview that airs Sunday.

Ontario PC leadership candidate Christine Elliott is taking aim at her competition, saying that she’s the only one who has “the knowledge and the experience” to lead her party to victory over Kathleen Wynne’s Liberals in the province’s June election.

In addition to Elliott, who spent more than nine years in Ontario’s legislature and is now running to head the province’s Progressive Conservatives for the third time, four other candidates are also vying to lead the party: social conservative Tanya Granic Allen, former Toronto city councilor Doug Ford, lawyer and businessperson Caroline Mulroney, and Patrick Brown, who unexpectedly joined the race Friday after resigning as party leader on Jan. 25 amid sexual misconduct allegations.

In an interview with CTV Question Period host Evan Solomon that airs Sunday, Elliott emphatically stated that because Mulroney has never held political office, it’s not her time to step into the political spotlight.

“I don’t think that she is ready now,” Elliott said. “I think that Caroline is very intelligent and she has lots of promise and she has a great political future, but right now we have an election coming up in just a little over 100 days. We need somebody who’s got the experience. I’ve been elected four times. I’ve been an MPP for nine years… We need somebody who’s ready to go right now and I’m that candidate.”

Regarding Ford, the brash brother and confidant of late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, Elliott levelled a similar criticism.

“I think that Doug has had some experience of course, at the municipal level,” she said, “but it’s a very different story at Queen’s Park and you need to have that experience, you need to have undergone question periods, you need to ask the questions and be on the receiving end of it as premier. So, you need to understand how that all works and you need to be able to have that background of knowledge of the issues, which I’m the only candidate that has.”

Despite her critiques of Mulroney and Ford, Elliott demurred when asked if Brown -- who has vociferously denied the sexual misconduct allegations that have been levelled against him -- can still lead Ontario’s PCs.

“Well I guess that’s going to be up to the voting members to decide,” Elliott said. “But I got into this race because I believe that I have the knowledge and the experience, and the steady hand that can take the party, unify our party, and bring us to victory in June. It’s not going to be an easy task.”

Watch Question Period Sunday mornings on CTV, CTV News Channel, CTVNews.ca, and CTV News GO at 11 a.m. ET, 10 a.m. CT, 9 a.m. MT and 8 a.m. PT