Association. Hockey Night in Barrie In 2007, Brown founded a charity hockey game known as Hockey Night in Barrie. Hockey Night in Barrie was a yearly summer event hosted at the Barrie Molson Centre that had participation from current and former NHLers, known personalities from across Canada, and locals from the police department, fire department, and hospitals in Simcoe County. All funds raised from each game contributed to local hospitals and charities in the Simcoe County region. Hockey Night in Barrie raised $2 million, with the majority of proceeds going towards the development of the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre’s Cancer Centre and a new eight-bed youth mental health inpatient unit. In addition to the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre, the game also supported for the Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital and Georgian Bay General Hospital for the 9th annual charity game in 2016. Money raised from the game contributed to the Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital's new Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. The game has featured NHL players like Connor McDavid, Aaron Ekblad, Steven Stamkos, Rick Nash, Brian Little, Mark Scheifele, and Andrew Mangiapane; former NHLers such as Wendell Clark, Darcy Tucker, Mike Gartner, Dale Hawerchuk, Bernie Nicholls, Gary Roberts, and Shane Corson; and has featured personalities like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Hockey Night in Canada’s Don Cherry and Ron Maclean, Ontario journalist Steve Paikin, Alan Thicke, Walter Gretzky and Jennifer Robinson, among others. In 2018, Brown passed on organizational leadership to Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MP Alex Nuttall for its eleventh annual charity hockey game. Provincial politics (2014–2018) On September 28, 2014, Brown announced his intention to run in the contest to replace Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak. From the outset of his campaign, Brown positioned himself as an outsider, challenging the leadership of the PC Party, which had been defeated in the last four provincial elections. In the most recent election campaign, in 2014, the party election platform included a commitment to cut 100,000 public service jobs over 4 years through attrition. As the only one of the original five leadership candidates who was not a member of the Ontario legislature, Brown was not involved in the promise, which he considered ill-advised, Brown's rivals attempted to use this same lack of previous involvement in provincial politics as an argument against his leadership bid. In March, Brown emerged as the front-runner in the leadership election, having sold over 40,000 of the 70,000 memberships in