[8][10] In November 2014, MacLaren introduced a private member's bill to repeal the law that grants environmental protections for the Niagara Escarpment for the second time.
[14][15] Also in Fall 2015, Brown chose MacLaren to replace fellow Ottawa PC MPP Lisa MacLeod as the party's critic for Eastern Ontario.
[19] MacLaren was forced to apologize on April 6, 2016, after calling his federal Liberal counterpart Karen McCrimmon to the stage at a cancer fundraising dinner the previous month in Carp, and then telling a vulgar joke about her and her husband's sexual relationship.
[20] Patrick Brown said that the party had "zero tolerance for misogynistic comments and an apology was made correctly to Karen McCrimmon this morning.
"[20][21] On April 12, 2016, the Ottawa Citizen reported that MacLaren's website included a testimonials section praising his work where most of the constituents were fictional and were represented by photos that had been taken without permission from the internet.
[22] MacLaren's website initially added a disclaimer claiming that the names and depictions of constituents had been changed to protect their privacy before removing the page entirely.
[23] The next day, Patrick Brown decided to demote MacLaren after the events of the past few weeks by replacing him as the party's Eastern Ontario representative in caucus with Jim McDonell.
[5] MacLaren kept his position as the shadow cabinet critic for natural resources, the chair of a party panel on property rights, and as an ambassador to ethnic communities.
[26] On May 28, 2017, Brown expelled MacLaren from the PC caucus, purportedly after a video recording surfaced of a 2012 speech in which he criticized French language rights in the province, and indicated that the party would act to limit them once in office.
[29] In an interview with Evan Solomon on CFRA after his expulsion, MacLaren said that he had grown unhappy with the direction that Brown was taking the party and hadn't spoken to him in a year.