We are not racists, say mother-son political duo in N.B.
Lawsuit claims NDP, Singh defamed them
The Great Battle of New Brunswick, the defining internecine feud of this campaign, soldiered on into another skirmish this week, when the leaders of a mass defection that wasn’t sued their old party for defamation.
It hasn’t been a vintage campaign year, 2019. If it were wine, you might call it corked. No soaring rhetoric. No big plans or bold characters. Just a full cast of also-rans limping for the line. (It’s the kind of race you’re sad to discover that someone has to win.)
Given all that, you might see what’s happened in New Brunswick as kind of quaint. Next to all the third-party attack ads, the depressing own-goals, and mind-numbing panders, a little local feud feels almost refreshing. It’s the palate cleanser of political scandals. Just don’t say that to Jonathan Richardson or his mom.
The Richardsons are the mother-son political duo behind New Brunswick’s aborted progressive schism. They tried to lead a great wave of former NDP candidates over to the Green Party in early September only to discover, after the fact, that what they had was more of a trickle.
To the Richardsons, the events of Sept. 3 through 5 are serious, million-dollar serious even, so serious they’re willing to fight about them in court. On Tuesday, six days before the federal election, the Richardsons filed a statement of claim in Ontario alleging the NDP, party leader Jagmeet Singh, and MP Charlie Angus all tarred the two as racists after they defected.
The Richardsons claim they have suffered “irreparable harm” to their reputations, that they have been subject to “extensive ridicule and contempt” and that Jonathan Richardson had his car vandalized, all as a direct result of the defendants’ actions.
They are asking for general damages of $500,000, aggravated damages of $250,000, punitive damages of $250,000 and to have their legal costs paid. They have retained noted Toronto defamation expert Ryder Gilliland to pursue their case.
Nothing in the statement of claim has been proven in court. None of the named parties has yet filed a statement of defence. But in an email, attributed to the NDP’s national director, Melissa Bruno, the party wrote: “The claim has no merit. We look forward to dealing with this through the legal system, so we won’t comment further.”
The Richardsons left the NDP for the Green party at a highly publicized press conference in Moncton on Sept. 3. At the time, the Richardsons claimed they were bringing 14 former NDP candidates with them. After the conference was over, though, that number began to shrink.
Some of the original defectors claimed they had misunderstood what Joyce Richardson was asking them when she asked them to switch parties. At least two, sisters Madison and Hailey Duffy, say Richardson never spoke to them at all.
But it was an interview that Jonathan Richardson, a former Atlantic organizer for the NDP, gave right after the press conference that led to the real trouble. Speaking to The Canadian Press, Richardson asserted that Singh’s ethnicity and appearance were an issue for the party in New Brunswick.
“(T)he racism card came up a lot (with party members and potential candidates) — especially in the northern part of the province,” he said, according to CP.
The wire service paraphrased Richardson as saying that “some potential NDP candidates were hesitant to run because they thought the electorate wouldn’t vote for a party whose leader wore a turban.”
“That was probably a major, a reason that they felt people wouldn’t want to vote for them because that would hold them back,” Richardson told CP.
The Richardsons have now accused the NDP, Singh and Angus of spinning those statements to make the Richardsons themselves out to be racists.
“At no time did the Richardsons indicate that race was a factor in them joining the Green party. It was not,” their statement of claim says. “The Richardsons had been supportive of Jagmeet Singh’s leadership of the NDP since he was nominated in 2017. They had no issue with his race. They are not racists.”
Joyce Richardson also took issue with the party for outing her as a former, foiled leadership candidate. She was the only person to put her name forward for the top job of the New Brunswick NDP during a leadership race last summer, but she failed a vetting process overseen by the federal party.
In the statement of claim, the Richardsons accused Angus of “knowingly and maliciously” breaching Joyce Richardson’s privacy by circulating an article that contained information Joyce Richardson provided the party in confidence. (Joyce Richardson later discussed the reasons she failed the vetting process in an interview with the National Post.)
The Green party had no comment on the lawsuit. Asked if she and her son remain active with the Greens, Joyce Richardson responded, via email: “We are just members, not more.”
Mackenzie Thomason, the 22-year-old newspaper deliveryman who took over the interim leadership of the New Brunswick NDP after the party rejected Joyce Richardson, is now running for the federal party in Monday’s election.