Singh diminishes harassment fight

In her Sept. 10 commentary, Angella MacEwen repeated the same arguments that the federal NDP is using to justify their mistreatment of MP Erin Weir.

She falsely accuses Erin of “calling the charges ‘trumped up’ and identifying one of the women who had come forward.” In fact, he never identified any of the complainants and none of their names have ever been reported anywhere.

Erin did state, “I object to the use of backroom procedural tactics — and now a trumped-up harassment complaint — to shut down democratic debate in the New Democratic Party.”

Erin was clearly referring to one single complaint about a political argument, not to all the “charges” or “accusations” (plural). He was not referring to the three complaints about standing too close and talking too long that were lumped together and mislabelled as “sexual harassment.”

He addressed those complaints only after their existence was announced by Jagmeet Singh, days after the above quote. As reported by the media, his response to those complaints was to publicly apologize, offer to enter into conciliation with anyone who wanted to, and complete sensitivity training — exactly the approach MacEwen advocates.

She writes, “Good leaders make tough choices.” In this case, Jagmeet Singh made a series of poor decisions. If anything has diminished support for the fight against harassment, it is the hamhanded way that Singh has dealt with this issue — not Erin’s legitimate attempts to defend himself against one of the complaints.

David Weir, father of Erin Weir, Regina