Harassment complaints against May dismissed
Accusations by former Green party employees don’t meet legal bar, investigation finds
OTTAWA— The Green party announced Thursday that an external investigation concluded that accusations levelled against longtime leader Elizabeth May do not constitute workplace harassment.
The now-dismissed complaints, first reported by the Star in January, came from three former party employees, who accused May of creating a toxic work environment with behaviour that included yelling at staff and putting them down in front of their colleagues.
May strongly contested the allegations at the time and, within days, called for an investigation “to put the matter to bed.” The party hired Toronto lawyer Sheila Block to conduct the investigation and released a summary of its findings Thursday morning.
According to the summary, Block concluded the allegations against May, “if accepted as true, do not rise to the level of workplace harassment,” as defined by Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act. The sum- mary says that definition would require showing May engaged “in a course of vexatious comment or conduct against a worker … that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome.”
Speaking to the Star on Parliament Hill, May welcomed the findings and said the complaints were from former employees who had “an axe to grind” with the Green party.
“The investigation was very thorough and the complaints were found to be without any merit,” May said. “It was baseless and it’s the end of it.”
“The investigation was very thorough and the complaints were found to be without any merit. It was baseless and it’s the end of it.” ELIZABETH MAY GREEN PARTY LEADER
May also called the Star’s original report “bad journalism” that failed to consult more widely to gain a “fuller perspective.”
“But that’s all right,” she said. “The investigation has been made public and that should be the end of it.”
Block’s team interviewed two of the three former employees who spoke to the Star in January: former Green party executive director Rob Rainer and Diana Nunes, who was the party’s director of finance for more than 10 years. The investigation also interviewed May and “a number of other individuals whom we believed could provide additional context,” the summary report says.
Rod Leggett, a party spokesperson, said investigators spoke with more than 10 current and former volunteers and staff, not including the complainants, and that the party had no say in who Block chose to interview.
May’s third accuser, Vanessa Brustolin, who worked as a provincial organizer for three months in 2017, did not agree to be interviewed for Block’s investigation.
In an email to the Star on Thursday, Brustolin said she is not surprised by the result of the investigation. She, Nunes and Rainer had raised concerns about the process and, in February, Nunes and Brustolin said they would not participate in the investigation. At the time, they wrote to the party to say they felt the investigation was not sufficiently independent, and raised questions about Block’s experience with workplace investigations. According to her bio on the Torys LLP website, Block is a senior trial lawyer with a “broad civil litigation practice.”
Brustolin also wanted other party employees who may have complaints about the party leader to be included in the investigation, which was “limited” to investigating the claims of Brustolin, Nunes and Rainer, according to the summary released Thursday.
“I knew this would be the result,” Brustolin wrote Thursday. “The Green party would never have commissioned a report, which would have been unfavourable to Elizabeth May. The Green Party of Canada is Elizabeth May.”
Nunes and Rainer did not provide comment on Thursday.
In January, May flatly rejected a series of allegations from the three former employees in a lengthy interview with the Star. She denied ever “yelling or screaming” in the workplace and said she is “the antithesis of the bully leader.”
The party’s executive director, Emily McMillan, worked with May for years at the Green party and Sierra Club. She also defended the leader, stating in an interview at the time that she had never seen May yell in anger at an employee.
“I think it’s sad that a woman in power is held to some kind of standard that you’re supposed to be meek and mild all the time,” she said.