THE WHISPER CAMPAIGNS
PCs’ APPROACH TO MISCONDUCT IN SHARP FOCUS
APaola Loriggio in Toronto longtime Progressive Conservative’s comments that she had flagged rumours about Patrick Brown to his campaign team weeks before he stepped down as leader raised questions Friday about the party’s own processes for dealing with sexual misconduct allegations.
Ontario legislator Lisa MacLeod said she shared information about Brown “two or three times” as recently as December but didn’t know whether it had been brought to the attention of others in the party.
The allegations related to “inappropriate touching,” among other things, and were similar to those that prompted Brown to resign Thursday, she said. MacLeod said she was told they were unfounded.
“There’s been a lot of speculation and people have heard a lot of different things throughout a period of time. So, there were lots of things that were percolating that a lot of people heard,” she said.
The Progressive Conservatives’ newly appointed interim leader, Vic Fedeli, said he had not heard any such rumours and vowed Friday to review the party’s human resources policies.
Brown stepped down as Ontario Progressive Conservative leader early Thursday morningj ust hours after emphatically denying what he called “troubling allegations” about his conduct and his character.
The allegations were brought by two women who spoke to CTV News and have not been independently verified by The Canadian Press.
Critics said MacLeod’s account raised “serious questions” about how the party handles such cases.
“Two brave, young women came forward with horrific allegations of degrading and unwanted sexual acts at the hands of Patrick Brown,” Andrea Horwath, leader of the Ontario New Democrats, said in a statement.
“My thoughts are still with those women — and that’s why today’s indication that the PC Party may have dismissed similar concerns about their leader as ‘ unfounded’ is deeply troubling, and raises serious questions.”
MacLeod said she reported the rumours to her friend Dimitri Soudas, who worked on Brown’s campaign team.
Soudas, who previously worked as communications director for former prime minister Stephen Harper, said the information he received was vague but he nonetheless encouraged MacLeod to report it to others.
“I strongly urged her to raise these issues directly with Mr. Brown as I was a volunteer and she was a caucus member,” he said on Twitter. “I also urged her to raise this issue with caucus. She clearly didn’t.”
Kevin Gaudet, a longtime Progressive Conservative who organized the party’s policy convention last year, said it has policies in place to deal with any allegations that might surface.
But he said it’s hard to comment on what the party could have done in this case given that the allegations reported by MacLeod were vague and that “none of us know what was said to whom.”
“To the best of my knowledge, the party is ... fully prepared and expects to receive and deal with any allegations ( of ) impropriety undertaken by any representative or agent of the party,” he said.
Brown’s sister came to his defence, saying on Facebook that her brother was the victim of a “political hit.”
Stephanie Brown said the allegations are “completely false” and her brother did not deserve what happened to him this week.
Meanwhile, the former premier of British Columbia, who was the first woman elected to that job, went on Facebook to say that politics is an often “brutally sexist” business.
Christy Clark said she saw plenty of “frat boy behaviour” during her time in office.
“All of us who have experienced a sexual assault, harassment, or aggressive and unwelcome advances know it’s a damn hard thing to talk about,” she wrote on Facebook Thursday, thanking women who have come forward.
“I was involved in politics for 25 years and saw plenty of frat boy behaviour. It made me promise myself that I would do things differently, should I ever get the chance to lead.”
Clark declined to expand on the post when contacted, saying she would comment after the B.C. Liberal leadership race that ends Feb. 3.
Clark worked behind the scenes in politics before she was elected to the legislature for the B.C. Liberal party in 1996. She served as premier from 2011 to 2017, when her minority government was defeated in a non- confidence motion.
In 2016, she revealed in a Vancouver Sun op-ed piece that when she was 13, a stranger pulled her off a sidewalk into some bushes, but she was able to escape. She said she never told anyone about the incident or any of the other “frightening things of a sexual nature” that happened to her as a youth.
Advocacy groups commended Clark for coming forward, but they also criticized her track record on women’s issues, arguing she had not increased funding to transition houses and crisis centres after cuts by her predecessor.
Clark touted her achievements in the Facebook post, saying her cabinet had a greater percentage of women than any in the previous decade, and she appointed the first women to serve as the province’s attorney general and to lead BC Hydro.
“It’s an awful lot harder for sexist behaviour to go unnoticed or be deliberately ignored when there’s a woman in the room,” she said.
“What can every citizen do to change it? Elect more women. Yes, make sure they’re qualified — not every woman is better just because she’s female — but if she’s smart and capable, give her the chance.”
First ministers also shouldn’t load up their offices and the senior civil service with men, or use gender- balanced cabinets as a facade, she said.
“Yes, I get it, most of you are men, but culture change starts at the top and if your ‘ real’ cabinet is mostly male, you won’t change a thing despite the window dressing,” she said.
“We are watching history being made right now. Politics is a brutal and very often brutally sexist business — one that has historically reduced women like me to a footnote in history. But, thanks to lots of brave women who are making their voices heard, change is FINALLY afoot.”