Premier Rachel Notley has called on UCP Leader Jason Kenney to remove his party’s house leader, after it was revealed that Jason Nixon fired a woman in 2008 who complained about sexual harassment on a Kelowna worksite.
Notley said if Nixon was her house leader “he would be out.”
“Mr. Kenney must answer to this,” she said. “Mr. Nixon was his handpicked selection to be his political lieutenant, his political spokesperson. So did he know and not care? Or now that he does know, what’s he going to do about it?”
Notley said it is dishonest and disingenuous for Nixon to argue against the need for Alberta to put workplace harassment policies in place.
Bill 30, An Act to Protect the Health and Well-being of Working Albertans, was introduced in the Alberta legislature late last month.
Under the bill, employers and supervisors would be required to take measures to prevent harassment and violence in the workplace. Workers would be prohibited from engaging in harassing, bullying or violent behaviour.
“For him to come into this house and say … he believes industry is always going to do the right thing is incredibly dishonest,” the premier said of Nixon. “Because he knows of one particular case where in his case, it didn’t do the right thing. It did the wrong thing.”
A ruling from the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, handed down on Dec. 30, 2008, involved three companies: Nixon’s company, Nixon Safety Consulting (NSC); Navigator, a company building a condo in Kelowna; and Con-Forte, a company that performed concrete work on the site. It also involved Greg Ford, an independent contractor.
The tribunal found that Nixon’s company fired its safety officer, Kori Harrison, in December 2005 after she complained that Ford had sexually harassed her.
“I find that Mr. Ford sexually harassed Ms. Harrison and that NSC terminated her employment when she complained,” adjudicator Kurt Neuenfeldt wrote.
“I find that NSC terminated her employment at the urging of Navigator, and with the tacit approval of Con-Forte.”
CBC has reached out to both Kenney and Nixon for comment.
Nixon, the UCP MLA for Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre, told the Edmonton Journal on Monday he would have dealt with the situation differently today, and would have resisted Navigator’s call to remove his employee from the worksite.