Two parties, two standards
The Liberal Party has zero tolerance for candidates accused of sexual misconduct. Some exceptions apply.
I won’t be voting for the Conservatives in this federal election. Not because I don’t want to, but because I literally can’t:
Shortly before the deadline for finalizing election candidates, the CPC nominee in my district withdrew after allegations of sexual assault (which he denies) were made against him.
I hope that justice is done. Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, has publicly stated that the Liberal Party has a zero-tolerance policy for candidates facing such allegations, and you know where this is going, don’t you?
The Liberal Party has given southwestern Ontario candidate Raj Saini the green light to seek re-election for his third term as an MP despite a series of allegations of inappropriate behaviour toward young female staffers that spanned his six years in office, CBC News has learned.
Seven sources with knowledge of the claims described four different cases where Saini allegedly made unwanted sexual advances or inappropriate comments. Saini said he has never acted inappropriately toward staff.
A former senior staffer who filed a Canadian Human Rights Commission complaint against Saini last year alleging unwelcome advances and harassing behavioursaid it's upsetting the party is allowing Saini to campaign again under the Liberal banner in Kitchener Centre. The staffer said her experience in Saini's office contributed to her mental distress, and she eventually tried to take her own life in his office in March 2020.
"That's pretty devastating to me, knowing what I have gone through and that I've raised concerns over the last more than year and a half," said the former senior staffer. "It's disturbing to me.... It's also concerning to me that it could continue to happen to other people."
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has maintained he has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to harassment in the workplace, and that he has led a feminist government. But his party also allowed MP Marwan Tabbara to run in the 2019 federal election despite a party investigation into allegations of sexual harassment made against him in the previous mandate. Tabbara later left caucus after police charged him with break and enter, assault and criminal harassment in an unrelated case last year. Tabbara's next court appearance is scheduled for tomorrow.
[…]
As he announced his party's mental health policy in Ottawa on Tuesday, Trudeau was asked why he's allowing Saini to run again and whether he believes his male candidate rather than female staffers.
"Mr. Saini has shared the processes," said Trudeau. "There have been rigorous processes undertaken that he has shared the details of. We know that it is extremely important to take any allegation seriously, which we certainly have, and we always will because everyone deserves a safe workplace."
Trudeau himself would be disqualified from running as a Liberal candidate if the party actually had a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual misconduct. But, hey, you have to bend the rules sometimes if you want to save Canada from radical right-wing extremist Erin O’Toole becoming Prime Minister in the election you called despite not having to do so for another couple of years.
As for my own vote, well, the Green Party is a total shitshow and the PPC is a bunch of conspiracy lunatics. Ideologically I’m closer to the Liberals than the left-wing New Democrats, and my Liberal MP Darren Fisher seems like a decent enough fellow.
But sometimes you have no choice but to vote strategically, and that’s why I’ll be voting to block the Liberals by voting for the social-democratic party this time.
Speaking of double standards, some of the people who insist on the sacredness of their choice not to get an “experimental” vaccine - even adopting the “my body, my choice” slogan of the abortion-rights movement, though something tells me they feel very different about, say, this - are not so tolerant of your right to get this vaccine:
A vaccination clinic in Georgia was shut down after anti-vaccination protesters harassed health care workers who were administering COVID-19 shots over the weekend, according to Georgia's top health official.
Kathleen Toomey, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Health, said she recently learned some health care workers helping to vaccinate members of the public against the virus have received threats and harassing emails. A mobile vaccination event held last weekend was forced to shutter after protesters aimed threats at the on-site workers, she said.
"This is wrong. This is absolutely wrong," Toomey said. "These people are giving their lives to help others and to help us in the state."
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Toomey did not specify during the news conference where the mobile vaccination clinic was located, but Nancy Nydam, a spokesperson for Toomey's office, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was operating in northern Georgia when protesters arrived and began verbally harassing the health care workers who were there.
"Aside from feeling threatened themselves, staff realized no one would want to come to that location for a vaccination under those circumstances, so they packed up and left," Nydam told the paper.
Nydam told Newsweek the mobile clinic's specific location would not be released due to concerns that doing so "may only make the situation worse."
There are several other vaccination clinics in Georgia at which health care workers have been "harassed, yelled at, threatened and demeaned by some of the very members of the public they were trying to help," Nydam added.
In the United States it’s the anti-vaxxer wingnuts who suck up all the media attention - and lots of space in this newsletter, honestly - but they are a dwindling minority:
The question is, as anti-vaccine sentiment gradually fizzles out, will the dead-enders give up their doomed, misguided crusade or become even more radical and violent? I’m kind of scared to find out.