In his reflection on 2017/2018, NDP MLA Cam Westhead declared, “The UCP has been spreading misinformation and misleading Albertans just to score cheap political points.”
Only to be followed up a few sentences later with his attempt to score a cheap political point of his own, saying, “When it was discovered the UCP’s House Leader Jason Nixon fired a woman in 2005 for complaining about sexual harassment, Kenney excused Nixon’s actions saying that he was young at the time.”
With that one-liner, a reader might be inclined to conclude that Nixon himself was personally responsible for sexual harassment. To put a little meat on the bone, Mr. Nixon at the time was the owner of a job site safety company. The incident occurred at a worksite not under his control, where the woman said a client that had hired Nixon’s company was harassing her.
Nixon reportedly actively tried to find a different worksite for the young woman. When the woman declined to switch job sites, Nixon sought legal advice and complied with the legal advice that he received to offer the employee a severance package. Nixon, who was only 25 at the time, says he regrets how he handled this, admits that he failed this young woman, and he says he would have handled it differently.
As opposed to Westhead’s attempt to smear Mr. Nixon, Calgary Herald columnist Licia Corbella in a November 2017 article described Nixon as “A giant, not just of stature, but, more significantly, of character.”
Meanwhile, NDP Premier Notley called on Kenney to fire Nixon as UCP house leader, self-righteously declaring that is what she would do if he was her house leader. In 1995, John Heaney was an assistant deputy minister of government services in the NDP Harcourt government. Heaney was formally reprimanded for being the originator of a sexually-charged chain letter that was sent around using the government's computer system. However, even after a formal reprimand for sexual impropriety in the workplace Heaney was still hired on by Notley as her chief of staff.
With respect to Westhead’s reference to presenting “a clear choice in 2019” to Albertans, all I can say is 2019 can’t come soon enough.
Ron Voss
