A story that has been topping talk radio in the past week or two has just been ratcheted up a notch;
During question period, Saskatchewan Party MLA Ken Krawetz asked: “Was the premier ever briefed by any government official on the Murdoch Carriere investigation and the subsequent disciplinary action prior to April 1st, 2003?” Calvert said no.
But summoning reporters later in the day, Calvert said he had made a mistake and, in fact, he did know about the situation before that date, when the first media reports appeared of sexual harassment allegations against Carriere.
“I didn’t speak to that question in the house because … in the preamble to that question I wasn’t aware of what he was saying over there,” he said.
[…]
Calvert told reporters Thursday he reviewed his files and realized he did know about the Carriere situation six days before it made the news, when he had received a letter from one of the alleged victims.
Meeting sought
She told him several women had lodged sexual harassment allegations against Carriere, that a government report had determined there were grounds for the allegations and that there was an ongoing RCMP investigation.
The woman wanted to meet with Calvert because she thought Carriere’s discipline before April 2003 was too light.
Globe And Mail (CP);
Mr. Carriere is the former senior manager with Saskatchewan Environment who was fired after a media report of allegations that he harassed his female employees.
He was eventually convicted of two counts of assault, but acquitted of two counts of sexual assault. He sued the government over his dismissal, and the government, citing its own legal advice, paid him $275,000 to settle out of court.
In contrast, the silence of the nine women had already been arranged for the modest sum of $15,000 each, in a settlement arranged by a lawyer provided by the government. None recieved a copy of the agreement.
It’s a new found aversion for the courts for Calvert and Co. This is the same government that used buckets of taxpayers money in an attempt to outspend a group suing over the Spudco fiasco. It’s also the government that took an anti-cigarette “shower curtain law” to the SCOC.
Here’s the SaskParty take on the matter.
While this item has received pretty good coverage in the province, but I thought it might be useful to invite comments on it.
deny.
deny deny deny deny deny deny.
deny deny deny deny deny deny deny dney (heh heh heh) deny deny deny deny deny deny deny deny deny deny deny.
and you people think politishuns are the answer to the nation’s woes? theyre the cause of the discontent and acrimony !!!!
do you get it yet?
Lorne Calvert’s impersonation of Ron Ziegler wouldn’t be the highlight of karaoke night at Mullah’s (see the youtube on the previous post for that), but it wouldn’t be out of place there, either.
And do you suppose the $410,000 in hush money paid to Carriere and nine women plaintiffs would have to be included in the NDP’s election expense tally?
Lorne Calvert will be soon sadly singing “I don’t like Mondays”. This thing is like a festering boil and when it bursts it is going to be messy. And Lorne, it will burst soon!
It will be the height of irony and hypocrisy when Lorne the prevaricator starts pointing his gnarled little claws and creepy spittle covered chin over at Brad Wall and starts braying his tired mantra about “that” unprincipled party with fresh lies and obfuscations dripping off his socialips.
There will be a heavy price for the NDP to pay to keep the friends of friends from ratting them out. Even a lot of good NDPers who would vote for any NDP candidate put forward may have to ask themselves what happened to their pure socialist leaders to make them appear to be rewarding a man who was ultimately convicted and making life difficult for women who received payments for being abused.
And after the NDP fairy tale about “there was no conspiracy to make this unpleasantness go away” can we please hear the one about how the province has actually grown (groan?) since Lorne took over the reins of power?
A caller to John Gormley’s show the other day put it best, “where the f*ck was the union concerning this matter”. After all, the women would be paying union dues, and part of the responsibility of a union is to provide legal representation in matters such as these.
Basically, if the government sent a lawyer to ‘negotiate’ with these 9 women, without going through the union, the government would have committed an Unfair Labour Practice, and there are specific penalties under the Trade Union Act for doing so (the Labour Relations Board could potentially quash any ‘agreement’ made directly between the women and the Province). Yet has the SGEU filed an Unfair Labour Practice against the Government for entering into ‘negotiations’ with employees directly? Not that I’m aware of. The SGEU has been mostly silent on the issue, save a brief statement of outrage from its leader, Bob Byomen.
And yes, I have information that the NDP covered up at least 2 other instances of harassment in the same year as the allegations of Carriere occurred.
Unfortunately, I can’t share details, but they occurred in a Crown corporation, and Calvert and his ministers had direct knowledge of very serious misconduct by managers of those organizations.
It takes a lot of courage for victims to come forward, and I’m not sure whether the victims of the (at least) two other instances will come forward (probably, as with the 9 women, under gag orders).
And don’t forget that Government employee who came forward last year, with the help of Brenda Baaken, who faced harassment in a Government of Saskatchewan workplace, harassment that was not dealt with appropriately by the relevant managers.
Nor should anyone forget the incident where the NDP covered up harassment in a Minister’s office when a Minister touched one of her secretaries in an innappropriate fashion. It was a Saskatoon MLA, but the name escapes me. The female Minister was thrown out of cabinet, but the secretary was so emotionally scarred by the experience that she was forced to quit her job.
What you have here is a very clear pattern of the NDP’s complete lack of respect for individuals who are in their employ.
(pssst: prairie new democraps: the bigger sin is the COVERUP. google ‘nixon plumbers’ etc.)
(psst: prairie new democraps: the larger sin by far is the COVERUP. google ‘nixon plumbers’ or whatever for some insight.)
interesting.
the double posts dont show up even when I refresh.
something to do with caching no doubt.
thats why I use IE AND mozilla. the stuff one misses the other gets.
I am frankly at a loss. We have, in the Carriere case, 9 instances of abuse in the workplace (if they didn’t happen why did the government pay) we now have anecdotal reports on this site of other harrassment in government departments and we have Lorne and his colleagues trying to claim that they are acting in the best interest of the victims by burying the incidents and cloaking all in a shroud of secrecy. I am sympathetic to the desire on the part of the victims to not be victimized once again by having their stories become public record but what are we to do? The NDP seem to allow this to happen and then protect their political butts by hushing this up and, presumably, moving the perpetrator (up or sideways) and only when some brave woman (or women) stand up and say NO MORE does anything happen. Gawd help Lorne if it comes out that he or any of his elected colleagues knew that one of these perps was in the public service and allowed them to continue in their harrassing ways.
This goes beyond politics and I think that the NDP had better come clean. If they have known harrassers in the ranks they better clean them out and if they have been protecting them . . .call an election and let the people pass judgement on them.
if the new democraps still believe they can cover it up with legalisticisms and gag orders and stonewalling and deny deny deny deny deny, take a look at various catholic and anglican diocese that did the same thing for decades with sexual abuse by priests.
it all came out in the wash and cost those churches MILLIONS in settlements.
wakey wakey ndp, you will render yourselves near extinct if you try to keep the lid on. why do you think pressure cookers have a release valve? ever see what happens when the valve malfunctions and the pressure builds?
on the other hand, go ahead!!!! shoot yourselves in the nuts!!!! please !!!
“if the new democraps still believe they can cover it up with legalisticisms and gag orders and stonewalling and deny deny deny deny deny, take a look at various catholic and anglican diocese that did the same thing for decades with sexual abuse by priests.
it all came out in the wash and cost those churches MILLIONS in settlements.”
Oh don’t forget the good Reverend Lorne Calvert is actually a minister of one of the denominations that was implicated and sued concerning residential school abuse.
http://sisis.nativeweb.org/resschool/oct2798uc.html
“The United Church of Canada faces almost 100 civil lawsuits relating to how it ran some of Canada’s 130 residential schools. Many of those lawsuits have been aired in court this month by former students at the United Church’s Port Alberni residential school, where former dormitory supervisor Arthur Plint has already been convicted of molesting dozens of native boys.”
I wonder if Calvert took “Cover-up 101” when he attended St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon in his earlier years. Because it sure sounds like many of his colleagues/predecessors did.
“if the new democraps still believe they can cover it up with legalisticisms and gag orders and stonewalling and deny deny deny deny deny, take a look at various catholic and anglican diocese that did the same thing for decades with sexual abuse by priests.
it all came out in the wash and cost those churches MILLIONS in settlements.”
Oh don’t forget the good Reverend Lorne Calvert is actually an ordained Minister of one of the denominations that was implicated and sued concerning residential school abuse.
http://sisis.nativeweb.org/resschool/oct2798uc.html
“The United Church of Canada faces almost 100 civil lawsuits relating to how it ran some of Canada’s 130 residential schools. Many of those lawsuits have been aired in court this month by former students at the United Church’s Port Alberni residential school, where former dormitory supervisor Arthur Plint has already been convicted of molesting dozens of native boys.”
I wonder if Calvert took “Cover-up 101” when he attended St. Andrew’s College in Saskatoon in his earlier years? Because it sure sounds like many of his colleagues/predecessors did. (that…and Hyprocrisy 101, because the good Reverend spent the better part of the 1980s campaigning against casino gambling in Moose Jaw, but then sat in a government that led an unprecedented expansion of gambling in Saskatchewan).
Although not under Calvert at the time (still Romanow) – this is the same NDP government that sought its own ‘legal advice’ to decide not to follow the 1991 plebiscite (63% of residents voting to get the government out of abortion funding). These guys have been playing these games for a long time.
250,000.00 that’s peanuts compared to the hundreds of millions your buddy “Devine” paid out during his first years in office but who’s counting? Right? Still reeling from the tory scandals of the 80’s. We’re still paying for that blunder and it was in the billions.
I love the intelligent, honest and acurate debate put forth by ok4ua and her NDP ilk…
250,000 is peanuts (popcorn and beer anyone?)
Also in their organic field fertilizer line….
There was no Spudco.
The Sask population has grown under the NDP Saskatchewan has the shortest health wait times
Evil Alberta has the longest wait times.
And, like the families going to Alberta every day, the list keeps getting longer.
Like most young people my daughter was a lefty. When she finished high school she went to Alberta to work before starting univeristy. She said “the NDP lied to us dad”. I told her there was no shame in being lied to. There was only shame if you believed the lies without make an honest attempt to find the truth.
The only way to keep believing that socialism somehow promotes “good” or that it might work it to keep your Eyes Wide Shut.
Trying to put Calvert and United Church’s handling of schools in the same breath hey? I don’t know if you know how stupid you really are.
Let me give you an example when the NDP didn’t have a lot of trouble spending money on lawyers.
In the mid-90’s Roy Romanow appointed a legislatively binded commission to explore provincial judges salaries. The members were Alison Rothery (now a judge), Marty Irwin (now a judge) and, I believe Gerry Albright (also now a judge).
They recommended a 25% increase in salaries, at a time when Romanow and the NDP were offering provincial unions 0-2-2.
Romanow retro-actively canned the commission because he didn’t like the answer.
The result? A battle all the way to the SCC in which the provincial court judges won their case and won the recommended amount.
The cost in legal fees to the province was to the tune of about $700K.
Romanow knew he was going to lose, but he needed to look good to the people of Saskatchewan and hence had no problem spending the money on lawyers.
The Carriere case was never about the legal costs, as Calvert claims. This is about a case that is going to get even more interesting as time goes on.
The NDP are savvy politically. If settling with Murdoch was the best route to take, you have to know that there are some pretty hefty issues that they don’t want anyone to know about.
And slowly but surely these things are going to come out…
ok4u
Have you no shame? Women are abused, government covers it up and likely protects the perpetrator and you talk about Devine? Either you are a paid employee of the NDP and are forced to throw that kind of garbage into this debate or you are completely oblivious to the real people involved in this matter. This issue is rapidly becoming a question of how this government treats people. In my opinion, supported by the facts, this government tried to make this go away quietly and went as far as to promote Carriere and change his job until it became public and they HAD to fire him. Politics before people. That is the character of our current government. And you have the audacity to compare matters of sexual harrassment to Devine? Sheesh.
It happens in every gov’t. We are so politically correct that the courts would’ve given him more. I filed a complaint against a lady I worked with. She later had a breakdown. That was payment enough for me. Carrier lost his job that’s the main point. They did not deserve the treatment but that’s corporate politics. I don’t want to hear about this for the next 6 mos. One of your supporters got caught with a 14 year old prostitute. He still denies it. That was far worse than this. We have more important issues to criticize gov’ts about.
ok4ua,
I know you don’t want to hear about this for the next six months, but you will.
You can nuance all you want about “one of your supporters”. There’s plenty on that crap on both sides.
The difference here is that the Carriere case was determined by a court of law, not by speculation. He recieved $270K, and the NDP have tried to cover it up. The people have a right to know the details. And slowly but surely, they are going to be released.
If you are a principled individual, you would agree, regardless of which side of the political spectrum you lie.
You’re not one of those braiwashed politicos that would only scream and holler if it was a SK Party issue, but would remain silent if it was one of your guys, would you?
OK4UA wants everyone make this “minor issue” go away.
Failing that she will deflect, obfuscate or change the topic in any way possible. Not a lot different than what Patty is trying to do in the house.
The lefties will go back to the 1980’s and talk about Grant Devine ad nauseum. Count on it, they have nothing else. They most certainly do not want to talk about the NDP record nor do they want anyone to talk about the current NDP scandal. I don’t blame them. If I was an NDP I would not want to talk about the truth either.
But like the Greek says there will be more on this. Much more. Patty and Lorne would not look so apoplectic if they knew this thing could be tidied up and eliminated.
I know it would be wrong to put Patty and Lorne on a lie detector but I would certainly like to see thier blood pressure readings!
We have a meglomaniacs running Canada spending a billion dollars on farmers who are already rich. Many more billions to buy votes in Quebec. Remind you of anyone?? Mulroney?? Devine?? You are all pissed off because your crimes in the eighties overshadow you to this day. $250,000.00 given to a man who could probably would’ve got more from a messy lawsuit. This is peanuts in the scheme of things. Quit pretending to be champions of the people. Harper gave 10 million to a man on his word he was tortured in Syria. I’d like to see the scars if there are any? Another way to buy votes from the immigrants. They’ll be coming out of the woodwork now. Nothing said about 10 million or 1 billion. You people on here are so full of crap. I’d like to meet you spouses you phoney baloney Tories.