The recently named Federal Cabinet Minister, Rebecca Chartrand, harassed a former employee at the River College Polytechnic of Winnipeg for a period of several months in 2019, according to an external investigation commissioned by the University and made by a Winnipe law firm.
Chartrand, chosen in April as a liberal member of Parliament for the driving of Northern Manitoba of Churchill-Kewatinook Aski, was appointed by Prime Minister Mark Carney in May as the Minister of Affairs of the North and the Arctic and the Minister responsible for the Canadian Agency for Economic Development of the North.
According to the documentation provided to CBC News in April, but reported for the first time this week by Canadaland, Chartrand was subject to an harassment investigation during the last months of his two -year period as Executive Director of Indigenous Strategy for RRC Polytech, a postsecundaria institution of Winnipe with annual registration of approximately 21,000 students.
In a complaint filed before RRC Polytech under its discrimination and harassment policy In September 2019, a former university employee said he was “attacked, undercut, intimidated and harassed” by Chartrand for an eight months.
Harassment took way of threatening the position of the employee, undermining her work and management of other personnel, interfering with her career, negatively impacting her reputation, increasing her workload and imposing unreasonable deadlines, according to the complaint.
In a letter dated December 19, 2019, RRC Polytech Human Resources Director, Curtis Craven, informed the former employee that Winnipeg Rachlis Neville LLP law firm corroborated the harassment complaint.
The law firm found that Chartrand’s behavior “amounted to personal harassment in which for a period of time, the way you committed to you and the approach used to assign work and administer your constituted performance that was severe,” said Craven in the letter.
“Such behavior could reasonably make an individual humiliate or intimidate and repeat himself, and had a durable and harmful effect on you,” he wrote.
However, “since Mrs. Chartrand is no longer with the university, the university will not take more corrective actions that arise from this research,” said Craven’s letter.
Chartrand was employee of RRC Polytech from June 2017 to December 2019, when he resigned, said University spokeswoman Emily Doer, in a statement.
Chartrand was not available to talk about his time at the University, said spokesman Kyle Allen this week.
“Minister Chartrand is committed to promoting a healthy work environment for all people in the workplace, characterized by collegiality and mutual respect,” said Allen in a statement.
RRC Polytech also refused to address Chartrand’s time in the postsecundaria institution.
“According to privacy legislation and university policy, we do not discuss personnel issues regarding current or previous employees,” said Doer in a statement.
‘Months of psychological war’: former employee
The former university employee who presented the harassment complaint left RRC Polytech in 2020. In an interview, she said she had no intention of revealing the investigation until Chartrand was nominated by the Liberal Party as her candidate for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski.
The employee, whom CBC News is not identifying for concerns about the potential impact on her employment, said she first tried to contact the officials of the Liberal Party about her experience, but was not successful.
“I really just wanted to forget this and move on,” said the former employee, who describes herself as a liberal defender.
“I was voting for Mark Carney. I didn’t want what happened to anyone in Ottawa. I didn’t want Mark Carny to be hurt by any additional action, if some of this nature once happened again.”
The spokeswoman of the Liberal Party, Jenna Ghassabeh, said that the party does not comment on the details of the candidate’s investigation process.
“The Canadians expect all political parties to make their due diligence in all possible candidates, and the Liberal Party of Canada has a rigorous process to carry out such revisions properly,” Ghassabeh said in a statement.
The former RRC Polytech employee said she finally contacted several media about her experience after Chartrand commented on social networks related to her own time at the university.
The former employee said that Chartrand came to know in 2015, when the now MP made a previous race for the position in Churchill-Keewatinook Aski. She arrived second in that race to Niki Ashton of the NDP, who Chartrand then defeated in the federal elections in April.
The former employee said she left another job to work under Chartrand at the University and had a good working relationship until 2019, when a nine -page survey was prepared to determine the needs of incoming students in the indigenous studies program.
The former employee said the survey was amended to include questions about drug and alcohol consumption, against the recommendations of an external consultant. The school did not reveal that the answers to these questions could determine if the respondents would receive financial assistance, said the former employee.
The survey retired after complaints from possible students and caused a chartrand apology, according to global news in 2019.
The former employee said that after she advised, including questions in the survey, which had been a positive working relationship with Chartrand deteriorated in harassment.
“It was like months of psychological war,” said the former employee.
“I just tried to go from all my own personal pain and trauma around this because it has impacted me personally and professionally, and I wanted to forget and move on. But it has not disappeared.”
In a Facebook post on the night of the elections, a former resident of Churchill-Keewatinook Aski called Kyle Ross caught attention to the RRC Polytech survey broadcast during Chartrand’s time at the University.
In a position from it, Chartrand accused Ross of participating in “lateral violence” and sought information about his whereabouts.
“If someone has any information about where this individual works or resides, communicate publicly,” he wrote.
Chartrand’s spokesman, Allen, said the minister laments the position.
“Regarding the publication on social networks to the reference, Minister Chartrand deeply regrets the language and tone she expressed. She without reservations offers her apologies for the language of the post,” said Allen in a statement.
Ross said in an interview that he would have preferred a direct apology for trying to discern where he lives and works.
“I feel that a direct message would be good,” he said.
