An Ontario NDP staffer reported her boss for sexual harassment. Then her own party punished her for seeking justice.
On August 8th, a binding decision on the grievance filed by a former staffer against Ontario MPP Michael Mantha and the Ontario NDP Caucus was issued, by an arbitrator acting under the legal authority of the Labour Relations Act, 1995. In this binding decision, arbitrator Jasbir Parmar ruled that despite the arguments of the Ontario NDP, the former staffer’s employment had not been terminated for just cause, and that the Ontario NDP would be required to come to binding agreement with the aggrieved former staffer on remedy.
Stepping back to the beginning, in August of 2022 a woman working for Algoma—Manitoulin MPP Michael Mantha since 2015 in his constituency office reported an unsafe work environment to the ONDP Caucus, after which she was placed on a paid leave of absence. On November 29th of 2022, COPE Local 343 filed a grievance on behalf of the staffer under the Labour Relations Act; unlike Liberal and PC staffers whom are not unionized in Ontario, ONDP staffers are unionized under COPE Local 343 and thus have additional protections from harm under their collective bargaining agreement.
On January 23rd of 2023, the ONDP Caucus contracted MortimerKhoraych to perform a third-party workplace investigation of the staffer’s accusations. Known as the Mortimer Investigation, it was conducted from January 31st to July 6th of 2023 and included not only interviews with the staffer and Mr. Mantha, but also witness testimony from three separate individuals as well as substantial video evidence and digital correspondence.
The Mortimer Investigation would conclude the following, on a balance of probabilities:
a) MPP Mantha pressured the Grievor to engage in non-consensual sexual interactions with him;
b) MPP Mantha required the Grievor to submit to his hugs on a regular basis;
c) MPP Mantha sexually harassed the Grievor on a regular basis in the office, engaging in several incidents of unwanted physical and sexual contact, notwithstanding the Grievor’s protests that he stop such conduct;
d) MPP Mantha requested that the Grievor send him sexually explicit photos of herself, advise him of anysexual [sic] dreams about him, and made comments about her appearance, including her makeup, hair, and clothes; and
e) MPP Mantha pressured the Grievor to work from the office more often so that he could physically have access to her and continue his practice of sexually touching her;
Before the Mortimer Investigation had concluded, by April 1st of 2023 ONDP Leader Marit Stiles had “suspended” Mantha from the ONDP Caucus. While the ONDP Caucus received the Mortimer Investigation’s report on July 18th, the findings would not be shared with the staffer, her union, or with Mr. Mantha until August 15th, on the same date where Mr. Mantha would be permanently banned from the ONDP Caucus.
As both the ONDP Caucus and COPE Local 343 accepted the findings of the Mortimer Investigation, Ms. Parmar did not make any of her own factual findings regarding the harassment allegations, and thus based her arbitration ruling on the evidence that the Mortimer Investigation’s report provided. Yet despite the Ontario NDP themselves accepting those material findings, they would proceed to do something absolutely despicable.
On January 19th, the ONDP Caucus issued a termination letter to the now-former staffer, indicating that since Mr. Mantha had been suspended from the ONDP Caucus since April of 2023, her employment “no longer fell within the purview of the collective agreement”. Other staffers in Mr. Mantha’s constituency office had also been issued termination letters at that time, and the letter from the ONDP Caucus stated that the former staffer would not be given the opportunity for an equivalent position elsewhere in the COPE Local 343 bargaining unit.
Let’s call this exactly what it is. A female staffer reported repeat instances of sexual harassment and assault by her boss, an Ontario NDP MPP. When the Ontario NDP hired independent third-party investigators, they saw enough substantive evidence to feel confident that they were accurate and that serious wrongdoing had occurred. And then, they fired not only the woman who they believe was sexually harassed and assaulted by her boss, but also every other staffer in that office as well.
The Ontario NDP and their retained legal council claimed that due to her physical distance from other NDP constituency offices, her employment was frustrated and they could not transfer her to another workplace. This is, quite frankly, horseshit. Elliot Lake, where the former staffer worked for Mr. Mantha, is roughly a two-hour drive from Jaime West’s constituency office in Sudbury, and France Gélinas’ office in Hamner.
Both of these MPPs are in the ONDP caucus, and both are close enough to make a hybrid work arrangement possible. If being physically present in-office is necessary full-time, which I know from personal experience is completely untrue and unnecessary, then frankly the Ontario NDP can consider paying her relocation costs part of their asshole tax for allowing this staffer to suffer under Mr. Mantha for seven straight years.
Instead, the Ontario NDP is sending a clear message by firing the former staffer. It is sending a message that if you report your boss for sexual harassment, the Ontario NDP will not just fire you in retaliation, they will fire all of your coworkers too in order to turn them against you. It does not matter how much it would cost to find her and the other staff in Mr. Mantha’s office new employment, the Ontario NDP should never have punished a survivor for reporting their abuse.
Marit Stiles herself would insist yesterday to Global News that her hands were tied due to the collective bargaining agreement with COPE Local 343. This is blatantly false and the attempt by Ms. Stiles to blame the union for her choice to retaliate against a victim of sexual harassment should enrage every single member of the NDP. This is a bad faith argument to defend dismissal without just cause, and both the former staffer and her union argued as much to the arbitrator.
Clearly, the arbitrator agreed. In her ruling, Ms. Parmar determined that both the former staffer’s employment as well as the terminated employment of all her coworkers in Mr. Mantha’s office had been frustrated through no fault of their own. Responsibility for this was placed not merely with Mr. Mantha himself, but with the ONDP Caucus at large, and as a result the arbitrator Ms. Parmar remitted the issue of negotiating remedy back to the parties, standing by to arbitrate remedy if the parties cannot come to agreement, which may include reinstatement, compensation, or a combination of both.
I have an extreme distaste for politicians who mistreat their own staffers, and in this case the mistreatment that this former staffer has faced is egregious and shameful. When I published my piece months ago about Marit Stiles bailing out on her own Keffiyeh protest at Queen’s Park, a protest she organized herself due to her own staffer being targeted by legislative security officers, I wrote “Marit Stiles said she was going to stand up for her staffers, and then she left them in the lurch.”
What Ms. Stiles has done here is a far worse betrayal of ONDP staffers than anything before. She is the leader of the Ontario NDP, she was the one responsible for Mr. Mantha’s removal from caucus, and she condoned the termination of Mr. Mantha’s entire office staff, including the aggrieved former staffer, without any just cause. Every claim from the Ontario NDP that they practice politics differently, that they respect their staffers and their volunteers, that they might have even a semblance of moral fiber, is a blatant and utter lie.
There is nothing that the former staffer can be awarded that will undo what she experienced at the hands of her employers; I was sexually assaulted when I was only fourteen years old, and the bitterness and resentment have stuck with me for over a decade. It is a deep betrayal, and no matter how much you heal, the scars always linger with you.
So I hope that as her union negotiates remedy with the political party that remorselessly stabbed her in the back, that she will take the Ontario NDP for every penny they have, and bleed their coffers dry. I hope she inflicts upon them a heavy price that they will never be able to forget. I hope she gets even a semblance of the justice that so many of us have been denied, time and time again.
And I hope it sends a message to every single politician, regardless of ideology, that when you abuse your staffers, we will not forget how you have wronged us. When the time comes, we will come to collect the debt that you owe us, and it shall be paid in spades.