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Sundhu allegedly made derogatory remarks to a female server and another hotel guest. He was also alleged to have acted aggressively toward hotel security and attempted to intimidate police officers by threatening their jobs, according to a Vancouver Sun report.

Police chose not to charge Sundhu, as he had agreed to an alternative measures program that would see him admit what he’d done and make restitution. He resigned from the bench in 2007.

Sundhu had been charged in 1989 for allegedly slapping an RCMP officer in his hometown of Williams Lake, B.C. He was later acquitted.

An NDP official on Thursday pointed to newspaper reports in which Sundhu expressed contrition for these incidents and described his rehabilitation. He admitted he was an “episodic alcoholic.”

Sundhu now practises human rights law and is a member of the Canadian Bar Association committee studying C-51. He will run for the party in the riding of Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo.

The NDP also offered the opinion of another former-jurist-turned-NDP-candidate. Carol Baird Ellan, the first woman appointed chief judge of the B.C. Provincial Court, said the bill posed a threat to a fundamental principle of the judicial system.

“During my career as a judge, I presided over many difficult cases, and I always made sure that anyone with something to say was able to say it.”

Baird Ellan is running as an NDP candidate in Burnaby North-Seymour, in a Vancouver suburb.

Mulcair appeared with the two former judges in Vancouver on Thursday.