A New Democrat MPP has had his knuckles rapped after posing for a photo with an unidentified man holding a sign saying “F— DOUG FORD.”

Joel Harden, a first-term legislator from Ottawa Centre, is smiling in the shot posted on Reddit on the weekend.

His boss, NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, said Harden’s decision to pose for the picture is “absolutely not acceptable” and offered an explanation.

“His suggestion is that he didn’t realize what the sign said and as soon as he realized that, it was a problem,” she said Tuesday.

Hours later — after repeatedly declining comment to two reporters who followed him down a hallway toward his office — Harden emerged with a contradictory explanation.

“I saw the sign before the photo was taken,” the MPP acknowledged in an interview with the Star. “I made a split-second decision that I regret.”

The photo was taken Saturday at a rally against health-care cuts in his riding. Harden said he apologized to the premier in person on Monday after the legislature’s daily question period.

“Obviously, like anybody would be, he was upset and I just said ‘it wasn’t my sign, I regretted posing with the photo, I want to hold myself to a higher standard. ’”

The premier’s office took a dim view of the episode that made a splash on social media.

“We believe in raising the decorum of our political discourse,” spokeswoman Ivana Yelich said in a statement. “It’s clear based on their past and current behaviour that the NDP caucus do not share this goal.”

That was a reference to two previous incidents, one involving Horwath and the other her Brampton East MPP Gurratan Singh.

During the 2018 election campaign, a picture emerged of Singh at a 2006 protest holding a sign that said “F— The Police” — something for which Ford has repeatedly needled the NDP. Last May, Horwath was outside the legislature at a protest when she posed with a participant holding a sign similar to the one in the Harden example.

Horwath said she had not read the “fine print” on the sign and later apologized to Ford.

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New Democrats have been reminded to be cautious when posing with protesters in case their signs are inappropriate.

“We’ve asked our MPPs on a couple of occasions to be very careful about that because this is exactly the outcome that can occur,” said Horwath. “It looks bad on everybody.”

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