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The expulsion of Regina-Lewvan MP Erin Weir from the NDP caucus in May of 2018 was welcomed by those seeking the end of workplace sexual harassment and by those who heard party leader Jagmeet Singh say survivors needed to be believed and workplaces needed to be safer. It should not have been. The entire affair was a travesty, one that still haunts the NDP as the next election approaches.

Weir had engaged in conduct described by an investigator as “on the low-end of the scale,” and which would not normally be understood as “sexual harassment.” Even if they thought it was, hardly anyone would imagine it was cause for public shaming, expulsion and banishment. In fact, now that the facts are known, most people should find Singh’s conduct more troubling than Weir’s.

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I first met Erin Weir many years ago, when I was a cabinet minister in an NDP government in Saskatchewan. He was an activist hired to work for me in my office over a summer. We did not always see eye-to-eye and did not stay in touch after our professional lives diverged. But I never had any doubt that Weir is intelligent, hard-working and sincere. He annoyed NDP leaders and operatives by not blindly accepting party positions and not always doing as he was told to do or say. He had been barred from asking questions in question period for months.