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NDP Leader Cam Broten says that while no one wants a provincial election campaign filled with “gotcha politics,” violence against women is no joking matter — which is why the party has removed a Saskatoon candidate from the ballot.

The NDP is searching for a new candidate in the Saskatoon Northwest riding, after Clayton Wilson was taken off the ballot by the party on Thursday.

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Wilson came under attack earlier this week after the Saskatchewan Party posted a screengrab of a two-year-old Facebook post in which Wilson referred four times to “stupid farmers.” On Thursday, he was removed from the NDP’s ballot for what Broten in a statement described as making “light of domestic violence.”

Broten acknowledged that Wilson’s social media post — which has since been deleted — was made “many years ago,” but said he has a zero-tolerance policy on the issue.

One post circulated to media by the governing Saskatchewan Party from 2013 showed a photo with the words: “A true gentleman holds the door for his woman then smacks her ass.”

He takes pride in the fact that almost half the NDP candidates in the current election are women, “because that’s how you change things,” he said.

“The Internet is certainly full of bad and inappropriate jokes and no one wants a campaign where every old retweet or Facebook post is dragged out in ‘gotcha’ politics, but violence against women is a serious issue and comments which take sexual harassment lightly are below the standard we should all expect from our elected representatives.”