The United Conservative Party's house leader and area MLA recently found himself embroiled in controversy.
Ten years before being elected with the former Wildrose Party in 2015, Jason Nixon was running a company called Nixon Safety Consulting, when he fired a mother of two less than a week before Christmas after she accused a contractor his firm was working with on a project in B.C. of sexual harassment.
The claims of gross misconduct included but were not limited to unsolicited slaps on the rear end as well as being propositioned sex in exchange for marijuana, lingerie and truck tires.
Nixon's letter of termination informed the woman, Kori Harrison, that "over the past few weeks it has become apparent that you are not fitting into the role that we needÖand upon review with our client Navigator Development it is clear that you are not meeting the requirements of the site safety adviser position on the project."
Sounds an awful lot like shameless victim blaming right there. Translation: Because she rejected unwanted sexual advances, she's fired.
The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal certainly seemed to think as much, later ruling in favour of Harrison, who was awarded $32,000 in lost wages and damages.
Adjudicator Kurt Neuenfeldt wrote in the Dec. 30, 2008 decision that her employment was terminated because she complained about the harassment.
The Rimbey-Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA claims that with the clarity of 20-20 retrospective vision, he would have handled the situation differently, standing up against his client in Harrison's defence.
"Now, with the benefit of hindsight and experienceÖI believe I should have pushed back very hard on my client at that pointÖand I probably should have terminated my relationship with that client at that point," Nixon told the media last week. Translation: If he knew he was going to get busted down the road, he would have acted differently.
UCP Leader Jason Kenney's defence of his handpicked right-hand man is that Nixon was only 25 years old at the time.
Yet when newly elected NDP MLA Deborah Drever faced a major backlash over a controversial photo she had willingly posed in several years before being voted into public office, the whole "I was younger and should have known better" excuse did not fly particularly far with her outraged detractors on the right.
Nixon asserts the best way to deal with sexual harassment in the workplace is to simply allow industry to self-regulate, claiming businesses have a proven track record of doing so.
So he and the UCP stand opposed to proposed legislation that would make employers and supervisors be responsible for taking steps to prevent workplace harassment and violence.
"The right way to deal with it is to get the industry to address it, to work through their safety associations, to understand the uniqueness of each organization, and they will do it. They've already proven it," he said in the legislature.
But in the end, actions speak louder than political platitudes.
And Nixon's past actions make it clear ó businesses and industry do not have the most exemplary track record of upholding women's right to work in a professional environment without having to fear, first of all, unwanted sexual advances, and, second of all, being punished for standing up when such incidents do occur.
In all fairness, the MLA has apologized and expressed regret over his decision. However, the time is long overdue for the Alberta government to match the same level of workplace protection as the rest of the country.
ó Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up, a Great West newspaper
