More than one year after Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer announced an investigation would be launched into his party’s handling of sexual-assault allegations against former MP Rick Dykstra, the party says it’s still being reviewed.
Cory Hann, a spokesman for the Conservative Party, said the review remains with Toronto lawyer Carol Nielsen, who is leading the investigation into how the party handled the allegations during the last federal election.
Mr. Scheer ordered the third-party investigation in January, 2018, shortly after the former Conservative MP stepped down as president of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, hours before Maclean’s magazine reported on allegations of sexual assault that occurred during his time in Parliament.
According to the report, a woman who worked for a Conservative MP said that after a night of drinking she ended up in Mr. Dykstra’s Ottawa apartment and that he forced her to perform oral sex on him. Mr. Dykstra’s lawyers had said that he denies the allegations.
The story prompted a response from former prime minister Stephen Harper, who said in a statement last February that he was aware Mr. Dykstra had been accused of sexual assault, but allowed him to remain on the ballot in 2015 because he was under the impression that the case had been investigated, and closed, by police. That statement was echoed by Mr. Harper’s former chief of staff Ray Novak, who also said he understood the investigation was closed.
When Mr. Scheer ordered the investigation, he vowed to make the findings public. The Conservative Party announced last March that Ms. Nielsen, a partner at Filion Wakely Thorup Angeletti, would lead the investigation.
Ms. Nielsen told The Canadian Press in November that the review was in its final stages and a report would be issued in the “near future.”
That was five months ago, and Ms. Nielsen has not publicly released a report and has not responded to multiple requests from The Globe and Mail.
The investigation has had its fair share of criticism. Guy Giorno, the Conservative Party’s campaign chair during the 2015 election and Mr. Harper’s chief of staff prior to that, took issue with the way interviews with witnesses were being recorded, saying there wouldn’t be any tapes or transcripts of them, only notes. As of early November he had not been interviewed for the review, but had an appointment scheduled to meet with Ms. Nielsen.
Ms. Nielsen told The Canadian Press that she had conducted the interviews with witnesses and all interviewees had the opportunity to review the notes for accuracy.
Tim Powers, Conservative strategist and vice-chairman of Summa Strategies, said that while any party faced with allegations against a current or former MP would hope for some “collective amnesia,” he said that’s not going to happen.
“I think Mr. Scheer and the Conservatives will want to make sure that this is out and spoken to, and addressed, reported on, before the election happens,” he said.
Mr. Powers said that even if the investigation is genuinely taking longer than expected, the party should provide an update before the election about why that work isn’t done and explain why it’s taken so long.
“I think there has to be some public reporting or public accounting of this before Canadians go to cast their ballots. Not that this necessarily, this one particular matter surrounding Mr. Dykstra, will be germane, but the Conservatives have made it a matter of importance so they need to address it.”
Janice Dickson