The Progressive Conservative Party has closed ranks around discredited leader Jamie Baillie.
“At this point, the statement that the party made yesterday is what we are prepared to say,” Angie Zinck, a party spokeswoman, said of accepting Baillie’s resignation Wednesdayafter learning that he acted inappropriately and breached the legislature’s policy on workplace harassment.
Zinck, who has worked as Baillie’s press secretary and executive assistant in the past, said she would not answer questions about his character.
“Unfortunately, I can’t,” she said.
Several party MLAs did not return calls and emails.
Party president Tara Miller and caucus chairwoman Karla Mac-Farlane, now the interim party leader, indicated Wednesday that sexual harassment was one of the claims. Sources have said the allegations were made by a female staffer in the caucus office.
MacFarlane, the MLA for Pictou West, said Wednesday that the party became aware of the allegations, involving one complainant,
late in December and immediately brought in an investigator. The party received the report on Tuesday night and made the decision, supported by caucus, to request Baillie’s resignation.
“It hasn’t been a good week,” said Doug Marshall, who was Baillie’s campaign manager for his riding byelection win in 2010 and his two election runs as PC leader in 2013 and 2017.
“I am surprised, that’s the only word I can say,” said Marshall, who was also the president of the PC riding association in Cumberland South. “I have known Jamie for a long time. We worked together in three elections.
“I always held Jamie to the highest regard and it’s a surprise. Everybody else is probably in the same boat as I am.”
Marshall mused about the allegations being unproven.
“That’s the sad part of the whole thing. Regardless of who he is, it’s out there and there must be some merit to it for the people in charge to investigate and do whatever they have to do.”
Marshall said he talked with Baillie on Wednesday.
“It’s a very difficult time for him, it’s a difficult time for all of us.” He wouldn’t say if Baillie denied or confirmed the allegations or what the nature of the allegations are.
“I wouldn’t want to share that. He talked to me in confidence and I will keep that confidence with him.”
An Acadia University professor said any time a party leader leaves under unusual circumstances, there can be challenges for the party.
“Political parties are set up in such a way that
the party leader becomes an important part of the party brand,” said Erin Crandall, an assistant professor of politics at the Wolfville campus. “When a party leader leaves under controversial, and in this case quite unfortunate, circumstances, it can greatly affect the party and it will require some rebuilding for the party and it will be rebuilding that the party hadn’t anticipated it would need to do. This will create challenges for the PC party moving forward.”
Crandall said the PC party has two things going for it in the changeover.
“He was already going to be exiting politics,” she said. “The party had already been gearing up for a new leader and a renewal of the party.”
The other fortuitous thing for the party is that a provincial election is off in the far distance, which is not the case in Ontario. There, Patrick Brown announced his resignation as PC leader Thursday amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment. An Ontario provincial election is slated for June.
“In Nova Scotia, you are going to have a few years to get a new party leader and try to move on from this event, not to try to get people to forget this ever happeneed but to demonstrate that the party has addressed it in a way that was appropriate and that it’s put mechanisms in place to decrease the likelihood that it would ever happen again.”
Crandall said the allegations could motivate more women to get involved in politics, as is the case in the United States with President Donald Trump and the allegations of sexual misconduct that have followed him.
“Women in the year since (the Trump victory) have been signing up in greater numbers to run for political office. The response hasn’tbeen ‘I am going to retreat from politics,’ it’s been ‘I am going to change politics.’ It could bereally interesting to see women in Nova Scotia
who are Conservative and consider themselves supporters of the Conservative party, if this could be a moment when they choose to enter and become more active in politics.”
Rebecca Taylor, for one, doesn’t see the allegations as a black mark for the party.
“The party’s values are very strong and I think certainly all the women I know who are candidates or MLAs are certainly behind the party,” said Taylor, who ran unsuccessfully for the party in the riding of Colchester North in 2017. “We feel that this is the right party for us. I certainly think that the party’s morals and values are pro-women, very progressive.”
Taylor said she too was surprised by the Baillie allegations.
“I don’t really have enough information to make up my mind about things. . . . It’s hard for me to have an opinion about it except that’s a really big surprise. That is not the Jamie that I thought I knew.”
Taylor said the allegations could run a wide spectrum from an utterance to physical action.
“We don’t know the nature of the situation. . . . Who knows what it was. I don’t.”
Leaders of the other Nova Scotia parties said Thursday that the resignation suggests a positive shift from times when mistreatment of female staff was tolerated.
Premier Stephen McNeil said this and other cases are precisely why his government brought in the policy around harassment at the legislature.
NDP Leader Gary Burrill said Baillie’s case saddened him, but it also signals that times have changed and that such behaviours “are no longer part of the accepted landscape.”
With files from The Canadian Press
