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Luca Disbrow / Daily Nexus

Over the past year, Ive watched a variety of terms go from tiny propositions to subjects of huge discourse that are regularly utilized by everyday people and mass corporations alike.

You are likely familiar with some of these terms folx, womxn, Latinx, houseless, BIPOC and many more. They clog up our Instagram feeds, fill up Twitter threads and even pop up in official emails from our university.

An email from UC Santa Barbara Career Services via Handshake on Feb. 21, 2021.

A new language has been formed, one created and used with the belief that it constructs a more understanding, safe and welcoming environment for the people it claims to serve. However, this language has a plethora of issues, beginning with one that we see on social media almost every day: It has perhaps inadvertently created a sect of people who see this terminology as the ultimate factor in determining whether or not the people, organizations, companies and governments in their lives are woke.

More often than not, the people who use this terminology are those who identify as liberals or whose views fall into the realm of liberalism, and once they have this language, they use it as a litmus test to determine whether those around them are serious about social causes.

This is a real shame, exemplified in terms like BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Attempts at explaining BIPOC to my Japanese relatives ends with them simply blinking at me in confusion. My aunties were raised in an era where they were described as colored or Oriental. Theyve barely begun to grasp the new label of POC (People of Color). But would you look these 60-year-old women in the eyes and tell them they are wrong for not understanding and immediately applying the term BIPOC? Language evolves so quickly that it is a mistake to shun people simply because they fail to use a fleeting term, especially those with valuable insight to share, like my aunties, whose lived experiences in post-WWII America have shaped my understanding of racism.

Additionally, many of the people who belong to these minority groups are entirely averse to this language.

For example, the term womxn was proposed with the intention of including trans and genderqueer women. However, trans women are quick to point out that adding the x to women simply further alienates them by denying that they are true women after all. Rather than calling them by their deserved title, women, the term womxn relegates trans women to being a sort of woman-tangent, never a true woman.

Language evolves so quickly that it is a mistake to shun people simply because they fail to use a fleeting term, especially those with valuable insight to share, like my aunties, whose lived experiences in post-WWII America have shaped my understanding of racism.

And perhaps the most glaring problem with terminology like this is that the effort to stand up for trans women, people of color, homeless people, etc., often ends at this utilization of inclusive language.

Rather than taking a further step to fight injustice within laws and community spaces or to support local organizations that fight these problems, people seem to think that using this language is enough that they can stop there and then it puts them beyond racism, beyond sexism, beyond cancellation. Surely someone so woke as to refer to homeless people as their houseless neighbors could never do any wrong.

One prime example of this is a recent comment from President Joe Biden (which was, in my opinion, a deeply telling moment as far as Bidens understanding of human rights goes). In a July press conference discussing the importance of adults getting vaccinated, Biden was quoted as saying, Its awful hard, as well, to get Latinx vaccinated as well. Why? Theyre worried that theyll be vaccinated and deported.

Is there anything that sums up misguided American politics more than those few sentences? Those phrases utterly stereotype and demean an entire group of people in mere seconds.

But one cannot deny that Biden really thought he did something. He took his inclusion of woke terminology to mean that he was above racism that everyone would accept his statement as truth, or at least as harmless, because he had done the unthinkable! The brave Biden had integrated the internet-speak term Latinx into a real press conference, broadcasting it to millions of American households that would now be exposed to a new idea.

He did not even realize that he really has no right to use this terminology. As Biden has little experience within the Latin American community and no real background in social advocacy, this usage of the term does not feel earnest in the slightest. And, when used in tandem with overt prejudice, his words take a condescending tone. Whether intentional or not, Biden has now seemingly weaponized a term whose original purpose was to uplift and empower.

Thats the very problem with this language.

Because he utilized a fun little woke term, Biden felt no pressure to amend his statements or confront his racist way of explaining vaccination issues in the United States. He believed that he had provided an excellent answer to questions about U.S. vaccination statistics. He didnt think about examining how these communities statistically have less access to vaccines or mentioning how misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine is rampant throughout the U.S.

No, he instead blamed it on a racist and inflammatory thought that the famously faulty Biden brain machine cooked up (amongst many other great ideas, like voting in favor of using force in Iraq in 2002, relentlessly bombing Syria in February of 2021 and authorizing the notorious 1994 crime bill that perpetuated mass incarceration).

Finally, its worth noting that these terms often originated in small communities who had extremely specific purposes for them. Unfortunately, these definitions have been significantly altered over time, largely due to the spreading of misinformation on the internet. For example, a 2020 article from Shape defined the term folx as being used to specifically display inclusion of gender-queer, transgender and agender folks.

However, back in 2014, the term folx was mainly utilized by grassroots organizations to designate People organizing and theorizing in queer, trans, and other people of color. This term has gone from highlighting community organization to being thrown around as a replacement for the already-genderless term folks in an effort to highlight ones wokeness.

The danger with this vocabulary is not merely that it needlessly excludes those who do not utilize it or that it excuses people from internal examination it is that it robs the communities it claims to protect of language that was special to them. In making it mainstream, the internet has corrupted its meaning.

This terminology is dangerous. It excuses people from examining their own possibly racist internal biases. It creates infighting within the left as people disagree about the value and usage of this new vocabulary. And much of its mainstream use is only a shallow imitation of its original purpose.

Rather than falling into the trap of obsessing over the language of liberalism, the left needs to come together and focus on what has always been the most important thing: improving the quality of life for people around us with strong action. Settling for words alone is, frankly, dangerous.

Syd Haupt couldnt care less about the term BIPOC and seriously thinks everyones efforts would be better put towards donating to J-TOWN Action and Solidarity.

A version of this article appeared on p. 20 of the Aug. 26, 2021 print edition of theDaily Nexus.

Original post:
The Language of Liberalism - Daily Nexus

The Liberal Party is promising, if re-elected, to require the oil and gas industry to curb its greenhouse gas emissions at a pace and scale needed to meet net-zero emissions by 2050, but experts and environmentalists want details before getting their hopes up.

The climate plan highlights a number of initiatives, like energy efficiency retrofit grants and making sure all vehicles sold after 2035 are zero-emission vehicles, but the plans centrepiece is a commitment to cap and lower emissions from the oil and gas industry a move experts say has long been the missing piece to a credible climate plan.

We're effectively capping oil and gas emissions in this country, and saying there will be five-year targets that will be established, that will be binding, on the pathway to net zero, said incumbent North Vancouver candidate Jonathan Wilkinson.

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There needs to be a path, and that path needs to be a path that has requirements, not simply aspirational goals, he added.

The plan is to set five-year targets, starting in 2025, based on the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body. Wilkinson confirmed the plan is focused on reducing absolute emissions rather than emission intensity per barrel. Emission intensity refers to the emissions generated when producing a product, but from a climate perspective, absolute emissions are what count.

It's fine, and in some respects important, that the sector improves emission intensity, but emission intensity is not sufficient because if you have more improvements yet increase production, then you end up with an increase in absolute emissions, said Wilkinson.

That means any expansion with respect to the oilsands would have to fit within the cap we've put in place and the reductions that would be required, he said. So the only way you could see significant expansion in the oilsands is if you saw enormous improvements in emission intensity.

Experts Canadas National Observer spoke with applauded the Liberals for recognizing that emissions in the oil and gas sector need to be regulated if there is any chance to reduce greenhouse gases in line with what science demands, but called the commitment too vague.

How much of this is (based) on carbon capture technology? How much of this is actually stepping in and saying no new expansion? asked Cam Fenton with climate group 350. There's way too much wiggle room built into it at this point in time, which is worrying ... There's a very big difference between whether or not this is a plan to wind down versus wind up and offset.

Fenton said the platform doesnt read like the Liberals grasped the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which United National Secretary General Antnio Guterres called a code red for humanity.

This reads more like what have we already promised, what have we put forward, and what're the new things we can add in, particularly to address the most significant critiques we're facing, he said. When you look at the things they're most worried about, a lot of it has to do with their foot-dragging on the Just Transition Act, and then the big elephant in the room of the climate plan has always been the lack of a plan for oil and gas emissions.

So this feels more like it's gilding the lily of their existing plan, as opposed to actually reacting or responding to the scale of the crisis.

Pembina Institutes Alberta regional director Chris Severson-Baker says oil and gas companies that have already made net-zero pledges should welcome the Liberal announcement.

It's sort of counterintuitive, but they've come out and made these pledges and now a major party is announcing that path to net zero is actually going to be part of government policy, he explained. Companies have made these net-zero pledges, but without policy certainty and an actual road map, they're going to find it very challenging to actually secure the investment capital they would need.

The most notable net-zero pledge from the oilsands came in June when Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, the companies responsible for 90 per cent of oilsands production, declared an alliance aimed at reaching net-zero through a multibillion-dollar carbon capture utilization and storage plan that would connect a sequestration hub to the oilsands with a massive trunkline.

This week Reuters revealed Natural Resources Canada is planning two major carbon capture projects, estimated to capture 15 million tonnes of carbon annually.

Severson-Baker said a suite of policies for the oil and gas sector is whats needed because the carbon price on its own doesnt cut it.

You hear it all the time talking to companies and the finance sector (that) they discount the carbon price, he said. They discount the carbon signal because they don't have enough details or certainty about how things are going to unfold, and it results in an inability to actually move forward.

He said that five-year plans with clear benchmarks, along with clean fuel regulations, and gradual increases to the carbon price are what provide the type of certainty needed for major investment decisions.

Elsewhere in the Liberal climate plan is a commitment to end thermal coal exports by 2030, which builds off a previous goal to phase out domestic thermal coal. In June, Wilkinson also announced what is effectively a ban on new thermal coal mines due to their greenhouse gas impact.

If the argument is, We need to stop exporting thermal coal because it's driving emissions elsewhere, the exact same logic applies to oil and gas, said Keith Stewart, a senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada.

Climate Action Network Canadas domestic policy manager Caroline Brouillette echoed the sentiment.

In Canada we are still not ready to have an honest conversation about what the International Energy Agency's net-zero by 2050 report tells us, which is that to contain global warming to 1.5 C there can be no new investment in fossil fuels, she said. It seems like we're ready to address the coal component of that reality, but talking about the end of oil and gas is still a difficult topic in Canada.

Obviously it's a complex and difficult transition that we'll need to undergo, but really this election should be about naming these hard choices that we'll have to make in the coming years, she said.

Another notable commitment in the climate plan is a pledge to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas by 75 per cent from 2012 levels by 2030. That appears to represent a step up from 2016s commitment to reduce emissions 40 to 45 per cent below 2012 levels by 2025.

Methane has been identified as a priority for greenhouse gas emission reductions by the IPCC because it warms the planet faster than CO2 but has a shorter life in the atmosphere.

John Woodside / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer

Continued here:
Liberals name the elephant in the room: Oil and gas emissions must come down - National Observer

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court told George W. Bush that fighting a global war on terrorism did not entitle the president to evade or ignore the requirements of the Constitution. That decision, Boumediene v. Bush, would go down in the books as one of the most significant modern rulings against wartime government power. "We'll abide by the Court's decision," Bush said. "That doesn't mean I have to agree with it."

What if Bush did not abide by the Court's decision? What if Bush said the Court was dead wrong and that his administration would not be bound by its erroneous judgment? What if subsequent presidents followed Bush's lead and ignored the Court whenever their own favored policies happened to lose?

Such what ifs are the driving force behind Justice Stephen Breyer's timely and important new book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics (Harvard University Press). The 83-year-old Supreme Court justice is well aware that many modern liberals want President Joe Biden to pack the Court and create a new liberal supermajority. Breyer thinks those liberal court packers are being both dimwitted and shortsighted. "Think long and hard," Breyer warns them, "before embodying those changes in law."

Court packing is a naked power grab and an attack on the independence of the judiciary. It is a tit-for-tat race to the bottom. One party expands the size of the bench for nakedly partisan purposes, so the other party does the same (or worse) as soon as it gets the chance. Breyer understands this. He also understands something else: If the authority of the Supreme Court is trashed and squandered by court packing, then liberalism itself is going to suffer in the long run.

Let history be our guide. President Andrew Jackson flatly ignored the Supreme Court's 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia, which ruled in favor of Cherokee control over Cherokee territory. Jackson later sent federal troops to forcibly remove the Cherokee people via the infamous Trail of Tears. The rule of law suffers when the political branches ignore the judiciary's judgment.

Breyer worries that today's liberal court packers are going to severely undermine judicial authority and pave the way for the next Andrew Jackson. "Whether particular decisions are right or wrong," Breyer writes, "is not the issue here." The issue "is the general tendency of the public to respect and follow judicial decisions, a habit developed over the course of American history." One of the biggest risks of court packing is that it will reverse that general tendency.

Just imagine what American history would look like without basic political and public support for the Court's decisions, Breyer writes. What "would have happened to all those Americans who espoused unpopular political beliefs, to those who practiced or advocated minority religions, to those who argued for an end to segregation in the South? What would have happened to criminal defendants unable to afford a lawyer, to those whose houses government officials wished to search without probable cause?"

Or take your pick of hot-button modern issues. If the court packers wreck the Court, as Breyer fears that they will, what's to stop an antigay marriage legislature from banning gay marriage, despite the Supreme Court's clear 2015 ruling to the contrary in Obergefell v. Hodges? Is that the future that liberals want?

Breyer's message is clear and convincing: The court packers should be careful what they wish for.

Read more:
Stephen Breyer Makes the Liberal Case Against Court Packing - Reason

Sep 4th 2021

SOMETHING HAS gone very wrong with Western liberalism. At its heart classical liberalism believes human progress is brought about by debate and reform. The best way to navigate disruptive change in a divided world is through a universal commitment to individual dignity, open markets and limited government. Yet a resurgent China sneers at liberalism for being selfish, decadent and unstable. At home, populists on the right and left rage at liberalism for its supposed elitism and privilege.

Over the past 250 years classical liberalism has helped bring about unparalleled progress. It will not vanish in a puff of smoke. But it is undergoing a severe test, just as it did a century ago when the cancers of Bolshevism and fascism began to eat away at liberal Europe from within. It is time for liberals to understand what they are up against and to fight back.

Nowhere is the fight fiercer than in America, where this week the Supreme Court chose not to strike down a draconian and bizarre anti-abortion law. The most dangerous threat in liberalisms spiritual home comes from the Trumpian right. Populists denigrate liberal edifices such as science and the rule of law as faades for a plot by the deep state against the people. They subordinate facts and reason to tribal emotion. The enduring falsehood that the presidential election in 2020 was stolen points to where such impulses lead. If people cannot settle their differences using debate and trusted institutions, they resort to force.

The attack from the left is harder to grasp, partly because in America liberal has come to include an illiberal left. We describe this week how a new style of politics has recently spread from elite university departments. As young graduates have taken jobs in the upmarket media and in politics, business and education, they have brought with them a horror of feeling unsafe and an agenda obsessed with a narrow vision of obtaining justice for oppressed identity groups. They have also brought along tactics to enforce ideological purity, by no-platforming their enemies and cancelling allies who have transgressedwith echoes of the confessional state that dominated Europe before classical liberalism took root at the end of the 18th century.

Superficially, the illiberal left and classical liberals like The Economist want many of the same things. Both believe that people should be able to flourish whatever their sexuality or race. They share a suspicion of authority and entrenched interests. They believe in the desirability of change.

However, classical liberals and illiberal progressives could hardly disagree more over how to bring these things about. For classical liberals, the precise direction of progress is unknowable. It must be spontaneous and from the bottom upand it depends on the separation of powers, so that nobody nor any group is able to exert lasting control. By contrast the illiberal left put their own power at the centre of things, because they are sure real progress is possible only after they have first seen to it that racial, sexual and other hierarchies are dismantled.

This difference in method has profound implications. Classical liberals believe in setting fair initial conditions and letting events unfold through competitionby, say, eliminating corporate monopolies, opening up guilds, radically reforming taxation and making education accessible with vouchers. Progressives see laissez-faire as a pretence which powerful vested interests use to preserve the status quo. Instead, they believe in imposing equitythe outcomes that they deem just. For example, Ibram X. Kendi, a scholar-activist, asserts that any colour-blind policy, including the standardised testing of children, is racist if it ends up increasing average racial differentials, however enlightened the intentions behind it.

Mr Kendi is right to want an anti-racist policy that works. But his blunderbuss approach risks denying some disadvantaged children the help they need and others the chance to realise their talents. Individuals, not just groups, must be treated fairly for society to flourish. Besides, society has many goals. People worry about economic growth, welfare, crime, the environment and national security, and policies cannot be judged simply on whether they advance a particular group. Classical liberals use debate to hash out priorities and trade-offs in a pluralist society and then use elections to settle on a course. The illiberal left believe that the marketplace of ideas is rigged just like all the others. What masquerades as evidence and argument, they say, is really yet another assertion of raw power by the elite.

Progressives of the old school remain champions of free speech. But illiberal progressives think that equity requires the field to be tilted against those who are privileged and reactionary. That means restricting their freedom of speech, using a caste system of victimhood in which those on top must defer to those with a greater claim to restorative justice. It also involves making an example of supposed reactionaries, by punishing them when they say something that is taken to make someone who is less privileged feel unsafe. The results are calling-out, cancellation and no-platforming.

Milton Friedman once said that the society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. He was right. Illiberal progressives think they have a blueprint for freeing oppressed groups. In reality theirs is a formula for the oppression of individualsand, in that, it is not so very different from the plans of the populist right. In their different ways both extremes put power before process, ends before means and the interests of the group before the freedom of the individual.

Countries run by the strongmen whom populists admire, such as Hungary under Viktor Orban and Russia under Vladimir Putin, show that unchecked power is a bad foundation for good government. Utopias like Cuba and Venezuela show that ends do not justify means. And nowhere at all do individuals willingly conform to state-imposed racial and economic stereotypes.

When populists put partisanship before truth, they sabotage good government. When progressives divide people into competing castes, they turn the nation against itself. Both diminish institutions that resolve social conflict. Hence they often resort to coercion, however much they like to talk about justice.

If classical liberalism is so much better than the alternatives, why is it struggling around the world? One reason is that populists and progressives feed off each other pathologically. The hatred each camp feels for the other inflames its own supportersto the benefit of both. Criticising your own tribes excesses seems like treachery. Under these conditions, liberal debate is starved of oxygen. Just look at Britain, where politics in the past few years was consumed by the rows between uncompromising Tory Brexiteers and the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Aspects of liberalism go against the grain of human nature. It requires you to defend your opponents right to speak, even when you know they are wrong. You must be willing to question your deepest beliefs. Businesses must not be sheltered from the gales of creative destruction. Your loved ones must advance on merit alone, even if all your instincts are to bend the rules for them. You must accept the victory of your enemies at the ballot box, even if you think they will bring the country to ruin.

In short, it is hard work to be a genuine liberal. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when their last ideological challenger seemed to crumble, arrogant elites lost touch with liberalisms humility and self-doubt. They fell into the habit of believing they were always right. They engineered Americas meritocracy to favour people like them. After the financial crisis, they oversaw an economy that grew too slowly for people to feel prosperous. Far from treating white working-class critics with dignity, they sneered at their supposed lack of sophistication.

This complacency has let opponents blame lasting imperfections on liberalismand, because of the treatment of race in America, to insist the whole country was rotten from the start. In the face of persistent inequality and racism, classical liberals can remind people that change takes time. But Washington is broken, China is storming ahead and people are restless.

The ultimate complacency would be for classical liberals to underestimate the threat. Too many right-leaning liberals are inclined to choose a shameless marriage of convenience with populists. Too many left-leaning liberals focus on how they, too, want social justice. They comfort themselves with the thought that the most intolerant illiberalism belongs to a fringe. Dont worry, they say, intolerance is part of the mechanism of change: by focusing on injustice, they shift the centre ground.

Yet it is precisely by countering the forces propelling people to the extremes that classical liberals prevent the extremes from strengthening. By applying liberal principles, they help solve societys many problems without anyone resorting to coercion. Only liberals appreciate diversity in all its forms and understand how to make it a strength. Only they can deal fairly with everything from education to planning and foreign policy so as to release peoples creative energies. Classical liberals must rediscover their fighting spirit. They should take on the bullies and cancellers. Liberalism is still the best engine for equitable progress. Liberals must have the courage to say so.

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The threat from the illiberal left"

Read more:
The threat from the illiberal left - The Economist

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Lindsay Mathyssen, a London New Democrat, said 'there is a clear pattern with Justin Trudeau. All of his talk about feminism isnt reflected in his actions'

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Erin OToole accused the highest echelons of the Liberal party of no accountability and a culture of cover-up in relation to a Liberal candidate whos being allowed to run despite facing numerous sexual misconduct allegations.

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The attack by the Conservative party leader is the latest broadside against the Liberal party over its proclaimed zero tolerance policy for harassment, as the party and leader Justin Trudeau continues to stand by Raj Saini, the Liberal candidate for Kitchener Centre, whos facing the allegations.

Former Liberal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould condemned Trudeaus support for the candidate in a blistering comment.

Anyone who has a responsibility to address this and does not is not fit to lead, Wilson-Raybould tweeted. Anyone who stands by and does nothing is complicit. Anyone who is surprised has not been paying attention.

Wilson-Raybould was pushed out of Trudeaus Liberal government during the 2019 SNC-Lavalin scandal.

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Anyone who has a responsibility to address this and does not is not fit to lead. Anyone who stands by and does nothing is complicit. Anyone who is surprised has not been paying attention. #cdnpoli #elxn44 #metoo https://t.co/qC0jM9ag96

The allegations against Saini, according to several sources who spoke to CBC News, include touching and being handsy' at a party function; following a staffer around asking for her phone number; late night requests for a staffer to come to the office and, in one case, a senior staffer told the CBC she considered suicide, alleging Saini would push her up against the wall during outbursts and had touched her leg.

Sources told CBC that higher-ups in the party were made aware of Sainis behaviour, but nothing was done.

The Post has been unable to independently verify the allegations CBC reported, though Saini and the party have denied wrongdoing.

The Liberals have faced a handful of sexual misconduct scandals since they first formed government in 2015.

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Most recently, Trudeau came under questioning about whether or not he was aware of a sexual misconduct allegation made against Jonathan Vance, then Chief of Defence Staff.

A House of Commons committee heard that the Prime Ministers Office, and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjans office, were made aware of the allegations in 2018. Trudeau insisted he knew nothing, and that it wasnt clear it was a MeToo type complaint.

Trudeaus chief of staff, Katie Telford, said she was aware of a complaint against Vance but didnt know the details.

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In the Saini case, the CBC said complainants told them that the Liberal Party and Telford were aware of allegations.

However, the Liberals responded, We have no records or knowledge of this matter.

For his part, on Tuesday Trudeau appeared to acknowledge that the party was now aware of issues. Without going into details, Trudeau said Mr. Saini has shared the processes, there have been rigorous processes undertaken that he has shared the details of.

Asked if Saini will be allowed to continue as a candidate, a spokesman for the Liberals said, I will refer you to Mr. Sainis statement regarding the process followed in this matter.

OToole accused the Liberals of a pattern of behaviour.

This is a pattern with Mr. Trudeau and his office, OToole said.Everyone knew except Mr. Trudeau, apparently. Now we see this same culture of cover-up was taking place with their own paid staff members, its very concerning. And I hope to hear a serious response from the prime minister and his team on how this type of cover-up took place.

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On Tuesday, Michelle Rempel Garner, a Calgary Conservative, said Trudeau has a pattern of covering up or looking the other way on these kinds of allegations.

Lindsay Mathyssen, a London New Democrat, said there is a clear pattern with Justin Trudeau.

All of his talk about feminism isnt reflected in his actions, Mathyssen said in a statement.

Saini, a pharmacist, was first elected in 2015.

That Saini remains as a candidate stands in sharp contrast with Trudeaus earlier statements that he shows zero tolerance for harassment, after Troy Myers, the Conservative candidate for Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, dropped out of the race, while denying allegations of harassment.

Canadians deserve to know the people standing up to represent them, to serve them in the House of Commons are not people who have shown disrespect, misbehaved or are facing serious allegations, said Trudeau on Monday.

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In a statement, Saini said he had never acted inappropriately towards staff or constituents.

The statement said he was made aware of one allegation regarding my office, but the individual chose not to pursue a formal or informal complaint process.

Saini said he insisted on a third-party review of his office, done through the House of Commons. Saini, who did not respond to a request for a copy of documents relating to that review, said it was finished in June 2020 and found nothing arose regarding concerns of harassment in the office.

Saini also said he provided information to the Waterloo Regional Police over concerns about his safety and that of his staff, and that the police took action to mediate the situation.

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The Post sought confirmation and comment from the Waterloo police, but did not receive a response by press time. With additional reporting by Michael Higgins and Adrian Humphreys

Email: tdawson@postmedia.com | Twitter: tylerrdawson

LIBERAL SEX SCANDALS

Since coming into office, the Liberals and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been confronted with a number of sexual misconduct allegations.

Marwan Tabbara, who represented Ontarios Kitchener SouthHespeler, was allowed to run in the 2019 federal election under the Liberal banner despite facing an internal investigation regarding allegations of inappropriate touching and unwelcome sexual comments against a female staff member during his 2015 run for Parliament. He is now facing break and enter, assault and criminal harassment charges in an unrelated incident.

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One of the first challenges for Justin Trudeau was when two female New Democrat MPs levelled complaints against Liberal MPs Massimo Pacettiand Scott Andrews in 2014. Trudeaususpended the two Liberals from caucus pending a third-partyinvestigation, at the conclusion of which the pair voluntarilyresignedfrom caucus permanently.

In 2017, Darshan Kang, a Calgary Liberal, resigned from caucus; a parliamentary investigation later substantiated some of the sexual harassment allegations he faced, and Kang did not run for re-election in 2019.

Another MP, Calgarian Kent Hehr who lost in 2019 resigned from his cabinet position in 2018 over a sexual harassment allegation.

Trudeau himself has faced an allegation of unwanted touching, back in August 2000, during an interaction with a local newspaper reporter. In 2018, when a newspaper report of the incident resurfaced, Trudeau said he had no memory of untoward or inappropriate action. Trudeau said in 2018,I fully respect her ability to experience something differently.

Tyler Dawson

From now until the bitter end of Election 44, the National Post is publishing a special daily edition of First Reading, our politics newsletter, to keep you posted on the ins and outs (and way outs) of the campaign. All curated by the National Posts own Tristin Hopper and published Monday to Friday at 6 p.m. and Sundays at 9 a.m. Sign up here.

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Liberals accused of 'culture of cover-up' in handling of sexual misconduct accusations - National Post