Manitoba cabinet minister harassed college employee in past job, external investigation concluded

Recently appointed federal cabinet minister Rebecca Chartrand harassed a former employee at Winnipeg's Red River College Polytechnic over a period of several months in 2019, according to an external investigation commissioned by the college and conducted by a Winnipeg law firm.

Chartrand, elected in April as the Liberal member of Parliament for the northern Manitoba riding of Churchill-Keewatinook Aski, was appointed by Prime Minister Mark Carney in May as the minister of northern and Arctic affairs and the minister responsible for the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency.

According to documentation provided to CBC News in April — but first reported this week by Canadaland — Chartrand was the subject of a harassment investigation during the final months of her two-year stint as executive director of Indigenous strategy for RRC Polytech, a Winnipeg post-secondary institution with annual enrolment of approximately 21,000 students.

In a complaint filed with RRC Polytech under its discrimination and harassment policy in September 2019, a former college employee claimed she was "targeted, undermined, bullied and harassed" by Chartrand over a period of eight months.

The harassment took the form of threatening the employee's position, undermining her work and her management of other staff, interfering with her career, negatively impacting her reputation, increasing her workload and imposing unreasonable deadlines, according to the complaint.

In a letter dated Dec. 19, 2019, RRC Polytech human resources director Curtis Craven informed the former employee that investigators with the Winnipeg law firm Rachlis Neville LLP substantiated the harassment complaint.

The law firm found Chartrand's conduct "amounted to personal harassment in that over a period of time, the manner in which she engaged with you and the approach used to assign work and manage your performance constituted conduct which was severe," Craven said in the letter.

"Such conduct could reasonably cause an individual to be humiliated or intimidated and was repeated, and had a lasting, harmful effect on you," he wrote.

However, "given that Ms. Chartrand is no longer with the college, the college will not be taking any further corrective actions arising from this investigation," Craven's letter said.

Chartrand was employed by RRC Polytech from June 2017 until December 2019, when she resigned, college spokesperson Emily Doer said in a statement.

Chartrand was not available to speak about her time at the college, spokesperson Kyle Allen said this week.

"Minister Chartrand is committed to fostering a healthy work environment for all persons in the workplace, characterized by collegiality and mutual respect," Allen said in a statement.

RRC Polytech also declined to address Chartrand's time at the post-secondary institution.

"In keeping with privacy legislation and college policy, we do not discuss personnel matters regarding current or former employees," Doer said in a statement.