“Male MPs and staff are bystanders to sexual misconduct on Hill”

Sexual misconduct is nothing short of “rampant” on Parliament Hill, a place that runs on a steady supply of cheap young labour, usually female,  Lauren Dobson-Hughes A NDP staffer  has said referring to when a much older MP suddenly kissed her front of at least 20 people — and no one seemed to bat an eye. “He pulled in my head righto him and he gave me this giant wet kiss,” said Dobson-Hughes, who was 25 at the time and shaken by the encounter. She added, “I went to the washroom to wash his spit that was dribbling down my cheek.”

In a voluntary survey of female MPs last month, The Canadian Press found more than half of respondents — 58 per cent — had personally been the target of one or more forms of sexual misconduct while in office, including inappropriate or unwanted remarks, gestures or text messages of a sexual nature.

Thirty-eight of 89 female MPs took part in the voluntary, anonymous survey.

Former interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose and Green party Leader Elizabeth May say they worry the most for vulnerable young staffers and interns on the Hill who might resist speaking up about misconduct for fear of losing what little job security they might already have.

“I think of staffers — where do they go?” Ambrose is reported to have said.

“It is not in a party’s interest to highlight, investigate, that one of their own MPs has been accused of sexual harassment or that everybody knows this person is a sexual harasser,” Lauren Dobson-Hughes said. “It damages the party electorally, it causes a media fuss, diverts your message  staff know that. They don’t come forward,” she said.

“If you hear something in your caucus meetings you think is just bad form, tell your male colleagues,” May said. “Politics and power run together, which means power and politics and sex run together, and men in positions of power are going to abuse that.”

“Canadians