Maple Monitor 50: Doug Ford, Bonnie Crombie Surveillance Allegations and WestJet Sexual Harassment Settlement

Irina Tsukerman is a New York-registered human rights and national security lawyer, geopolitical analyst, and journalist. She earned a B.A. in International/Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006 and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She is president of Scarab Rising, Inc., editor-in-chief of The Washington Outsider, and fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and the Arabian Peninsula Institute. Her work focuses on foreign policy, information warfare, security, and Middle Eastern affairs. She serves as Written Content Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s Science and Technology Committee.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Irina Tsukerman examine allegations that Ontario Progressive Conservatives funded surveillance of Bonnie Crombie during a 2023 Jamaica trip, questioning political accountability, opposition research, and media ethics. They also discuss WestJet’s $4.5 million class-action settlement involving female flight attendants, focusing on workplace harassment claims, modest individual compensation, reputational consequences, complaint systems, institutional responsibility, and whether structural reforms may matter more than mandatory training alone.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Welcome back to Maple Monitor with Irina Tsukerman, our Washington Outsider, and myself, Scott Douglas Jacobsen. There are going to be a few smaller Canadian stories, but individually, they can obviously be impactful. We will start with the first one.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he had been unaware that the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party had sent someone to Jamaica to surveil Bonnie Crombie, who had just been elected leader of the Ontario Liberal Party. Crombie arrived in Jamaica on December 8, 2023, six days after winning the Liberal leadership, for a three-day vacation. According to reporting by The Trillium and POLICORNER, two anonymous sources familiar with the operation said the Ontario PCs sent an opposition researcher to surveil her. The party’s financial records show approximately $3,000 in spending at two Jamaican resorts, including about $1,000 at the resort where Crombie stayed. The precise purpose of the second resort expenditure remains unclear.

Ford said that he had only learned about the operation the previous day and that he did not approve of it. He emphasized that the roughly $3,000 involved was party money rather than government money. However, Ontario political parties receive public support through mechanisms including the province’s per-vote subsidy, and that subsidy accounted for a substantial portion of the Ontario PC Party’s income in 2023.

Ford’s response included, quote, “I wouldn’t do it, but again, things happen,” unquote. He also compared the situation to members of the media following him during trips to the United States. He subsequently said, “It’s politics,” and, “Stuff happens during the elections.” There is an oddity there because this operation occurred in December 2023, between provincial general elections, although Crombie had just completed the Ontario Liberal leadership contest.

The key distinction in this story, which I would love to get your take on, is that this was an Ontario political party funding an opposition-research operation, according to the reporting, rather than a news organization paying journalists to cover a politician. Those are different institutional spheres.

Journalists working for professional news organizations are ordinarily subject to their employer’s editorial standards and, where applicable, professional ethical codes. Organizations such as the Canadian Association of Journalists publish ethics guidelines for journalistic practice. In the United States, the Society of Professional Journalists maintains its own Code of Ethics. By contrast, an opposition researcher employed or contracted by a political party is working on behalf of a partisan organization and is not operating under journalistic professional standards merely because the work involves gathering information.

So the issue is more complicated than simply saying, “things happen.” According to the reporting, somebody was deliberately sent to Jamaica as part of an opposition-research effort. That is different from an accidental occurrence. “Things happen” makes it sound almost like an act of nature or an act of God. What are your thoughts?

Tsukerman: I find this whole premise both amusing and horrifying at the same time. I am also not entirely sure who the intended audience was for this purported surveillance. The fact that the comments are very much in character with this particular politician raises broader questions. We keep hearing the same sort of rhetoric from the same kinds of politicians, and there seems to be no middle ground.

The detractors think this individual is a populist demagogue who is trying to appeal to his audience and rile people up, while his supporters believe that he is an honest broker who tells the truth and is one of the few people unafraid to call things out for what they are. Is there no middle ground where people can be direct and to the point without engaging in deliberate provocation or appealing to shock value rather than common sense?

Why has it gotten to the point where either you have to be a complete hypocrite, stifling legitimate criticism of the status quo or refusing to propose new, fresh ideas, or you have to be a rabble-rouser, essentially appealing to the lowest common denominator and calling that being a man of the people?

The surveillance story comes right into that. Is there no middle ground between being transparent about your travels, your work, and your engagements at home and abroad, and engaging in this sort of political operation?

Jacobsen: There was a line item worth $3,000, right? You can check these things through public records and freedom-of-information processes. Three thousand dollars is not a lot of money, but it is not insubstantial. If this person would be open to an interview or speaking publicly about this activity, that could settle some of the questions.

What was said? Why this amount of money? What was your task, and did you achieve the task, or did you discover something else by accident? Could the task have been to surveil Crombie, again, based on the allegation, and then you found something else entirely, or nothing at all?

Why is this becoming public news in 2026, when we have a different prime minister, a different relationship between Canada and the United States, and new federal political leadership? This is coming out nearly three years later. That seems like a substantial amount of time. Is it simply a matter of needing to fill a news cycle?

Tsukerman: I would posit something else. What is going on between the United States and Canada right now? Negotiations over the trade relationship are continuing amid threats of higher U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods.

Jacobsen: A particular story about allegations of surveillance in Jamaica.

Tsukerman: It may not seem directly related. In fact, you would reasonably question what one has to do with the other. But if the idea is to cause disruption, heighten tensions, or play up underlying unease between the two parties, that would certainly add to the ongoing debacle rather than detract from it.

Jacobsen: Like an open political psy-op, maybe. I will put it within the realm of plausibility, but it seems to me more like regular political-party nonsense than anything else.

Tsukerman: It does seem very trivial. Jamaica is not exactly a global geopolitical hotspot.

Jacobsen: No. Are they trying to get dirt on someone at a Bob Marley-related event or something? I do not know.

Tsukerman: If this were China, I could at least say, okay, there is a legitimate geopolitical dimension to consider. That would be much more consequential.

Jacobsen: Let us get to another one. This one is actually quite sad at the start, although there is at least some resolution at the end, because most cases like this never make it into court. Many women do not come forward. Of those who do, relatively few cases proceed through lengthy litigation, and fewer still result in a settlement or judgment.

WestJet has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a decade-old class action involving thousands of current and former female flight attendants. WestJet did not admit liability or wrongdoing under the settlement. A British Columbia court approved the agreement in August 2026 after finding it fair and in the best interests of eligible class members.

The class covers 3,452 current and former female flight attendants who worked for WestJet during the relevant period. The litigation began in 2016 after former flight attendant Mandalena Lewis filed suit. Lewis alleged that a WestJet pilot sexually assaulted her during a layover in Hawaii in 2010. Other women later came forward with allegations of harassment, and the B.C. Court of Appeal certified the case as a class action in 2022.

The central class-action claim was not that WestJet itself encouraged harassment. Rather, the plaintiffs alleged that WestJet breached its contractual promise to provide a harassment-free workplace by failing to implement and maintain adequate systems for preventing, reporting, investigating, and responding to workplace harassment.

So it is important to frame the case correctly. This was fundamentally a systemic breach-of-contract claim concerning WestJet’s anti-harassment policies and practices, rather than a proceeding determining the truth or damages associated with every individual allegation of assault or harassment.

The $4.5 million is also not simply divided evenly among all 3,452 class members. The settlement fund covers class-member compensation as well as legal fees, disbursements, administrative expenses, and an honorarium for Lewis. Valid claimants are expected to receive roughly $400 to $470 each, depending on the final administration of the fund.

Lewis said, quote, “It’s the best we could get given the circumstances. I had to fight tooth and nail for these slivers,” unquote. She has also said that, although she is relieved the case is over, she does not believe the plaintiffs received full justice.

There is another substantive part of the settlement that should not be overlooked. WestJet is required to retain a third-party consultant to conduct a workplace assessment examining the prevalence of harassment, the extent of underreporting, and ways to improve reporting and response systems. The settlement does not, however, include an admission of wrongdoing or the mandatory anti-harassment training for pilots that the lawsuit had sought.

Joshua Coratti, an associate lawyer with the Toronto employment law firm Ball Professional Corporation, described the agreement as looking like, quote, “a pretty good deal,” unquote, for WestJet because it releases the airline from liability for individual claims covered by the settlement. Coratti also observed that class actions often produce relatively modest monetary recoveries for individual plaintiffs, while their broader effect can be to establish that certain conduct is unacceptable and make companies more cautious about systemic violations.

That distinction matters. The individual monetary amount here is modest after a decade of litigation. But a class action can also have an institutional function. It can force scrutiny of policies, establish legal principles, create external oversight, and pressure an organization to change its practices.

In an ideal realistic outcome, then, you would have some compensation for the class members, along with institutional changes that make future harassment less likely and improve how complaints are handled. We can imagine a world in which this behaviour never occurs and everyone is consistently respectful, but that is not the world in which employment law operates.

So Coratti has a point about the financial structure of class actions. The lawyers’ fees can be substantial while the individual plaintiffs receive comparatively little. But when I read this case, the more consequential question is whether the settlement produces durable institutional change. If the independent workplace assessment leads to better reporting systems, stronger safeguards, and more effective responses to harassment, then this may ultimately be a more positive development than the relatively small individual payouts suggest.

What are your thoughts?

Tsukerman: A couple of thoughts. First, there is another aspect to this besides the financial recovery for the plaintiffs, which is the reputational damage associated with having to litigate these allegations for such a long time and being publicly associated with claims involving sexual harassment and sexual assault. That is not good news for an airline, even if one begins with a single alleged incident. In this case, however, the litigation developed into a class action covering thousands of current and former female flight attendants, which makes the reputational issue considerably broader.

On the other hand, training is not necessarily the same thing as creating effective guardrails. I am not entirely sure that mandatory sexual-harassment training, by itself, is going to prevent someone determined to engage in abusive conduct. It can easily become another box for an airline to check by saying that it fulfilled the mandatory requirement.

What may be more useful is creating a streamlined internal investigation process and a faster, more effective response to allegations, while protecting people who report misconduct and making it easier for complainants to come forward without fear of intimidation or retaliation. In fact, the approved settlement requires WestJet to retain a third party to examine the prevalence of harassment, underreporting, and the effectiveness of its reporting systems. It does not require the mandatory pilot training originally sought in the lawsuit.

So demanding that sort of institutional change from the airline, particularly a better system for pursuing and investigating complaints, may ultimately be more useful than simply mandating training.

There is also the question of internal culture. A single employee committing misconduct does not necessarily establish that an entire organization has a culture that encourages or tolerates that conduct. Sometimes there are failures of hiring, supervision, investigation, or due diligence. Sometimes an individual engages in misconduct without obvious prior warning signs.

But this case is more complicated than an isolated allegation involving one pilot. Lewis alleged that she was sexually assaulted by a WestJet pilot in 2010 and that another flight attendant had previously accused the same pilot of assault in 2008. The broader class claim alleged that WestJet systematically failed to fulfill contractual commitments concerning harassment prevention, investigation, and response. Those allegations, rather than merely the conduct of one employee, became central to the litigation.

So in this case, I would agree that there is a legitimate institutional question. The fact that it became a class action does not itself prove that every allegation was established or that WestJet maintained a culture of harassment. What it does show is that the litigation concerned alleged systemic failures affecting a defined class of employees, rather than simply determining liability for one alleged assault. The British Columbia Court of Appeal certified the class action in 2022 on a breach-of-contract theory involving WestJet’s anti-harassment commitments.

Had this truly been one isolated case involving one employee, I would not necessarily say that it demonstrated some major institutional failing by the airline. But where there are repeated allegations and questions about how complaints were handled, an examination of the reporting and investigative systems becomes much more warranted.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Irina.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the Lifestyle and Finance Writer and Editor for A Further Inquiry with more than 400 published articles in the outlet. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.

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