I don’t know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. I don’t know if Steve Paikin made a stupid joke and Sarah Thomson took it seriously.But I do know that, amidst the tsunami of allegations of sexual impropriety against high-profile individuals, at least one employer has not taken shelter from the storm by pre-emptively firing or suspending or cutting off at the knees the alleged perpetrator.Keeping Paikin on the air as host of TVO’s The Agenda until an independent investigator — Rachel Turnpenney, a lawyer specializing in workplace investigations, employment litigation and human rights law — finishes her probe of the complaint is the proper response. Because nobody should be taken down, have a lifetime career trashed, on the allegations of one person, even when, as in the case, the complainant has been identified.Read more: TVO investigating sexual harassment allegation against Steve Paikin“Based on the evidence to date, TVO sees no reason to remove Mr. Paikin from his role of host for The Agenda pending the outcome of the investigation, CEO Lisa de Wilde said in a statement released Monday.Former mayoral candidate Thomson did not name Paikin in a series of posts she made on her personal website last week, recounting a lunch she’d had with the veteran journalist during the 2010 mayoral campaign. Her assistant, she said, was also present, with the host of a “political talk show”.“Not five minutes into the lunch the host asked me if I would sleep with him,” Thomson wrote. “My assistant almost spit his drink all over the table.”Thomson claimed “the host” had posed the lunch invitation to discuss her coming on the show, where she had earlier appeared with the other top four candidates.“In 2010, the host made it harder for me to compete with the men I was up against because they were invited to appear on his show while I wasn’t,” Thomson wrote, & ...
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