A local lawyer who is part of a class action lawsuit against the RCMP says the case should be in front of a judge or the force needs to start mediating.
Sandy Zaitzeff is part of a class action suit from nearly 300 current and former female RCMP officers who allege discrimination, sexual harassment and abuse from coast-to-coast. On Tuesday, the case of RCMP veteran Janet Merlo was heard in a B.C. courtroom where lawyers argued the suit should go ahead.
But Zaitzeff said Crown attorneys filed a motion that would set the case back.
“For one reason,” he said in Thunder Bay Wednesday. “Delay, delay, delay.”
Mediation could have the suit wrapped up in as little as a year. But if the government continues to try and delay the proceedings, Zatizeff said it could take a decade.
“We won’t shrug our shoulders and walk away it’ll just take longer and that’s what they want,” he said.
In the meantime, Zaitzeff said victims and their families, some who suffer from post-traumatc stress disorder and are without income, continue to suffer.
“The longer this takes the tougher it is,” he said.
“We’re talking about ruined relationships, lost marriages, children that are suffering PTSD.”
While there is compensation involved, Zaitzeff said the victims want the truth about the RCMP and the way it has functioned for more than 50 years to come to light and significant changes made.
“What the women want first and foremost is that it becomes a matter of public record, that everybody knows about the abuses, the bullying, the harassment, the sexual innuendos, the sexual assaults that everybody knows about this. that Canada knows,” he said.
But that won’t happen until evidence on both sides can be presented either in court or through mediation Zaitzeff said.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
