OTTAWA — Less than a week after her own allegations got a fellow MP kicked out of the NDP caucus, Christine Moore found herself suspended from party duties Tuesday amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour involving a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh ordered an investigation into the claims against the Quebec MP as media reports swirled about Moore’s alleged behaviour towards a retired soldier who came to Ottawa to advocate on behalf of ill and injured military members.
In an interview, retired corporal Glen Kirkland said Moore first approached him after he testified before a parliamentary committee in June 2013, where he had been asked to speak on the treatment of ill and injured soldiers.
Kirkland was wounded in an ambush in Afghanistan in 2008 while driving a light-armoured vehicle. Three other soldiers were killed and Kirkland suffered severe injuries, including a damaged pancreas and right eye, crushed vertebrae, bleeding in the brain and PTSD.
“She took interest in my health because her background is in nursing,” Kirkland told The Canadian Press in a phone interview Tuesday.
“She asked me back to her office.… I was a corporal in the military and a member of Parliament asked me to do something. There was no thought process. It was just the way it was.
“She started pouring me drinks and I told her: ‘I’m on medication,’” Kirkland continued. “I told her what I was on. She said it was fine. I was like: ‘OK, you’re a nurse and you’re kind of my boss, so what am I going to say?’”
Kirkland did not want to get into specifics Tuesday. But he did tell the CBC that Moore followed him back to his hotel and continued to send explicit messages, even turning up unannounced at his Manitoba home before he forcibly told her to stop.