‘Bully’ bosses issue ‘swept under the carpet’ until junior government lawyer sent email

Former assistant deputy attorney general Malliha Wilson left the ministry last year

A junior lawyer’s decision to speak out — with an email copied to dozens of government lawyers — about an allegedly “abusive” boss at Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General caused Queen’s Park to finally take notice of historic problems that were later called a “festering” sore in a government report.

“I write to express my profound disappointment and deep sense of shame in the organization I work for under your leadership,” the young lawyer wrote in November 2016 to then-deputy attorney general Patrick Monahan.

Seeking maximum impact, the junior lawyer copied her two-page letter of complaint to the executive management group and dozens of rank and file lawyers at the attorney general’s ministry. She was responding to Monahan’s glowing description in a staff email of Malliha Wilson, his assistant deputy attorney general who had just received a lateral posting to another part of the Ontario public service.

“Your memo is particularly distressing given that you and other senior leadership in government . . . are fully aware of this pattern of behaviour,” the junior lawyer wrote. “Yet you chose to sweep all of this under the carpet.”

Wednesday, the Star reported on a secret government report into the behaviour of “bully” bosses at the ministry. In short, report author Leslie Macleod found that the workplace at the Civil Law Division is a “toxic” cesspool where senior bureaucrats — male and female — bully, harass and discriminate against hundreds of lawyers and administrative assistants.  (more...)

‘Bully’ bosses issue ‘swept under the carpet’ until junior government lawyer sent email

Background:

Ontario government lawyers being terrorized by ‘bully’ bosses, secret report reveals