MP Leslyn Lewis sues her alma mater, and professor for 'traumatizing' job interview - National Post

Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis speaks during question period in the House of Commons in Ottawa, April 20, 2026. Photo by Blair Gable/PostmediaArticle contentSeeking damages of more than $3 million, Leslyn Lewis, the MP for Haldimand-Norfolk in rural southern Ontario and a former leadership candidate for the Conservative Party of Canada, has brought a defamation claim against her alma mater law school at York University and a professor of refugee law over Lewis’s failed application to a scholar position reserved for a Black person of African descent.

Lewis claims Sean Rehaag derailed her short-listed candidacy from the start, by allegedly scheming behind the scenes to alert academic decision makers to his defamatory allegations that Lewis was racist, anti-gay, anti-refugee and opposed women’s reproductive freedom.

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In her statement of claim filed in Ontario Superior Court, Lewis also alleges the school was negligent in exposing her to a “traumatizing” job interview process by allowing a “toxic culture” of “wokeism” and “groupthink” to develop at Osgoode Hall law school.

She claims Rehaag “blindsided” her with these defamatory allegations about her politics as she gave a presentation about her candidacy, “ganged up” on her with other academic decision makers to verbally abuse her, and that he did this to “embarrass and humiliate” her in public and in front of academic colleagues.

She claims she has been “de facto vetted-out of any future prospect in academia.”

She claims Rehaag told her that people like her had no place at Osgoode and she was not welcome.

In a statement of defence, Rehaag specifically denies this. York denies the environment was “dangerous, hostile, or abusive.” Both deny there was ever any campaign of “vetting out” or “lobbying” against Lewis.

The conflict dates to March of 2021, when Lewis was simultaneously running as a high-profile candidate for the federal Conservatives and applying for this newly created job at York’s Osgoode Hall, where she once took a doctorate.

The job in the Osgoode’s Centre for Refugee Studies “supported York’s Affirmative Action program, in recognition of the underrepresentation of Black faculty,” according to York’s statement of defence. Lewis’s claim says the job “was created in response to the racial awareness that emerged from the George Floyd murder, and the law school sought a faculty member that also shared the lived-experience as a person of Black-African Descent who could continue to advance causes of racial equality.”

Lewis had been involved with the centre as a student in the 1990s, and later worked in refugee law. She says in her statement of claim that she “advocated for members of the LGBTQ+2 community, with a specific focus on Jamaica (the country of her birth). Another area of focus was women fleeing domestic assault.”

Lewis was first elected to Parliament in the September 2021 election. She ran for the federal Conservative leadership in 2020, seeking to replace Andrew Scheer, and in 2022, seeking to replace Erin O’Toole. She lost in 2022 to current leader Pierre Poilievre.