Nygard lawyer claims abuse of process in Manitoba, wants judge to stay sex charges

A lawyer for disgraced fashion mogul and convicted sex offender Peter Nygard is seeking to have Manitoba charges against him stayed.

Nygard, 83, is set to stand trial in December on charges he sexually assaulted and forcibly confined a then-20-year-old woman in 1993 at his former corporate headquarters in Winnipeg.

At a hearing Friday morning before provincial court Judge Mary Kate Harvie, Nygard’s lawyer Gerri Wiebe argued former provincial attorney general Kelvin Goertzen had no grounds to seek a second opinion on the case from the Saskatchewan Public Prosecutions Service in November 2022, more than a year after the Manitoba Crown attorney’s office decided it would not pursue charges against Nygard.

Wiebe called the Manitoba prosecution an abuse of process, alleging Goertzen was responding to media and political pressure when he made the decision to seek a second Crown opinion from out of province, a move not specifically sanctioned by government policy.

‘I don’t even know what this is about’: Nygard

Nygard appeared via video from Ontario’s Bath Institution, where he is serving an 11-year sentence after being convicted last September of sexually assaulting four women at his Toronto corporate headquarters from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s.

Nygard, sporting long hair and a beard, sat with his head bowed, barely visible for the camera, his head topped with both a ball cap and tuque. When brought to the video room, he appeared not to know the purpose of the hearing.

“I have no idea (how long I will be here),” he told a corrections officer in a hoarse voice. “I don’t even know what this is about.”

‘Unprecedented’ second opinion

The woman at the centre of the Winnipeg charges was one of eight alleged sexual assault victims whose cases were investigated by city police and assessed by Manitoba Crown attorneys.

In November 2022, then-Manitoba Liberal leader Dougald Lamont took the calls for a new investigation to the legislative assembly and organized a news conference with women who had accused Nygard of assault.

Two days later, Goertzen ordered a second opinion on the matter — a decision Wiebe said Goertzen himself described as “unprecedented” — and sent the case files to Saskatchewan prosecutors for review. That review resulted in Manitoba prosecutors authorizing charges involving one alleged victim.

“Sixteen months after a decision was made not to prosecute, in the face of direct questioning in the legislative assembly, the attorney general sought a second opinion with respect to what we say was a considered opinion by Manitoba Prosecution Services that there was no reasonable likelihood of conviction,” Wiebe said.

“The attorney general’s explanation for seeking the second opinion does not appear to have been based on any articulated problem with the Manitoba Prosecutions decision,” she said.

“The only explanation given by the attorney general is that he appears to have been bothered by the fact that charges were authorized in other jurisdictions, that he had heard from the victims and that he had lost sleep at night.”

‘Literally an ends-justifies-the-means kind of situation’

The hearing will resume Monday with submissions from Crown attorney Charles Murray on behalf of the attorney general.

Harvie said she expects Murray to argue the alleged victims deserve to have their day in court.

“The concern is there are real live people behind these cases and your friend is going to be arguing that these issues are best addressed by a full airing of the allegations before the court,” Harvie told Wiebe.

Wiebe said prosecuting the case — given the backdrop of how the charges against Nygard came to be authorized — threatens the integrity of the justice system.

“I don’t deny these are serious charges,” Wiebe said. “Society has a real interest in having sexual assault allegations determined on their merit. But the question… is at what cost? Allowing this prosecution to continue sends the message that if the accused is high-profile enough, reviled in the media enough or if the political pressure or media attention is intense enough, extraordinary unprincipled measures are justified.

“It’s quite literally an ends-justifies-the-means kind of situation,” she said.

Nygard also faces charges in Quebec and extradition to the U.S., where he has been charged with sex trafficking and racketeering.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

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Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.