According to court records, a B.C. judge rejected MacRae’s request to revoke the non-disclosure agreement she had signed in 1997 as a part of a litigation settlement four years ago.
Additionally, MacRae was required to pay $500 in court fees to her father’s estate. The Vancouver lady said, “It’s really disrespectful.”
MacRae’s 84-year-old mother Marie is not constrained by law from discussing what occurred to her when she was a child, despite the fact that she is not allowed to do so. Marie has verified that MacRae told her about the alleged sexual assault long before the NDA.
Currently, they are both fighting to have non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) severely restricted in usage and outright prohibited in instances of abuse, harassment, and discrimination by the provincial and federal governments. People can’t recover if they keep quiet about what occurred to them, according to MacRae.
In Canada, the movement is gaining momentum swiftly. Recently, Prince Edward Island became the first jurisdiction to explicitly restrict the use of NDAs, and similar legislation has been proposed in Manitoba and Nova Scotia.
Can’t Buy My Silence campaign leaders claim to have been meeting often with government employees in British Columbia.
In an email to CBC, a representative for the attorney general’s office stated that the ministry is keeping an eye on changes in other provinces to see whether B.C. legislation needs to be altered.
The Can’t Buy My Silence campaign was started by Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to notorious film producer and sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, and Julie Macfarlane, an emerita professor of law at the University of Windsor in Ontario.
In order to get the church to stop utilizing NDAs in instances like hers, Macfarlane sued the Anglican Church after being sexually assaulted by a pastor.
She said that over the past ten years, NDAs have become prevalent and accepted in the academic community and employment conflicts. In incidents of abuse and harassment, those who signed them said they were led to believe that was the only option to resolve their issues.
