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Nygard, left, with Klein in Winnipeg in 2008. Nygard was convicted in 2023 of four counts of sexual assault, and in 2026 of one count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement. (www4.nygard.com)<\/p>\nManitoba cabinet minister Nahanni Fontaine has weighed in on Winnipeg’s mayoral race by taking to social media to remind voters that soon-to-be candidate Kevin Klein used to work for convicted sex offender Peter Nygard.<\/p>\n
Fontaine, who has served as families minister since the NDP was elected in 2023, posted a 55-second video on Facebook about Klein, a former city councillor and cabinet minister in the previous Progressive Conservative government. <\/p>\n
“Kevin Klein once worked for Peter Nygard. Peter Nygard is Canada’s equivalent to Jeffrey Epstein: had his own little island, did unspeakable, disgusting things to women,” Fontaine said in the video, posted Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“I just thought that Winnipeggers would want to know that Kevin Klein at one point worked for Peter Nygard.”<\/p>\n
The caption for Fontaine’s video reads, “I mean really, who chooses to work for Count Dracula?” followed by a vampire emoji.<\/p>\n
Klein, who finished third in Winnipeg’s mayoral race in 2022, declared his candidacy for the 2026 election on Monday. <\/p>\n
Keith Poulson, Klein’s campaign manager, said his candidate plans to register his campaign on Thursday and will respond to Fontaine then. <\/p>\n
Klein said he worked for Nygard for\u00a0four months in\u00a02012\u00a0and another two weeks in December 2013. He handled\u00a0communications\u00a0and worked in a government-relations role\u00a0for a biotech company partially owned by Nygard. <\/p>\n
Klein has repeatedly stated he was unaware of Nygard’s criminal activities when he worked for the now-disgraced former fashion mogul. Nygard, who built his clothing business in Winnipeg, was convicted in Toronto in 2023 of four counts of sexual assault and in Montreal this year of both sexual assault and forcible confinement.<\/p>\n
Nygard, left, with Klein in Winnipeg in 2008. Nygard was convicted in 2023 of four counts of sexual assault, and in 2026 of one count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement. (www4.nygard.com)<\/p>\n
“I get that that man is a horrible human being, but thousands upon thousands of Winnipeggers worked for him,” Klein said in an interview Monday.<\/p>\n
“I got offered a job that’s one of those jobs that you look at and say, ‘Wow, this could be the job of a lifetime,’ not knowing what the man was like.” <\/p>\n
Gillingham calls Klein ‘political fixer for Nygard’<\/p>\n
Spokespeople for Premier Wab Kinew’s cabinet did not comment on Fontaine’s video. <\/p>\n
She’s not the only politician raising Klein’s association with Nygard. In a statement Tuesday, incumbent mayoral candidate Scott Gillingham referred to Klein as a former “Caribbean\u00a0political fixer” for Nygard.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
CBC News can not independently verify this claim.<\/p>\n
Gillingham’s campaign said the incumbent candidate’s statement is based on Klein’s appearance in reporting by CBC investigative documentary series The Fifth Estate\u00a0“as a participant in meetings between Nygard and Bahamian government officials” and “as a visitor to ‘Nygard Cay'” in subsequent news stories.<\/p>\n
In 2021, when Klein was the councillor for Winnipeg’s Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood ward, Klein told CBC News he\u00a0travelled to Nygard’s estate in the Bahamas on two occasions for work,\u00a0both times with his wife.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one segment of\u00a0The Fifth\u00a0Estate\u00a0documentary, Klein is seen at a beach location with Nygard and several others.<\/p>\n
“My role at that time [was] as a senior executive [for] government relations,” Klein told CBC News in 2021, adding that segment shows an event attended by\u00a0ministers and elected officials from the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
“That was why I was there.”<\/p>\n
A second scene in the documentary shows Klein at a poker table where Nygard is dealing cards. Klein said he couldn’t be sure where the video was shot, but said it could have been in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1788431889_960_default.jpg\")
Klein says he played poker with Nygard twice but doesn’t remember where this game was played. (The Fifth Estate\/CBC )<\/p>\n
“It would be very hard for me to definitively tell you where exactly that one was,” he said.<\/p>\n
Klein also said in 2021 that he and his wife never saw any behaviour by Nygard that would be regarded as inappropriate or illegal. <\/p>\n
“We saw nothing \u2026\u00a0that would raise eyebrows whatsoever \u2014 but again, then, we didn’t spend a lot of time connected to Peter himself,” he said. <\/p>\n
Gillingham’s campaign addressed these statements as well.<\/p>\n
“The\u00a0Gillingham\u00a0campaign accepts Klein’s claims\u00a0that he saw nothing during his visits to the Bahamas related to Nygard’s Epstein-like criminal behaviour toward women,” the statement from the incumbent mayoral candidate read.<\/p>\n
“However, Klein’s\u00a0protests in this regard\u00a0have obscured\u00a0other\u00a0important\u00a0questions of judgment about Klein’s\u00a0history\u00a0in the Caribbean \u2014 either\u00a0working\u00a0for, or aligned with \u2014 Peter Nygard.”<\/p>\n
Klein said in 2022 his work with the\u00a0St. Kitts Biomedical Research Foundation\u00a0in the Caribbean in 2016 had no connection with Nygard.<\/p>\n
“I do not believe Nygard Biotech or Nygard had any interest in the internationally-recognized medical research organization, The St. Kitts\u00a0Biomedical Research Foundation. Certainly not with any work I was involved in,” Klein wrote in an email in 2022, when he was the PC candidate in the Kirkfield Park provincial byelection. <\/p>\n