The authority to make municipal councillors more accountable needs to come from the province, says Barrie Mayor Jeff Lehman.
“It’s a good thing the province is proposing to strengthen the sort of disciplinary actions and revisions that are in the legislation,” he said. “I think this is timely and important. I think expectations are changing.”
On March 5, the Ontario government announced it’s launching consultations with the municipal sector to strengthen accountability for council members; the province says it wants to ensure that councillors and heads of council maintain a safe and respectful workplace and carry out their duties as elected officials in an ethical and responsible manner.
Barrie city council has been dealing with a workplace harassment investigation involving a city councillor and a city employee since October.
Lehman said he favours such matters being handled by the municipal integrity commissioner, rather than a local council.
“It creates an independent third-party who can investigate allegations of wrongdoing and recommend what the consequence of those should be,” he said.
But as the regulations now stand, the final decision on such matters is in the hands of the municipal council. The Ontario Municipal Act states that if the integrity commissioner determines a councillor has contravened the municipality’s code of conduct, the council can impose a penalty — either a reprimand or forfeiting as much as 90 days’ pay.
In Barrie’s case, council has already approved a settlement, corrective measures for the officially unnamed councillor and a review of city staff’s handling of the complaint that led to the workplace harassment investigation. And the matter is not yet concluded.
“It does create a very awkward environment and municipal councillors are not always the experienced voices in terms of understanding both the legislative requirement and frankly, the codes of conduct,” Lehman said. “I think even codes of conduct…they’re easy to understand and all councillors should be able to abide by them, but to then act as jury can be very, very difficult and it makes political a decision that should really be judicial, in my opinion.”
The Code of Conduct is an agreed-upon understanding by all members of Barrie city council about what standards they should meet in the individual conduct of their official duties.
Lehman noted integrity commissioners, ombudsmen, financial accountability officers and auditor generals are independent, not political positions.
“There are protections to ensure that politics doesn’t enter into those processes, so I think it’s a bit weird that our end is what’s essentially a decision by a political body, and so I would welcome the straightening of the integrity commissioner role,” he said.
In recently announcing three new Barrie task forces — on the downtown market precinct, affordable housing and a performing arts centre — the mayor said city council has been distracted, pulled off its agenda and the task forces will help.
One of those distractions is the workplace harassment investigation.
“That particular case that council has been struggling with has taken up a lot of time and I don’t think that’s a good thing. I do believe there are matters of importance to the whole city as well that we need to be focused on,” he said. ‘But I don’t want to leave the impression from that remark that I don’t think it (the workplace harassment investigation matter) is important. I absolutely do. I just think it’s unfortunate that council has been put into the position it’s in.”
Liberal municipal affairs critic and Orleans MPP Stephen Blais introduced a bill in the Ontario legislature March 8 to create a process that could force a local councillor to vacate his or her seat for violations to workplace violence and harassment policies, by which the integrity commissioner would apply to the courts for the ouster.
