Aurora to hire integrity commissioner, draft code of conduct by March

Ontario Ombudsman has received 11 complaints about the Town of Aurora since 2016

Yorkregion.com
September 11, 2018
Teresa Latchford

Complaints about the conduct of council members will be handled differently in Aurora come 2019.

The Town of Aurora doesn’t currently have a code of conduct or an integrity commissioner, whose purpose is to serve as an objective, independent officer who may conduct a review of the behaviour or actions of a member of council alleged to be in violation of the council code of conduct.

However, the provincial government has mandated all Ontario municipalities, including Aurora, have a council code of conduct and an integrity commissioner to review potential violations in place by March 1, 2019.

“The town will be compliant with this requirement,” Aurora Town Clerk Mike de Rond said.

The town’s legislative services department has not received an integrity complaint in the past two years, he added. Should the town receive a complaint between now and March of next year, the town will continue to send the complaints to the Ontario Ombudsman office as is current practice.

The Ontario Ombudsman received a total of 11 complaints related to the Town of Aurora from Jan. 1, 2016, to March 31, 2018. All of these were resolved without undertaking a formal investigation, according to the Ombudsman's office.

“We don’t give out information about the substance of individual complaints or complaints in a particular municipality,” Ombudsman spokesperson Linda Williamson said when asked what the nature of the complaints were. “Most are resolved by referring complaints to the right officials at the local level.”

She added that none of those complaints dealt with closed-door meetings, as Aurora has its own third-party, closed-meeting investigator. This is different from the integrity commissioner, as the investigator reviews whether council was allowed to consider a matter in a session closed to the public.

In the past two years, the town has completed two investigations, which found council did no wrong in discussing these matters behind closed doors, at a cost of $2,000, according to de Rond.

As for the town hiring an integrity commissioner, it wouldn’t be considered a full-time staff position, de Rond pointed out. The town would pay a retainer and then an hourly fee for each case investigated or reviewed.

The first order of business will be for the integrity commissioner to lead the town through the drafting of a code of conduct. Following that, the commissioner would only be called upon when a complaint about the conduct of a council member is received by the town.

“We are expecting the first year to cost about $35,000,” de Rond said. “After the drafting of the code of conduct, we will have a better idea of what the annual cost will be.”

When asked if York Region’s northern six municipalities had any intention of joining forces to share an integrity commissioner for cost savings as they have done in the past with waste and insurance contracts, de Rond said there definitely wouldn’t be anything illegal about the municipalities sharing the cost of the retainer and then paying the hourly rate for their own reviews.

Aurora coun. Sandra Humfryes believes the code of conduct is important but doesn’t see the value in the integrity commissioner since council has been able to work through issues in her two terms of council.

Mayor Geoff Dawe feels the town should proceed carefully as the previous attempt to create a code of conduct was fractious and costly.

While coun. John Abel believes an integrity commissioner is worth the cost,  coun. Tom Mrakas believes a regional integrity commissioner would be more a fiscally responsible way of complying with the law and he or she wouldn’t be at risk of being fired because of a ruling a municipal council doesn’t like. He is also an advocate for standardizing a code of conduct that applies to all municipal politicians rather than each municipality having one of its own.

Modernizing Ontario’s Municipal Legislation Act, also known as Bill 68, was passed by the previous Liberal government in 2017, and requires all municipalities establish codes of conduct for municipal council members and certain local boards as well as give the public and councillors access to the services of an integrity commissioner.

It is left up to municipalities to decide whether or not to appoint their own full-time integrity commissioner, share the service with other municipalities, or retain one on a fee-for-use basis.

During the bill’s third reading in the legislature, the then Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Bill Mauro said changes to the act would do a number of things to strengthen Ontario communities right across the province.

“They would improve access to justice for both the public and municipal councillors by allowing integrity commissioners to investigate conflict-of-interest issues if a complaint was brought to them,” he said to the Speaker of the House. “They ensure municipalities have a code of conduct for members of municipal councils and certain local boards.”

York University Professor Dennis Pilon doubts forcing all of Ontario’s 144 municipalities to have an integrity commissioner and council code of conduct will have the desired effect policy makers envisioned.

“These kinds of approaches don’t always work,” he said. “Often there is an underlying political problem that is at the root of the (conduct) issue. There has to be a political will for these (systemic) changes to work.”

The most prominent issue is council members have final say on what goes into the code of conduct and any recommendations made by the integrity commissioner, he added.

For example, if there isn’t a consensus on a point some councillors believe should be in the code of conduct, it won’t be included and the code of conduct can be changed upon council’s desire.

“There was an integrity commissioner in British Columbia who was too good at his job and was digging up all kinds of information and the council pulled funding for his office,” Pilon said. “It’s not an ideal model.”