Markham taxpayers billed at least $20,000 a year to employ integrity commissioner

Complaints against Shore, Ho, highlight conduct probes over last four years

Yorkregion.com
October 5, 2018
Tim Kelly

They don’t often deal with complaints, but when they do, Markham’s integrity commissioners handle some pretty colourful grievances from the public and others.

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 by March 1, 2019 as well as give the public and councillors access to the services of an integrity commissioner.

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.”

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.

Like many other municipalities, Markham has for years now employed a council code of conduct and integrity commissioner to deal with violations.

There was a complaint this term of council and one back in 2014 handled by the firm ADR Chambers, which is paid a retainer of $20,000 per year to act as the integrity commissioner for Markham. The firm dealt with a number of complaints against former Markham councillor Howard Shore.

Current Ward 2 councillor Alan Ho was also the subject of a code of conduct complaint that resulted in a report from the integrity commissioner in 2016.

In the complaints against Shore, who was defeated in his bid for re-election in 2014 and is running again in Ward 1 this October, integrity commissioner Donald R. Cameron dealt with a total of 12 complaints made against the councillor, dismissing nine of them and upholding three, including findings that he campaigned at a Movie in the Park Night at a city-owned facility during the 2014 election period, a contravention of the city’s ethics code.

The commissioner also found Shore engaged in campaigning in City Hall during the campaign period against the code; and that he prevented members of a council committee, other than council members, from voting on issues while Chair of a Liaison committee, in contravention of the code.

In the case of Ho, the Ward 2 incumbent councillor who is running for re-election, a Markham resident complained he insulted a council colleague at a council meeting in 2016 by saying, “this kind of thing is ignorance,” and “there’s a saying in our Chinese culture… that there are frogs on the bottom of the well, to them the size of the sky is only the size of the opening of the well. They don’t know how big the sky is….”

The resident asked Ho to apologize to the councillor and was told by Ho that he would at the next meeting and after he didn’t do so, the resident complained to the integrity commissioner.

The integrity commissioner, Ben Drory in this instance, found Ho in breach of the code of conduct.

Markham installed the integrity commissioner position, along with a code of conduct for councillors, in 2014 after several years of debate.

Are the two reports on Shore and Ho enough to make it worthwhile to spend $20,000 annually in taxpayers’ money to keep an integrity commissioner on retainer?

Ward 3 Coun. Karen Rea, who is running for re-election this October, thinks so, though she has some reservations about the way the system works.

“I think something needs to be there,” said Rea.

“But I think the problem with the integrity commissioner is when the report comes back, council makes the decision and councillors are making the decision on whether they’re going to reprimand somebody that they work with,” she said, adding she’s not comfortable having the final say on voting on an integrity commissioner’s recommendation when it involves a colleague.

“Councillors vote on whether a fellow councillor gets a reprimand. Asking us to vote against somebody we work with daily…. The process probably needs to be changed so that it’s not the councillors that implement the recommendation of the integrity commissioner,” she said.

York University Professor Dennis Pilon, who raises similar concern, doubts forcing all of Ontario’s 444 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.”