Ontario ombudsman sees jump in complaints over municipal matters

Ombudsman Andre Marin says the increase has been sparked by the bill giving the watchdog expanded oversight over municipalities, universities and school boards.

Thestar.com
Jan. 27, 2015
By Richard Brennan

A small town council that flipped a coin to decide who’d be the next councillor. Budget meetings held in trios so they could be held in secret. Council members gathered in a bar to avoid scrutiny.

These are of the kinds of secret meetings that have come to the attention of ombudsman Andre Marin, who found in the past year that nearly a quarter of local meetings he investigated were illegally conducted in secret.

And those examples may be only the beginning as the provincial ombudsman expands his oversight powers to all 444 municipalities in Ontario. Currently, he’s limited to investigating municipalities where he is invited to look into allegations of wrongdoing.

“Many of them will defy the legislation,” Marin told reporters Tuesday at Queen Park, where he also noted that he will be seeking a third term.

The ombudsman’s special open meeting law enforcement squad during the last fiscal year reviewed 49 meetings by 40 municipalities and found that 11 of them, or 22 per cent, were illegal.

The so-called Sunshine Law, which allows the public to complain when they are shut out of local council meetings, has been around since 2008.

But his new powers over municipalities, school boards and universities came just last month with the passage of the Accountability and Transparency Act (Bill 8). While it has yet to become law, his office has already seen an increase in public complaints about local municipalities.

“We are already seeing a spike in complaints about municipal issues since Bill 8 passed,” Marin said.

Last fiscal year ending March 31, 2014 the ombudsman’s office had a record 1,595 complaints about municipalities - not including about closed municipal meetings.

For the first 10 months of this fiscal year there have been 1,652 complaints about municipalities as of Monday. Just over 200 of those came in after Bill 8 was passed.

Marin told reporters some municipalities will go to unbelievable lengths to hide what they are doing - even on matters of life and death.

“We have seen over the last year some egregious examples ... the County of Bruce for eight years met to discuss the disposal of nuclear waste in cottage country ... I can’t think of a case where there would be greater urgency to move to meet publicly,” he said.

“There was an inquiry as well into the Elliot Lake collapse of the Algo (Centre) Mall, where the commissioner found that for 12 years council was meeting secretly and he couldn’t determine whether the risk of the mall was discussed during those meetings because they were kept secretly.”

Marin said to make matters worse municipalities will hire their own investigators to probe complaints about secret meetings instead of relying on his office.

In the case of Huron County, he said the investigator released a “wishy-washy report concluding that, ‘Yeah it was illegal but I am recommending that they sensitize themselves to their legal obligations.’”

In another case, Marin said he was “aghast” to find out last week that Waterloo council has found a “novel way” to meet secretly by only having three councillors in on budget deliberations at one time, thereby avoiding a quorum.

“I’ve rarely seen something so contemptuous of the rule of law,” he said.

“I can tell you my jaw dropped ... it was really an incredible disclosure by the City of Waterloo that they thought they could get away with it,” he said, noting that Waterloo opted out of oversight by his office.

Marin said he was just as stunned to learn that the City of Brampton charged its residents $250 to file a complaint about closed meetings. He said it comes as no surprise that there wasn’t a single complaint filed in seven years.

Marin said even with his new powers, the fact remains that there is no penalty for holding secret meetings - just “public shaming” by his office.

“Part of the problem is that there is no consequence,” he said.

In Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan there are fines and also possible jail time for holding secret meetings. Repeat offenders in Michigan can face up to a year and fines of up to $2,000