Ombudsman set to crack down on cities gone bad
Ontario’s Ombudsman is ready to deal with complaints against cities after turning away 11,000 of them in decade prior to new powers

TorontoStar.com
Dec. 16, 2015
San Grewal

After a decade in which the Ontario Ombudsman had to turn away more than 11,000 complaints about municipalities, things are about to change with sweeping new powers for the provincial watchdog. What won’t change is the office’s inability to investigate closed-door meetings in most big cities.

“That is the problem with the patchwork system; municipalities can hire their own private investigator,” acting ombudsman Barbara Finlay said Wednesday.

She announced her finding that 16 “illegal” closed meetings were conducted by municipalities between September 2014 and August 2015 — plus seven more since then. But that figure doesn’t include any complaints of that kind from most of Ontario’s large cities.

Rejecting the ombudsman’s oversight, those cities have exercised their option to use other means of determining whether meetings held out of public view — allowed only in certain specified circumstances — were actually legal.

Along with her new powers to investigate municipalities, which take effect Jan. 1, Finlay wants oversight of all closed meetings.

“There’s 206 municipalities that we are currently the (closed meeting) investigator for,” Finlay told a Queen’s Park news conference. “The rest either opted for an individual private investigator or to use the services of the organization set up by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario.”

Voicing concern about that practice, she said “municipalities have engaged in oversight shopping,” with staff and councils picking who will police them.

She said the province needs to apply a consistent standard, with only one body — preferably her office — overseeing closed meetings in all municipalities. “There should be one referee in the game.”

Finlay said she’s prepared to deal with the onslaught of other municipal complaints, which have also been steadily increasing even though her office has lacked the power to deal with them. About 50 new staff will join the current 86 to help with the expanded role.

Residents will be able to file complaints to the Ombudsman about everything from poor bylaw enforcement to alleged misconduct in development deals and municipal real estate transactions.

Under the province’s 2008 “Sunshine Law,” an amendment to the Municipal Act, new rules were established for filing complaints if it’s alleged that a closed meeting has been held for reasons other than the narrow set of issues — including private personnel matters, labour relations and litigation — that can be legally dealt with behind closed doors.

But the ombudsman has been shut out in certain cities such as Markham, where last year councillors used a closed-door meeting to raise their own salaries without public scrutiny or knowledge.

In October, Brampton, which also doesn't use the Ombudsman, came under fire when council took a vote involving a controversial salary hike for themselves in a room normally used for closed meetings.

“Our office only has the authority to investigate and report back on those (meetings) we can investigate,” Finlay said, when asked why most large cities were absent from her list of investigated complaints. “So the law will need to be changed, and that’s part of the submission we made to the ministry as part of its consultations on the Municipal Act.”

The Association of Municipalities of Ontario has resisted ombudsman oversight of closed meetings. The group's executive director, Pat Vanini, stated in an email: “Our experience is that the Office of Ontario’s ombudsman has, at times, disrespected municipal government... Good government is best achieved when individual governments accept the responsibility to earn and maintain public trust on their own two feet. We cannot understand why anyone would oppose that, or rule out the option for Ontario’s municipal governments.”

At Wednesday’s news conference, Finlay also took aim at lax recording procedures for closed meetings, pointing out that her office is aware of only 17 municipalities, out of 444 in Ontario, that record closed meetings, with either audio or video.

“We’ve had complaints about illegal meetings in 2012, 2013, there were just no records kept; other instances where we found municipalities have kept records, but they haven’t recorded items that were discussed in the closed session.”

She wants to see the legislation toughened up, to deal with breaches.

“There should be consequences for violating the law.”