Rec file on commissioner's radar

orilliapacket.com
April 13, 2015
By Roberta Bell

The city’s integrity commissioner is keeping an eye on how council is handling the rec file.

“I think that it’s something that I’d like to keep on my radar,” said Suzanne Craig, who is also the closed-session investigator, of the way city politicians proceed with developing Orillia’s long-anticipated recreation facility.

Since this council took office at the end of last year, Craig has received one formal and one informal complaint. Both were dispensed of, she said, adding that for that reason, she can’t speak to what exactly they concerned.

The formal complaint, which came first, was not within her realm to deal with. She clarified the informal complaint with the complainant, who didn’t pursue it further.

Craig said following a presentation to council committee on the city’s code of conduct that both of the complaints had to do with the same issue.

She said the highlights of her presentation, which included procedure and preferential treatment, were a result of the complaints.

“It’s no secret that there are particular issues in Orillia that were the subject of complaints in the past term that continue to be issues that the public is grappling with,” Craig said. “And so what I tried to highlight tonight was the importance of procedure, the importance of having authority to bring a matter before council and the importance of not acting alone.”

After, Couns. Mason Ainsworth, Pat Hehn and Tim Lauer had questions about outreach, the code’s origins, and closed-session voting, respectively.

Coun. Ted Emond commented that between the time he served as Orillia mayor in the 1980s and now, “the behaviour of members of council across this province have been such that we’ve ended up having to have a code of conduct.”

Craig said she doesn’t take that to mean Emond disagrees with there being a code.

“I think that it’s important for all members of council to know that there is a code, there are rules in place,” she said. “This particular file that has been ongoing in the city for quite some time will certainly trigger some rules and they need to know what happened in the previous council, what my rulings were and things that they should be avoiding.”

Craig plans to meet with individual council members in the near future to review the code once again and ask if they have questions.

“I will touch on procedure, I will touch on the code complaint from the last term that did deal with the rec file and lessons learned,” she said.

Craig said she’s aware there are members of council who have been involved in rec file discussions in the past.

“We have to make sure that everyone is clear as to what they can and cannot do or it’s just going to be a repeat of last term,” she said.