Stratford city council broke several transparency rules at nearly five-dozen closed-door meetings throughout an 18-month period beginning in January 2020, a new report shows.
In a review of 56 closed-door meetings at Stratford city hall from Jan. 1, 2020, to June 14, 2021, investigators from Kingston-based law firm Cunningham Swan Carty Little & Bonham found that all of the public motions city council passed to move into closed sessions during that time failed to meet transparency-related requirements in Ontario’s Municipal Act.
“Further deficiencies existed for certain meetings,” the report said. “In some cases, the public agenda did not match the agenda used during the closed meeting, whether as a result of different exceptions being cited or, more problematically, items which were listed only on the closed session agenda but not on the public agenda. ”
The report also noted that “a small number of meetings posed further issues by lumping multiple discrete topics together in one agenda item.”
In total, 28 agenda items were inappropriately discussed behind closed doors, according to the report. In 10 cases, city council’s agenda cited the wrong reason for moving into closed session. On eight occasions, discussions strayed beyond what was cited on the closed-door agenda to issues that should have been discussed in public.
A link to the 85-page report was posted to the city’s website on Thursdaythe same day it was released by the closed meeting investigator.
This is the second time closed meetings at Stratford city hall have been the focus of a third-party investigator.
In June 2021, an investigation by Toronto-based law firm Aird & Berlis LLP determined that Stratford’s city council contravened the Municipal Act during a closed meeting in September 2018, when Mayor Dan Mathieson offered a verbal update about early discussions officials were having with a Xinyi Canada Glass, the manufacturer behind a controversial $400-million factory. That report also stated that council resolutions passed before the group moves into a closed session “regularly provide insufficient detail of the subject matter to be discussed.”
Both investigations were triggered by complaints from Get Concerned Stratford, one of the local citizens’ groups that formed in opposition to the glass factory after it was publicly revealed in October 2020. The factory city hall was pursuing with Xinyi fell through early last year in part due to public backlash over concerns about how much of the proposed deal was negotiated behind closed doors.
Get Concerned Stratford has not stopped seeking more information. The group has filed hundreds of individual complaints about the way Stratford has been reporting its closed meetings.
Although the group has not received as much information as it would like, the most recent report offers a more comprehensive picture of the transparency issues citizens’ groups have been trying to flag, said Sharon Collingwood, a member of Get Concerned Stratford.
“We’re glad that the report has come out before the end of voting,” she said. “We hope it will serve as a good starting point for improving council’s behavior. We understand and fully support the idea that there must be occasional in-camera meetings to conduct some aspects of financial negotiations, but it’s essential for the city to conduct most of its business in public if we are to get the best deal for our tax dollars .”
Stratford Mayor Dan Mathieson did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Mayoral candidates Martin Ritsma and Kathy Vassilakos, both past members of Stratford’s city council, requested time Thursday to read through the report before commenting.
Thursday’s report reached many of the same conclusions as its predecessor.
“Our review indicated confusion amongst both council and city staff with respect to the exceptions to the open meeting rules,” the report said. “To that end, we recommend that both staff and council seek and complete comprehensive training on the open meeting requirements, and that such training be regularly re-offered to incoming staff and council.”
Pressured by the findings of the first closed-meeting investigationcouncilors unanimously approved last summer a variety of procedural changes to the way closed meetings are recorded in Stratford.
A council request to retroactively amend agendas and minutes spanning back to the beginning of the 2018 term, however, was shot down by staff. Stratford clerk Tatiana Dafoe argued at the time that provincial legislation allows her to make minor clerical, typographical, or grammatical corrections to minutes to ensure accuracy, but any attempt to amend meeting minutes beyond that could result in a finding by Ontario’s ombudsman – the province’s public -sector watchdog – that those minutes had been falsified and were not accurate.
Dafoe noted in an email Thursday that deficiencies in city hall’s public motions to move into closed session had been addressed, a step investigators also noted in the most recent report.
“The city continues to review the process for holding in-camera meetings and will continue to make improvements to increase transparency and access by members of the public,” Dafoe said.
The latest report will be discussed at council’s next meeting Nov. 14, the first regular meeting following Monday’s election.
“The city previously committed to and has received training on in-camera meetings,” Dafoe said. “The city is developing a comprehensive council orientation program to provide the new council with information needed to be successful in their role.”