Nearly one-third of Stratford city council votes during closed-door meetings over an almost five-year span broke the Municipal Act, a third-party investigation revealed this week.
Nearly one-third of Stratford city council votes during closed-door meetings over an almost five-year span broke the Municipal Act, a third-party investigation revealed this week.
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“On the one end, some votes were clearly improper and constitute concerning breaches of the Act,” Tony Fleming of Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham LLP wrote in a 120-page report. “On the other end, however, were a number of situations where the question of whether a vote was held improperly was less clear, and the breaches we identified more technical or minor in nature.
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“Although all improper votes must be avoided, and all of the improper votes we identified represent opportunities to learn and improve, we encourage council to pay closest attention to the most flagrant or egregious breaches.”
One of those occurred May 24, 2022, when council voted to give the city’s chief administrative officer the authority to issue a request for proposal and then, without tender, enter into a contract for as much as $300,000. Fleming called it a “substantive decision” and noted those must be made in public while closed sessions should be used to receive and/or discuss information that needs to justifiably remain out of public view.
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The investigation, which was launched following a complaint on May 31, 2023, found that 142 closed meetings were held between September 2018 and May 2023. During those sessions, 132 of the votes were deemed improper.
Mike Sullivan, a retired union representative and former member of Parliament, spoke at Monday’s council meeting and alluded to the backlash council received after his ill-fated attempt a few years ago to do business with a Chinese glassmaker.
“Some of you might argue that this is old news and the Xinyi days are long past, and that these are relatively minor offenses and not worth worrying about,” he said. “Neither is really the case. The violations of the law continued long after the Xinyi debacle was over, and while some of the violations were minor, many were substantive decisions by council deliberately hidden from the public.”
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It’s not the first time Stratford city council has been investigated for its use of closed meetings. The same Kingston-based firm investigated a large number of complaints in 2022 and, in a report released that October, found council broke several transparency rules at nearly five-dozen closed-door meetings from Jan. 1, 2020 to June 14, 2021.
In his latest report, Fleming said only three improper votes were held from October 2022 to May 2023.
Five members of the current council — Mayor Martin Ritsma, then a councillor, and councilors Jo-Dee Burbach, Cody Sebben, Bonnie Henderson and Brad Beatty — were on city council at the time of the last report.
“Old habits die hard,” Sullivan said.
Ritsma declined to comment this week, noting he wants to be respectful of the process and motion by council to refer the latest report’s recommendations back to staff and legal counsel.
The report recommended council and staff get more training to ensure they are properly following the Municipal Act. It also suggested council and staff work towards creating procedures for topics that often arise, like contracts, land sale or employment decisions, and have a clear process for moving substantive decision making into the open.
“Consistency is key,” Fleming wrote.
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