Niagara’s NDP are proposing a new bill to make it easier to remove Ontario city councillors from their seat. The Ontario NDP says it’s aimed to address harassment and misconduct in municipal workspaces.
The recommendation is to create a board of integrity commissioners under the province’s ethics watchdog, to handle those types of violations, then put forward an application for a judicial review.
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“Municipally elected officials should be held accountable for workplace misconduct like anybody else, and that should include, if necessary, losing their job,” NDP opposition leader, Marit Stiles said.
Thursday morning at Queen’s Park, the proposed bill was announced and put forward by Niagara Centre’s Jeff Burch, who is calling to amend the province’s municipal act and implement tools to oust a sitting councillor from their seat if deemed to be in violation by integrity commissioners.
“If the seat is vacated, which in this legislation, different from past legislation, does not have to go through the city council and it can be referred directly from the commissioner to the judiciary, and they would not be eligible to run in the future election,” Burch said.
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Burch says the proposed legislation would revamp the codes of conduct, and establish a board of integrity commissioners under Ontario’s ethics watchdog.
The committee would then appeal for a judicial review to determine a dismissal.
“There have been moments where councillors have contravened a code been removed from chambers, for a short period of time, but that can only go up to 90 days,” Bateman said.
Niagara councillor, Haley Bateman says the change was supported at the regional level, and even across Ontario, where many council chambers are no stranger to heated exchanges.
“If you want to talk policy and hash out policy, and challenge one another, do it, in the most professional way,” Bateman said.
However, some questions remain about the legislation’s current draft.
Political science professor at McMaster University, Peter Graefe said, “If you have this ability to remove a sitting member, you remove the democratic voice from the people who elected that person. And who may feel their representative is being removed not because they’ve acted in an improper manner, but because they’re upsetting the other sitting councillors. So there has to be a pretty high bar to remove an elected official.”
The new bill appears to mimic similar calls for change from the Association of Ontario Municipalities.
The Ford government says they are considering it.
Municipal affairs minister Paul Calandra said, “Across every single municipality, 444 municipalities, they treat this differently, and I think we got to get to a place where we have a more unified system that can meet any challenge that might be put before us.”
Tory house leader Paul Calandra says he anticipates more proposals and discussions about advancing a framework for misconduct at this year’s AMO conference in Ottawa.