City’s integrity commissioner to gain power to start investigations

Article content material

Town’s integrity commissioner could quickly have the ability to provoke their very own investigations, even with no grievance, underneath proposed legislative adjustments accredited at a committee assembly Tuesday.

Article content material

Ethics advisor Emily Laidlaw and integrity commissioner Ellen-Anne O’Donnell appeared earlier than the town council’s govt committee to debate their proposed adjustments to the bylaw.

Article content material

The bylaw is reviewed each few years to handle any problem the board or the ethics workplace may even see with the bylaw, and these adjustments got here as a part of a kind of periodic updates.

Board members must be required to cooperate with investigations

Lots of the adjustments are supposed to make clear elements of the ordinance, such because the expectation of anonymity the place attainable, though some substantive adjustments have additionally been proposed.

One other vital change is wording requiring board members to cooperate with investigations. Failure to cooperate or protect proof will likely be thought of obstruction and will likely be thought of a violation of the bylaw.

Article content material

Shovel. Andre Chabot requested for readability on this modification. He needed to know if this could possibly be grounds for dismissal.

Laidlaw stated the Municipal Authorities Act would exchange the council’s code of conduct, and dismissal from the council for that cause wouldn’t be permitted underneath the MGA.

Integrity Commissioner to have the ability to perform ‘substantial’ investigations

One other main proposed change is that the integrity commissioner will be capable to perform investigations they deem to be materials, even when the unique complainant is withdrawn.

Laidlaw stated these commissioner-driven investigations could possibly be initiated by the commissioner on their very own, or may come up because of a withdrawn grievance.

“(We) make it clear that complaints can usually be withdrawn by the complainant, (however) on the discretion of the integrity commissioner there could also be circumstances the place an investigation can proceed with out additional participation from the complainant,” says Laidlaw.

Article content material

O’Donnell stated she has seen complaints of a severe nature withdrawn over confidentiality considerations. She stated that is an space that’s problematic for her and for the town’s whistleblower program.

“They wish to stay nameless,” O’Donnell stated. “But when I’m supplied with paperwork, for instance, that present a severe case to be thought of, in the event that they withdraw their grievance – which all of them have updated – then it might need to go forward.”

Mayor Jyoti Gondek stated this modification is about giving the integrity commissioner the flexibility to do their job.

“I feel when you might have an integrity commissioner, and let’s deal with the phrase integrity, and so they imagine there was a violation, it is necessary that they’ve the area to do an investigation,” she stated.

The committee voted to approve the adjustments. The amendments will nonetheless have to be accredited by the council at a future assembly.

brthomas@postmedia.com
Twitter: @brodie_thomas