Mayor’s admonishment out of line

Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM) Mayor Cecil Clarke’s insistence at Tuesday’s meeting on a very unusual point of order to admonish Councillor Amanda McDougall (for giving voice to the concerns of her constituents) speaks to a quality of overstated censorship that is unbecoming of civic leaders.

I implore readers to review the letter (“Defying logic and council’s mandate”) from Dec. 11 in the Cape Breton Post of which Coun. McDougall was signatory, and decide for themselves whether or not they would interpret it as a specific attack on the mayor who twice during his scolding said he took offense to specific language.

In it, I am sure most readers will find a terse but fair assessment of matter of great civic importance. The mayor, it seems, interpreted the letter as a personal attack and he used his privilege to take umbrage with specific language in the letter. He decried it as “not appropriate or fair” and “a contravention of the code of conduct” but at no point did he cite the specific item in the code that McDougall had apparently contravened.

Over and over the mayor admonished Coun. McDougall for the use of the word “reckless” to describe council imperiling a multimillion dollar community economic project at a crucial point in its fragile fruition. If the mayor has a better word to describe flushing years of work and millions of dollars in investment down the toilet, he should suggest one in his next point of order.

Apparently, the code of conduct forbids councillors the use of the word “reckless” or any other adjective to describe the actions of their colleagues no matter how inexplicable or detrimental those actions might be.

Furthermore, in a speech that was dizzyingly vague in its description of would-be transgressions, the mayor proclaimed that “people can have an opinion on many other things that are not before the council’s consideration and on the agenda” presumably implying that for councilors to have an opinion on matters before council is in violation of the code of conduct. If that is the case, let us review the papers, newsreels and speeches and explore the myriad indictments that now fall under this strange and boundless embargo.

At no point during Tuesday’s meeting (or, as far as I am aware, in public) did any other member of council claim personal offence from McDougall’s comments. In fact, the only comments on the point of order came from councillors Earlene McMullin and Kendra Coombes who supported McDougall’s position, and councillors Steve Gillespie and Ivan Doncaster who stated specifically they were not offended by the letter.

To that end, unless the mayor is speaking on behalf of unnamed councilors, there seems to be no mutual sense of attack from any other member of the council. Rather, there was a general wish among members that the council do more to heal a divide that seems to have grown between them.

Ultimately, it is important that residents know the offence taken from McDougall’s comments was taken by the mayor alone. We should be encouraged that council for the most part supported Coun. McDougall’s right to represent her constituents and state her opinion publicly.

Residents of District 8 and those paying attention to the election last year will remember that McDougall ran on a promise of transparency and openness. As a symbol of that promised integrity, she energetically encouraged a public debate with the incumbent which was summarily refused. The voters, nevertheless, acknowledged her efforts and the value of this principled position toward transparency and elected her decisively. In that spirit, she continues admirably to voice her opinion and the opinions of her constituents.

That the mayor would use his position and privilege to admonish a councillor for demonstrating that unequivocal integrity is simply amazing. Donald Calabrese Sydney