Managing conflict is a vital political skill

Located in York Region about a half an hour’s drive north of Toronto, the Town of Whitchurch-Stouffville is home to approximately 46,000 people. In recent months, it has also been home to a bizarre display of political theatre.

Justin Altmann was elected mayor of Whitchurch-Stouffville in 2014. A lifelong resident, he ran Altmann Farm Market and was named Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the local Chamber of Commerce in 2012. He cut his political teeth as a former constituency assistant to Thornhill MPP Peter Shurman. His mayoral term has been characterized by a rapid turnover in town staff, including the departures of four chief administrative officers in three years and 32 staff since 2015.

Mayor Altmann’s personal troubles began in the summer of 2014 when he learned that some 12 packages of information had been anonymously sent to selected residents. The packages contained leaked information from closed session council meetings that he believed were part of a campaign to discredit him. He saw this action as a retaliatory response to his refusal to support a bylaw amendment concerning a particular company’s operation of a landfill site. Following his refusal, he was sued by the company and began to experience what he believed to be hostility and harassment from current and former town councillors. He then began his own investigation into the anonymous packages as well as the dealings of the town with the company. He assembled multiple binders of information that he gave to the York Region Police, inviting them to take over his investigation.

This is where the story takes a strange turn. This January, Mayor Altmann began to create a collage of dozens of photos, pictures, cartoons and clip art that he secured to the bathroom wall of the mayor’s office, all connected by a grid of meticulous flow chart lines of the sort that you might find on the wall of a wideeyed conspiracy theorist. The bathroom wall display featured a former mayor and mayoral candidates, current and former city councillors, three former CAOs, business people, a reporter, a publisher, a lawyer and the mayor himself, some punctuated with signs such as “You’re Fired!” and “You Are Dead!” Some faces appeared on the wall up to six times.

In March, after a person reported the “CSI-like” photo wall, a complaint was filed with the town’s Integrity Commissioner who later reported that the complainant had been approached by co-workers who had discovered something “very evil” in the mayor’s bathroom and “were afraid for their safety.” The Commissioner reported in the fall, at a cost of $111,210, that the mayor’s actions violated three sections of the town’s code of conduct. His bathroom wall was judged to be “disturbing to staff ” and “a serious incident of workplace harassment.” The commissioner recommended that the mayor offer a formal apology, interact respectfully with staff and be docked a month’s pay. At a tense September meeting complete with police presence, town council agreed. The mayor, however, disagreed, arguing that he was creating a “mind map” for his own purposes and that the investigation was biased and unfair.

In politics, interpersonal conflict is a fact of life. Municipal politicians are more likely to demonstrate raw expressions of emotion because they are free of the discipline of party or caucus rules in place for provincial and federal politicians. Experienced politicians do their best to toughen their skin to prevent conflict from becoming a consuming or even debilitating behaviour – a skill set that some manage much better than others.

The last time I looked, the only thing on Mayor Bennett’s private bathroom walls was paint.

David Goyette is a writer, political advisor and communications consultant.