Political science prof to oversee CAO probe

A university professor hired by Niagara Region to oversee the digital hunt for evidence about the tainted 2016 chief administrative officer hiring process says he has no experience supervising this type of investigation.

Andrew Sancton, a Western University political science professor, said Wednesday he has done “some kind” of investigative work in the past, but has never supervised a search for documents in government servers and has no experience in investigating computer systems.

Last week, Sancton — he is being paid $78,000 to do an audit of Niagara Region’s governance — was named supervisor for a search for documents written by regional staff obtained by CAO Carmen D’Angelo while he was a candidate for the job.

The Standard has learned that four documents pertaining to the CAO hiring were downloaded by D’Angelo in September and October 2016 while the hiring process was ongoing.

Three of the documents were written by Robert D’Amboise, policy director of Regional Chair Alan Caslin, who was also the chair of the selection committee. Two of those documents contained confidential information on other candidates for CAO and the third contained a list of interview questions.

The fourth document was written by Jason Tamming, then Caslin’s communications director and currently director of corporate communications. That document contained answers to questions D’Angelo was to address in a written submission to the hiring committee. The Standard also obtained D’Angelo’s submission, which uses verbatim passages from the Tamming memo.

In response to The Standard’s July 26 expose on D’Angelo’s hiring, regional council passed a motion directing regional staff — the legal director and IT manager — to search regional servers for the documents. They also passed a motion asking Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority, where D’Angelo was employed in 2016, to search its servers.

NPCA did not respond to an interview request nor answer questions about whether the authority will comply with the Region’s request or how a search of NPCA servers will be conducted.

The Region cannot compel the authority to do the search.

Donna Gibbs, the Region’s legal director, did not respond to questions about the document search, or if a document preservation order has been issued or if the Region has asked NPCA protect its files.

Sancton was hired to do the governance audit following the report by Toronto lawyer Marvin Huberman, which found nothing amiss with the CAO hiring process. However, Huberman did not access digital evidence and accepted “improbable” statements from D’Angelo as credible.

Huberman recommended the Region undertake a governance audit and on July 26, D’Angelo recommended council hire Sancton, an expert on municipal government.

Also on D’Angelo’s recommendation, Sancton was named to oversee the document search at the Region.

On Wednesday, Sancton said the details of how the search will be conducted at the Region were still being worked out. Gibbs and the IT manager are to report to council in September.