Fix flawed secrecy law
When there’s no penalty for breaking a law, it doesn’t do much to stop bad behaviour. Witness the situation in Oshawa where municipal politicians have repeatedly breached provincial rules requiring them to work in an open and above-board way.
Not only are public officials here serial offenders, improperly conducting the people’s business hidden from the people’s view, they don’t seem to grasp that they’ve done wrong.
It doesn’t help that there’s no punishment for violating an Ontario law requiring municipal councils and committees to operate in a transparent manner. That leaves public accountability poorly served.
Queen’s Park would do well to amend its requirement for open meetings by giving the Municipal Act some bite. Politicians would be less inclined to shrug if presented with real consequences and punishments.
Oshawa council’s rule-breaking came to light in a recent report from Ontario ombudsman Paul Dubé. He found local politicians contravened the law when they went behind closed doors on Dec. 17 to hear about a proposed merger of area hydro utilities.
The ombudsman’s office has the duty of investigating allegations of undue municipal secrecy, and Dubé reported that four complaints were lodged about that meeting.
It was ostensibly held to obtain “education and training” on electricity distribution trends in Ontario. But “while a small portion of the presentation related to general marketplace trends,” Dubé wrote, much of the meeting “was intended to inform council about a particular course of action that would likely come before council for a future vote.”
Although Oshawa council didn’t debate or vote on the matter, “the information presented and the questions asked materially advanced council’s business and decision-making,” Dubé concluded. As such, this was information the public had a right to see.
There’s no excuse for such obstruction. The recorded minutes of that secret session reveal some councillors repeatedly expressing concern that the meeting wasn’t open to the public. But such doubts were dismissed by Mayor John Henry and a council majority.
They should have known better, especially because Oshawa politicians were severely chastised by the previous ombudsman, André Marin, for inappropriately conducting business behind closed doors under the same guise of an “education and training” session.
Marin, in fact, issued two reports in 2009 in connection with that matter: one showing how members of the development services committee had contravened the law, plus a second 51-page document revealing, in exquisite detail, how Oshawa politicians had refused to co-operate with his investigation.
Now they’ve broken the rules again. And Henry still doesn’t seem to get the point. As reported by the Star’s San Grewal, the mayor said he accepted responsibility, but then summed up his conduct in the closed-door session in this way: “Do I believe that what I did that day was totally wrong? No.”
This doesn’t bode well for the prevention of future abuses, here or anywhere else. Oshawa’s unrepentant conduct sets the wrong example for other politicians who may be tempted to do public business in secret.
Queen’s Park is currently conducting a legislative review with an eye to updating the Municipal Act. A useful reform would be to impose some form of penalty on politicians violating the rules on open meetings, especially for repeat offenders. One possibility worth considering is a suspension of pay, perhaps for up to 90 days. That might get their attention.
The sole punishment levelled in the current system is embarrassment from being publicly exposed through an investigation by the ombudsman. And clearly that’s not much of a deterrent. As events in Oshawa show, there’s little point in attempting to shame the shameless.
Oshawa politicians have again broken Ontario’s law requiring openness in municipal government