Councillors keep integrity commissioner busy

No, councillor, you can’t appear on TV, shilling for a developer who’s working on a project in your ward.

And — I’m sorry, you want to do what? Go to a private party hosted by a company that’s lobbying the city for special treatment? No, no, no. Here, let me explain to you what ethics are.

These are the sorts of exchanges city hall’s integrity commissioner Bob Marleau has had with Ottawa’s elected leaders in the last year, contained in an annual report they accepted quickly at Wednesday morning’s city council meeting before they dug into the Salvation Army’s shelter proposal for Vanier.

There are others, all lamentably stripped of identifying details. The idea behind including them, Marleau wrote, is to supply councillors with some scenarios to help them develop a sense of how they should apply their own code of conduct to themselves.

On average, Marleau gets a question from a councillor about every other day; it’s the single biggest chunk of his work, which also includes running the city’s lobbying registry. He’s a former clerk of the House of Commons, a career upholder of propriety, who’s paid a retainer plus a per diem when he’s on the job. Last year his total all-in bill was about $87,000.

A couple of cases show councillors bending over backwards to be certain of rules they’re nowhere close to violating. And accepting tickets to events, especially charity fundraisers, can be tricky. For a councillor, these things are part public duty, part political self-advancement, part pleasure, and the face value of the tickets is inflated because that’s the nature of a fundraiser. Exactly what the exchange is in such a case isn’t always easy to define.

Marleau said a councillor could go to a provincial political party’s event on a complimentary ticket, as long as he or she disclosed it because the ticket would be worth more than $30. The councillor claimed it would be strictly a social occasion, for which one imagines a councillor could pay his or her own way. There’s no such declaration on the councillors’ public gifts registry (though it’s only current to last June), so maybe that’s what happened, or the councillor didn’t go.

Another councillor had the decency to ask about attending a charity event where the price of admission was promising to help raise some money for the charity. That’s fine, too, Marleau said.

Others cases suggest a worrying lack of innate ethical sense in at least some of our representatives. Some really want to find ways to take free stuff. Others just haven’t grasped that they’re invited to dinners and entertainments because they have power, not because they’re smashing good company.

Consider the party. This involved a company with multiple lobbying files open at city hall — it almost has to be a developer, though Marleau doesn’t say that — and the question was, since the company is based in the relevant councillor’s ward, could he or she go and treat it as a “ward event” where attendance would be a normal part of any councillor’s schedule?

No, Marleau told the councillor. This is not a public function. It’s a party, thrown by people who lobby you.

“Although the invitation comes from a ward resident and is occurring in the ward, these factors are not sufficient to classify the event as a ward event, making it difficult to establish a strong enough case for an exemption based on the member’s role as a community leader,” he advised. “Further, the purpose of the event is not linked to the ward and is not an event to which the community at large would be invited, making it more challenging to deem the event a ward event.”

Consider that TV appearance. The details are sketchy but it sounds like the sort of item you might see padding a local mid-day show, about some new subdivision in Stittsville, say. The developer, not the broadcaster, asked the councillor to take part.

“The member (of council) sought advice regarding whether an appearance on the broadcast was permissible under the code of conduct,” Marleau wrote.

Yeah, no, not a good idea, he replied.

“The member was advised that participation in the broadcast may give rise to questions from a reasonable member of the public with respect to the member’s responsibilities under the code of conduct and the development firm’s obligations under the lobbyists’ code of conduct. Specifically, due to the active lobbying files, a reasonable person might question the appropriateness of a member making such an appearance, seemingly in support of the local developer,” says Marleau’s summary. You’re a regulator, not a salesperson, and you shouldn’t be doing favours for one company you regulate.

Another councillor wanted to know if it’s OK to hit up a developer lobbying the city on its projects for a donation to a fundraiser he or she was organizing. A community group could do it, but sorry, councillor, you’re not allowed to ask companies for money that want your vote, even if it goes to a cause you like rather than your own pocket.

On one hand, we shouldn’t be too hard on councillors who asked Marleau what to do when they were in danger of doing the wrong thing. They did seek advice and presumably took it. If their consciences prickled before they acted, that’s a good thing.

On the other hand, yeesh.