Ombudsman ‘baffled’ by response
Paul Dube talks to The Standard about his report
On Wednesday, Ontario’s provincial Ombudsman released the report of his investigation into the seizure of a journalist’s computer and notes by Niagara Region on Dec. 7, 2017.
Paul Dube’s report says the Region’s actions — directed by decisions made by Regional Chair Alan Caslin and Chief Administrative Officer Carmen D’Angelo — were unreasonable, unjust and contrary to law.
St. Catharines Standard reporter Grant LaFleche interviewed Dube about his investigation.
This transcript of the interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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Grant LaFleche: Your investigation began in December. Now we’re in July. Can you give us a sense of your methods from the time you decided to investigate to the release of today’s report?
Paul Dube: Well, as they often do, they start with complaints. So I think within a week of that Dec. 7 meeting, we had five or six complaints; we ended up with 11 in all. Investigations, to be done properly, there’s a lot at stake, so you want to get it right. And we adopt the old adage, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” We’ve learned over the years, over the decades of doing these investigations, that that’s really important to really have a clear roadmap to follow when you’re doing these investigations.
I think we interviewed something like 58 witnesses; that takes time, and it was subject to their availability. And we reviewed thousands and thousands of pages of documents. And of course, the region hired external legal counsel, and counsel asked that we go through them to get access to information and to co-ordinate the interviews, predominately. Doing the research and taking the time to get the facts right, as I’m sure you can appreciate as a journalist. So that is the primary focus that’s paramount, is getting it right, and the timing is less of a concern.
GL: As we say sometimes, ‘Better to be right than first.’
PD: Exactly.
GL: You pointed to the adversarial approach of the external lawyer hired by the Region. What do you mean by that?
PD: To be fair, the external counsel did provide assistance; they helped us get access to the recording that we required. They coordinated some interviews. It was once we submitted a preliminary report for comment, which is our standard operating procedure, [that things changed].
We were frankly quite baffled by the response that we got, saying that they were not going comment on whether the recommendations were accepted or not. And then there were several challenges to my authority, the office’s authority to conduct the investigation that we did, contesting some of the factual findings that we made, stressing that I didn’t have authority as the ombudsman to make findings of law and fact, and contesting my ability to make findings under the charter, and even saying that I can’t impose remedies into the charter, which is absolutely correct; we never purport to do so.
GL: And you make that clear in the report that you can find facts about violations of the charter, but you can’t actually impose charter remedies.
PD: That’s correct. We’ve never ever tried to do that, but we are authorized and compelled under the Act to make findings. We’re mandated to find whether something was contrary to law. And the highest law of the land is the charter. So we did that accordingly.
And so there were also little things, claiming that the region was not given enough time to review the preliminary report, when really they had 17 days.
And municipal councils meet all the time at the drop of a hat when something important comes up.
To read more of The Standard’s interview with Dube go to www.stcatharinesstandard.ca