Becoming Citizen Bill: Part 2
Special report: Part 2 of 2
The secret truth of Bill Hodgson’s 25-year political career was that he didn’t want it.
He had a bone-deep belief in the merit of public service and politics, but the farmer didn’t have much in the way of political ambition.
In 1993, he was elected trustee to the Lincoln County Board of Education — a local agency that governed many of Niagara’s public schools. He shepherded the board through the amalgamation process that created District School Board of Niagara and became its chair.
But after 11 years in education, Hodgson’s greenhouse business in Vineland was struggling. He says he spent too much time on the politics and not enough growing plants.
But quitting wasn’t an option for him in those days. Hodgson describes himself as an “all-in sort of person.”
So in 2003, he hatched a counter-intuitive scheme to exit politics without quitting — he ran to be the mayor of Lincoln.
Hodgson had frequently locked horns with then-Lincoln mayor Ray Konkle over school closures and playground demolitions. Those arguments stuck in Hodgson craw.
“I’ve got a plan. I’ve never been a municipal politician. I can’t quit the school board. They need the people who believe, right? So I what if ran for mayor?” he says. “It’ll fire a shot across the bow of Ray. I’ll lose. I get to go back to being Citizen Bill and I’ve solved my conundrum.
“Of course, I win.”
The greenhouse business would have to make do. Hodgson was all-in. At least until what he describes as a 2017 campaign of bullying by members of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority board of directors that included being publicly censured by board chair and Fort Erie regional Coun. Sandy Annunziata and an angry confrontation with board member and Grimsby regional Coun. Tony Quirk.
It was more than Hodgson could handle. He resigned from the board and isn’t seeking reelection.
Quirk, the only member of NPCA to respond to The Standard’s interview requests, rejects Hodgson’s version of events and called him a “cry-bully” and accused The Standard of painting the Lincoln councillor as a hero.
“Here is the thing. Fourteen other people agree with something, and you don’t — and then you quit when you don’t get your own way. If that’s the case, which is what I call a cry-bully,” Quirk says. “You try to say things, and the rest of the board feels you are full of s—, does that mean everyone else is corrupt but you? Then he is the hero. His leaving falls
into the narrative that your paper has helped create, that we are a bunch of bullies who don’t know what we are doing. It doesn’t matter that every finding along the way have shown that’s not the case.”
Hodgson served as mayor until 2014, when left town hall to become Lincoln’s councillor at Niagara Region and was appointed to the NPCA board.
“It started off fine and because I am the agricultural candidate, I’m sort of the agri-dude. That’s my speciality or whatever you want to call it,” he says.
It wouldn’t remain fine for long.
Hodgson says he painted a target on his own back with a self-confessed “acid tongue” and objections to raises given to senior staff members, which he thought were unreasonable, and the promotion of Port Colborne regional Coun. David Barrick to director of operations, a position Hodgson felt he was unqualified for.
The real turning came after the 2016 publication of a report critical of NPCA by local activist Ed Smith, which alleged the agency was rife with conflict of interest problems and engaged in other questionable practices. NPCA attempted to sue him for $100,000 and lost.
Justice James Ramsay ruled against NPCA in November 2017, “and the agency’s conduct in pursuing the suit was not in keeping the Canadian value of free speech.”
“There are many places in the world where I might expect such a thing to happen, but not in our beloved dominion,” ruled Ramsay, who ordered NPCA to pay Smith $131,000 in legal costs.
It was an outcome Hodgson wanted to avoid. He says he opposed the lawsuit and “tried to save the board from themselves,” by urging them not to go down the “rat hole” of a lawsuit.
“I was just seeing the worst character of the board coming out instead of them taking a deep breath,” he says. “I said to them, ‘In a three-year period I was involved in closing 13 schools here in Niagara. If I had sued everybody who said very publicly nasty, nasty things about me, I’d still be in court today.”
Hodgson was in the minority. Other board members — notably Annunziata and Quirk — argued publicly NPCA needed to go on the offensive to protect itself.
Quirk even declared Ramsay’s ruling a victory for NPCA.
Smith’s report fuelled more demands from Niagara residents for a comprehensive NPCA audit. Hodgson put forward a motion to hire an auditor that would report directly to the NPCA board of directors. The motion passed with subtle changes Hodgson did not agree with and, from his point of view, changed its intent.
Hodgson locked horns with the board over the changes in March 2017, saying that “weasel down language” compromised his motion. The phrase so upset acting CAO Peter Graham that he broke down in tears. Hodgson apologized and retracted the comment, but would earn the ire of the board soon after when at a Lincoln town meeting he said a twoyear-old could understand the intent of his motion.
By late April Annunziata had the Gowling report — which The Standard has found is missing key information — and Hodgson was publicly censured.
But the pressure did not stop there.
According to NPCA documents obtained by The Standard, a workplace harassment complaint was made against Hodgson because of his comments regarding the audit motion. In a May 11, 2017, letter, Annunziata said there was no violation of workplace harassment policies, but Hodgson’s comments violated the NPCA code of conduct. He demanded a written apology from Hodgson.
Annunziata and Graham did not respond to multiple interview requests.
Hodgson refused but he had already made his decision. He was leaving NPCA and closing the book on his political career.
Hodgson thought when he resigned from the NPCA board, that would be the end of it. It wasn’t.
In August 2017, Hodgson attended the Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa. There he came face-toface with an angry Quirk, who Hodgson says shoved him in a bar.
In Hodgson’s account, he was at the Lord Elgin bar when he was confronted by a “tipsy” Quirk at the Lord Elgin bar, who was angry because he was told that Hodgson was claiming he was being sued by Quirk.
“‘Why would I have told this guy that you’re suing me if you’re not suing me?’” Hodgson says he told Quirk. “He just comes over, shoves me and says, ‘I’m not suing you yet.’”
Hodgson’s account is supported by Lincoln town Coun. Tony Bruent, who said Quirk’s face was “bright red and he was irate.”
“We turned to each other and said, ‘Did that actually just happen?’
“We were both taken back at not only Tony Quirk’s action, but his comments as well,” Brunet said in an interview. “I remember thinking, ‘Really, is this what it has come to?’”
Quirk says while he and Hodgson did argue about NPCA and he did say he wasn’t suing him yet, he never touched Hodgson.
“There was no physical contact. It absolutely, 100 per cent, didn’t happen. He had been drinking. If I had hit him, he wouldn’t have gotten up,” Quirk says.
His account of the encounter is supported by Peel Region Coun. Jennifer Innis, who told The Standard that “I don’t remember anything like that happening. It’s not Tony’s character — so if something like that had happened, I’m sure I would remember it.”
Hodgson says his experience with NPCA, and the public accusations of tainting a hiring process, shook him deeply.
“All of a sudden it dawned on me. Even though I quit, there’s the subtle threats against you. I gave up quite a bit for my public service,” Hodgson says. “I made my bed and I’ll sleep in it. I’m not crying the blues. We’re not gonna have big pensions that some people have and all of that.
“It’s the fact that I don’t see an end. It’s not fair. If you talked to my two boys, you’d be alarmed with how angry they are, because they know. They know. The whole family has to sacrifice,” he says. “I don’t want to spend my retirement in court with these guys, they’re not worth it. It just isn’t worth that. I’m gonna be happy to help anybody in the fall election that I feel I should help, but I’m not gonna run.”