The Ontario Municipal Act requires that municipalities have a policy describing the relationship between the Council and its hired staff.
Wilmot Township has an existing Council – Staff Relations Policy #CA-007.
At a time when the Township is in the midst of issues such as the future use of 770 acres of present agricultural land, Prime Ministers Path Project community consultations process, Budget deliberations regarding a proposed tax increase of 50.87%, the same CFO / Acting CAO is using his and our time to review a policy that is not urgent, let alone an emergency.
Clicking on the button above will take you to a page that has the CAO’s proposed policy review report.
You will notice the last line on page 2, which states, “Members of Council have the same rights of access to information as members of the community.” In practice, this means that anything a CAO wants to be withheld from residents can also be withheld from councillors. Councillors require all information available to their hired staff, as well as information from constituents / residents. Councillors need more information than their hired staff, not less.
On page 4 of the Acting – CAO’s report, Greg Clark stated, “Comparator Review – To aid staff’s review, the following municipalities and their respective policies were included in the municipal scan for best practices: City of Brampton; Town of Oakville; Town of Halton Hills; Region of Waterloo; City of Kitchener; City of Waterloo; Township of Woolwich; County of Dufferin; Simcoe County; York Region; Township of Centre Wellington; Town of Fort Erie; municipality (sic) of Middlesex; City of Stratford; Town of Tillsonburg.
“The attached policy is consistent with comparators in its structure and content. The majority of comparators also include similar language related to complaints in that it refers to existing corporate policies specifically designed to deal with the respective issues.“
I performed a Google search for the 15 municipal policies that the Acting – CAO alleges are comparators, and “the attached policy is consistent with comparators in its structure and content.” I FOUND ONLY 2. THEY WERE NOT CONSISTENT IN CONTENT, AND ONLY 1 HAD PARAGRAPHING STRUCTURE SIMILAR, BUT THAT POLICY USED THE WORD “MAY” NOT “WILL” AS GREG CLARK ALLEGES.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I guessed that he must have better access to municipal policies than a Google user. So I submitted an FOI request to get copies of the 15 comparator policies to confirm that he had really used them as comparators and that a majority of(8 of 15) used similar language.
Clicking on the button below will take you to a page which contains the response from the Wilmot Township’s Freedom of Information Officer, a.k.a. the Clerk.
When in Doubt, Just Make It Up
The Wilmot Township Clerk, who reports to the Acting – CAO, and has access to all Wilmot Township documents – by law – I received the following response:
“Despite a thorough and reasonable search, staff have been unable to locate any records repeated to your request within our custody or control of the institution. Access, therefore, cannot be granted as the records do not exist.
“In responding to requests made under the legislation, staff determine if the records being requested are in the custody or control of the institution. It was determined that there were no records responsive to your request in our custody or control.“
Reasonable Conclusions? – pick one or make up another one of your own to explain this fiasco:
- The FOI clerk doesn’t know her job, and can’t find materials recently used by the Acting – CAO / CFO / Director of Corporate Services and which were submitted as content in a formal report to the Council.
- The FOI clerk is lying, she found them but won’t release them for some unknown reason.
- The FOI clerk is being “verbally scrupulous” by using caveat-type language by saying, “are in the custody or control of the institution”. Maybe she means, I found them but they aren’t in the custody or control of Wilmot Township, maybe because they ‘are in the custody or control of’ someone who won’t release them to her? Maybe we should guess who that might be?
- The FOI clerk is being honest, the documents don’t exist in the corporation.
- Therefore, the Acting – CAO may have written his report in a role outside the corporation – and is thus a carpetbagger.
- Therefore, the Acting – CAO just made it up out of thin air.
- Therefore, the Acting – CAO is trying to deceive the elected council and residents by passing off a cherry-picking document as having “comparators” validity.
I delegated again to the Council on January 6th, 2024 with this purpose:
My delegation is recommending that the Council either defeat the motion to approve this proposed policy so that the existing Policy remains in place, OR table the motion definitely until the 3rd Quarter Council meeting in late September, or after a new CAO is hired – whichever happens last. [NOTE: At the January 6th meeting of Council the motion to amend the policy presented by the Acting CAO was defeated. That means that the status quo remains. Click on the link in the 2nd sentence above for the existent policy.]
I am opposed to this policy because it makes the CAO the judge and jury regarding which information will be given to the Council and to the public.
Greg Clark’s proposed wording is, “Members of Council have the same rights of information as members of the community.” The council will not have access to the information that is required for it to provide leadership. and directions to hired staff. Information such as:
Where is the Restructuring and People Plan report’s information?
Where is the agenda item where the Council discusses, deliberates and potentially amends the “Corporate Communications and Community Engagement Strategy“?
Where is the 10-year 2025-2035 Capital Budget assessment?
Where is the “Management Letter” which is presented to the corporation each year by the auditor (selected annually by Council approval) with the audited financial statement?
Where is the “F.I.R. – Financial Information Return” which is required to be submitted to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing each year along with the Township’s audited financial report?
The proposed policy changes would make the CAO an autocrat, arbitrarily making all decisions about what the Council can know. The CAO would be able to keep any “unsettling” information a secret.
Did you know that the Council must confirm the best firm to act as the corporation’s annual financial records? (O.M.A. section 296 states that a municipality shall appoint a qualified auditor who is responsible for annually auditing the accounts and transactions of the municipality and its local boards.) That it require the Council’s official approval to hire an auditor? Did you know that the last time the Council approved its auditor was in 2010 – 15 years ago? In the meantime, the CAO has simply rolled over the contract to the same auditor. An arbitrary, unilateral decision such as an Autocratic CAO will do.
I have attached the comprehensive document which is the basis for my 7-minute delegation. 7 minutes is not enough time to explain how the CAO’s comparator municipalities are not representative of the 444 municipalities in Ontario and is in effect a cherry-picking project which gerrymanders the product. This document has a “P.S.” in which I describe a model of community consultation for reviewing policies of importance such as this one.
Click on the yellow button.
I have also attached my proposed alternative policy for the Council’s consideration.
Click on the yellow button.
Alternative C-S Relations Policy