A person with an umbrella walks past Vancouver City Hall on March 28.Isabella Falsetti/The Globe and Mail
British Columbia’s ombudsperson says the province needs a law to ensure effective oversight of integrity and ethics at city councils, emphasizing it’s something almost every other Canadian province has in place.
In a letter to provincial Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Ravi Kahlon, Jay Chalke said recent events in Vancouver, where the dominant ABC Vancouver party tried last summer to temporarily suspend the work of the city’s integrity commissioner as she was about to issue an unflattering report about the behaviour of Mayor Ken Sim’s office staff, showed the need for an actual law to prevent municipal misconduct.
At the moment, the province only encourages cities to set up their own systems for deciding on codes of conduct.
Larger cities in B.C., such as Vancouver, Surrey and New Westminster, have appointed integrity or ethics commissioners. Smaller municipalities handle complaints about politicians’ conduct or ethics violations by votes among existing councillors – a process that has led to more than one objection that decisions are then more about political divisions at councils than ethics.
“If they are totally locally controlled, they are subject to the local council,” Mr. Chalke said in an interview.
He said there should be a legislative framework that sets out how the integrity commissions in larger cities should operate, while creating a provincial investigator who could handle ethics issues that arise for smaller city councils.
That investigator could also potentially deal with sanctions in large cities in cases where so many elected politicians are involved in an issue that there are not enough voting members left to set a penalty.
That’s what happened in a recent case involving Vancouver’s park board, where six of the seven commissioners (the six commissioners were also members of the ABC Vancouver party) were found to have engaged in improper conduct by meeting in secret to make decisions about voting at public meetings.
“Two recent reports from Vancouver highlight the pressing need for this legislation,” said a published statement from Mr. Chalke. “The findings demonstrate the serious risks of relying solely on local oversight. Without a provincial framework, local ethics and integrity bodies are only established by local by-law and thus lack the protection needed to operate independently and effectively. As a result, public accountability suffers.”
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim responded in a statement Thursday saying: “It’s clear that municipalities across B.C. are facing similar challenges, and we agree that a provincial framework is necessary to provide consistency and clarity. We’re committed to working with the Province, Council, and City staff to make smart, thoughtful changes that improve transparency and fairness to a process that isn’t just flawed, but also costly to taxpayers.”
Mr. Chalke said he was also disturbed by statements from an ABC party official, after Vancouver Integrity Commissioner Lisa Southern’s February report said that the secret meetings were improper, and that the party didn’t see a problem with its actions.
“When the integrity commission’s findings can be disregarded, it indicates the system itself isn’t strong enough,” he said.
Vancouver ordered a review of its integrity commission bylaw after the unsuccessful effort to temporarily suspend the work of the commissioner.
Former Surrey integrity commissioner Reece Harding, who had his own work suspended at one point by Surrey council in advance of an election, made a number of recommendations earlier this month to strengthen Vancouver’s Code of Conduct bylaw.
He, like the B.C. ombudsperson, noted that B.C. is out of step with other Canadian provinces in how it deals with regulating behaviour at city councils.
“British Columbia, in our view, is well behind these other provinces in its lack of provincial guidance to local government as regards codes of conduct,” he wrote in a March 11 report to Vancouver City Council.