Mark Sutcliffe urges Doug Ford to back bill to oust abusive councillors

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Ottawa’s new mayor and new council have added their voices in support of a bill that would give municipalities the power to oust a misbehaving councillor.

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Mayor Mark Sutcliffe is writing a letter to Premier Doug Ford, as did former mayor Jim Watson before him, to urge the province to pass a private member’s bill by Orléans Liberal MPP Stephen Blais. The Stopping Harassment and Abuse by Local Leaders Act would give councils the power to fire councillors who are found to have harassed or bullied people in the workplace and keep that person from running for re-election for at least two terms.

The bill is to receive second reading at Queen’s Park on May 30 and could be voted on as early as that evening.

“I don’t need to remind council why we need this bill to be passed by the Ontario Legislature after the shameful, abusive actions by a former member of city council,” Somerset Ward Coun. Ariel Troster said as she brought the motion to council earlier this week.

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“There is absolutely no mechanism for a city council to have real consequences for someone who is found to have engaged in this kind of horrendous, disrespectful, abusive conduct toward a member of the public or a member of city staff.”

Former College Ward Coun. Rick Chiarelli was the subject of two reports by the city’s integrity commissioner that found he had harassed female members of his staff with lewd and demeaning remarks, including offering one female assistant $250 to perform a sex act on a man she had met in a Montreal night club.

But council’s hands were tied when it came to punishment. Chiarelli, who served 22 years on council, was suspended and docked a total of 450 days pay worth $132,000, the 90-day maximum for each offence. But the law did not allow for him to be removed from office.

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Blais’ bill would change that.

“We lived through a very difficult situation in Ottawa. It was hard to understand how it could happen, and how it could happen for so long,” Blais said in an interview Thursday.

“It’s harder still to see that the biggest consequence would be a suspension in pay. If you did that at your job, or if you were to do it in a job at Amazon or at a school, I think you would lose your job very quickly,” he said. “I believe elected officials should be held to the same standard, if not a higher standard, than any other employee in the province. There needs to be a mechanism where they can lose their jobs.”

Blais said that, as of Thursday, the bill had the support of 128 municipalities and is backed by the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the Rural Ontario Municipal Association and the Big City Mayors, representing cities of more than 100,000 people. A grassroots organization, The Women of Ontario Say No, has also thrown its support behind the bill.

An earlier version of the bill reached second reading during the previous session at Queen’s Park, but died when the election was called last June. Blais re-introduced a slightly modified version in August.

Blais is a former Ottawa city councillor who served alongside Chiarelli.

Chiarelli, who has maintained his innocence throughout, did not run in last fall’s municipal election.