New law could see Ottawa councillors fired for bad behaviour

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Councillors in Ontario municipalities could soon face harsher penalties for violating codes of conduct, including possibly being fired and barred from running for election again, under new provincial legislation introduced Dec. 12.

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Municipalities across Ontario have long called for the provincial government to update codes of conduct and provide harsher penalties for local elected officials found to have violated them.

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In Ottawa, disgraced former city councillor Rick Chiarelli was docketed 450 days’ pay for various code of conduct violations during his lengthy time on council. That money was split between the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition and the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women (OCTEVAW). The city’s integrity commissioner issued three reports between 2020 and 2022 which condemned Chiarelli’s behaviour toward women who were on his staff or had applied to work for him.

Chiarelli refused to resign and at the time of the integrity commissioner’s findings, a 90-day suspension of pay was the maximum penalty that could be applied for each violation of conduct by a councillor.

A 2022 report said in 2014, Chiarelli had offered to pay a female assistant $250 to perform a sexual act on a man she’d met in a Montreal nightclub. The report said Chiarelli later teased the woman about the experience and encouraged her to repeat it.

The woman was a part-time assistant in her 20s and worked for Chiarelli between 2013 and 2015. She also alleged that the year before the nightclub incident, Chiarelli gave her a “sheer and revealing shirt” which he asked her to wear to an Ottawa International Animation Festival event, urging her to change clothes in his car while he was present.

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The commissioner recommended Chiarelli be docked 90 days’ pay for that particular incident, but since his term ended shortly after the report was issued, a motion was made to deduct the remainder of the pay penalty from the six-months severance pay he received for leaving council. That money will also be directed to OCTEVAW and the Ottawa Aboriginal Coalition.

Previous integrity commissioner reports substantiated complaints from women, including one who said Chiarelli asked her if she would go braless, and another who said the councillor asked if she would consider stripping and if she had participated in “World Orgasm Day.”

Although Chiarelli rejected calls for resignation, he chose not to run for re-election in 2022. He served on Ottawa’s city council starting in 2000 and was a councillor in the former city of Nepean before that.

A number of private members bills have been introduced in the provincial legislature in recent years with the intention of bringing harsher penalties for councillors who have misbehaved, but none passed.

Among them was a bill introduced by Orléans Liberal MPP Stephen Blais, a former Ottawa city councillor, that would allow councillors to be removed from council for serious ethics violations.

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But now that the new bill was introduced by Municipal Affairs Minister Paul Calandra with government support, it will likely pave the way to creating a standard code of conduct in municipalities across the province, as well as beefing up penalties if they seriously violate the code.

The proposed legislation also includes a province’s integrity commissioner inquiry process that would be consistent throughout the province, and mandatory code of conduct training for councillors and certain local boards.

“We had to make sure we got this right, which is why we worked with Ontario’s integrity commissioner to find the best path forward to create a standardized code of conduct process across the province,” said Paul Calandra, minister of municipal affairs and housing, in a press statement. “This process will support consistent accountability across our municipalities.”

The legislation maps out the process to be followed if councillors seriously violate a municipality’s code of conduct. Removal from city council, and disqualification from running again, could only occur on the recommendation of the municipal integrity commissioner, a concurring report from the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario and a unanimous vote of council. The member who is the subject of the report won’t be able to cast a vote.

With files from Blair Crawford.

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