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At the end of June, the Office of the Ombudsman of Ontario released their 9th Annual Report highlighting complaints and inquiries received from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024. While municipalities are a relatively new area for the Ombudsman, since January 2016, the report includes examples of how they — as an independent non-partisan office — worked with municipalities to resolve or investigate issues ensuring access to services, promoting transparency and fairness, open meetings and more.
The report outlines case examples, trends and lessons learned that may be of particular interest to municipal clerk members and other officials who oversee municipal administration and closed municipal meetings. As an overview for 2023-2024, municipalities and municipal meetings accounted for a record 3,694 cases and about 15% of the Ombudsman’s total cases. The Ombudsman issued 24 reports and letters regarding 38 closed municipal meetings, 42% of which were found to have violated the Municipal Act rules.
General municipal issue cases tended to involve councils and committees, bylaw enforcement, housing, infrastructure, planning and land use, and local accountability officers. Note, the vast majority of municipal cases were resolved through referrals and working with staff to address concerns. Meanwhile, open meeting trends cover open meeting rules in an increasingly hybrid meeting environment, informal gatherings, exceptions to closed meeting rules, as well as procedural concerns and best practices to improve procedure bylaws in line with open meeting rules.
Additionally, the report includes a handful of municipal case summaries, and references to tools and resources such as:
- Online digest of reports and letters to understand and apply open meeting rules
- Best practice guides about integrity commissioners and codes of conduct
- Submission to the Province on local service boards
- "Tip cards” on various topics