On Thursday, July 3, AMCTO President Danielle Manton brought forward interests and concerns of members, municipal staff, and local government leadership during a hearing at the Standing Committee on Heritage, Infrastructure and Cultural Policy on Bill 9, Municipal Accountability Act, 2025.
The deputation continues our long-standing advocacy on this important topic of council-staff relations, including our participation in the 2021 public consultations on strengthening municipal codes of conduct.
While welcoming the bill and showing our appreciation for addressing some of our previously raised concerns, Danielle's remarks focused on several areas where improvements could still be made:
- Protections for staff
- Additional penalties
- Implications of two-step investigations
- Removal provision
- A model Code and training
Among the suggested areas for improvement, she highlighted:
- The necessity of stronger ties between the code of conduct and existing legislative employment standards, other inter-related policies, and an independent mechanism to remedy inappropriate behaviours that ensure affected individuals have protection from making a complaint.
- Our continued call for the removal strong mayor powers related to employment matters to foster a culture of accountability and transparency at the local level.
- The need for a progressive hierarchy of penalties and a wider range of sanctions to discourage poor behaviour that may not meet the threshold for removal.
- The lengthy two-step investigative process that requires witnesses and the complainant to be interviewed multiple times. In cases of harassment, this could be very challenging and perhaps traumatic for complainants and witnesses.
- The implementation challenges of removal provisions that can limit a complainant’s ability to seek an appropriate remedy and continues the existing cycles of investigation.
- The benefit of more criteria and standards being included in foundational elements of codes to ensure a consistent framework across the province while allowing some flexibility for local cultures - recommendations we made previously in our 2021 submission.
In addition to this presentation at Standing Committee, our team will be making a written submission. Written submissions will be accepted by the committee until August 18. Should you wish to provide comments, suggestions, or feedback for consideration in our submission, please email us by Monday, July 21.
As an Association, we will continue our advocacy to improve local accountability and transparency frameworks to protect the health, safety and well-being of our members and Ontario municipal staff.