Code of Conduct Sanction Hearing
A couple weeks ago, there was a sanction hearing related to Councillor Janz’s violation of our Code of Conduct. I decided to write about this as I have had some people reach out and suggested that he was not punished for his violation and I felt it would be good to cover how this process works.
The Code of Conduct is something that all councillors agree to uphold. It’s a public document that anyone can review. If a member of council or member of the public feels there has been a violation of the Code of Conduct, they may file a formal complaint with the Integrity Commissioner.
Once a complaint is received, the Integrity Commissioner will investigate to determine if a violation has occurred. If it has, they will write a report to council and provide a recommended sanction, if any.
In this specific case, the Integrity Commissioner found a violation had occurred and in advance of the report coming to council, they recommended that Councillor Janz apologize for his violation as an apology is one of a number of sanctions available to council. Because the apology happened before the report came to council, the Integrity Commissioner did not feel the need to recommend a sanction as the sanction that they would have recommended was already completed.
What that means is a violation has still occurred and that is serious and it was treated very seriously by council during the sanction hearing. The language of the tweet that the councillor retweeted was not appropriate and did not contribute to the high bar we need to hold ourselves to.
When there were two violations last term by a former colleague, the reason sanctions were recommended is because there was no attempt to apologize or rectify the violations. Therefore, when presented with a motion to impose a sanction last term, I supported the recommendation from our Integrity Commissioner.
If a future violation were to occur by the same member of council, the Integrity Commissioner will treat these violations as cumulative which means that an apologize would most likely not be recommended as a sanction.
While I hope we won’t have any more Code of Conduct violations going forward, I will always seriously consider the recommendations of our Integrity Commissioner when making a decision at a sanction hearing.
