Councillor bios to be wiped from city website come election time

By Joel Wittnebel/The Oshawa Express

Come election time, information pertaining to current city and regional councillors is set to be wiped from the city’s website.

This, among others, is a recent change to the city’s policy relating to the use of city resources by councillors and staff during election time, and is said by staff to be a means of filling “gaps” that existed in the city’s previous rules.

Among the recent additions to the city policy, a clause has been added that officially prevents councillors from campaigning or sharing campaign materials at city hosted events.

This new rule mainly came about due to some borderline behaviours from candidates during the last election.

“In 2014, several candidates and potential candidates were found to be actively campaigning during special events hosted by the City of Oshawa (particularly the city’s Canada Day celebrations), despite previous communications from city clerk services indicating that such activities could be seen to be a campaign contribution under the Municipal Elections Act and were prohibited,” the city report reads.

The new rules have also cleared up the use of city contractors, now prohibiting councillors from using any city contractors “for campaign purposes or to engage in campaign activities while delivering services paid for by the city.”

Along with the additions, a number of alterations have also been made to the existing rules.

Most substantially, the new rules have added several caveats for city staff during an election period. Whereas the previous rules simply stated that city staff, “may not contribute to a campaign while receiving compensation from the city.” The new rules have relaxed that regulation, but make it clear that city staff must not contribute to campaigns while, “while wearing a uniform, badge, crest or other element that identifies them as City staff (and) may not engage in campaign activities while using any resource (vehicle, technology, etc.) owned or leased by the City.” Finally, staff are to ensure that their activities do not includes a “real or perceived” conflict of interest.”

And where previously all campaign links for councillors were barred from the city’s website, the restrictions have been relaxed slightly and will now allow for councillors to have one link to their campaign website from the city’s election portal.

However, with that said, the biographies and information about councillors, which is currently easily accessible on the city’s webpage, will be removed on the day before the campaign election period begins at the start of May.

This same rule will now also apply to any councillor running for a provincial or federal seat, and their information and biography will be removed from the city’s website on the day the writ is dropped for that particular election.

“This policy now applies to federal, provincial and municipal elections,” states Jason McWilliam, the city’s manager of records and information systems.

Currently, this will apply for Councillor Bob Chapman, who is running as a candidate for the Progressive Conservative party in the upcoming June election.

During the Feb. 26 meeting of the Corporate Services Committee, Councillor Gail Bates questioned what types of penalties were in place in the event that a candidate is caught contravening these new rules.

“I do find our penalty system to be very, very weak when it comes to elections,” she said.

And perhaps the answer she got did little to alley her concerns, as currently there are no penalties, but McWilliam explained that a person can make a complaint to the city’s Compliance Audit committee, which would investigate and enforce any violations under the Municipal Act.

The 2018 election is slated for Monday, October 22.