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When council this week turns its frayed attention to integrity commissioner Janet Leiper\u2019s follow-up report about Rob Ford\u2019s practice of asking lobbyists to donate to his family\u2019s football foundation, it will be doing nothing less than casting a vote of confidence in the city\u2019s most important accountability mechanism.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake: if council refuses to act on her recommendations (i.e., merely receives the report), it will be completely gutting the credibility of the office of Toronto\u2019s integrity commissioner (IC). After all, if the city\u2019s top accountability officer, armed with a legislative mandate and clear council policies, can\u2019t confront a sitting mayor, what\u2019s the point?<\/p>\n
Indeed, Leiper may as well tender her resignation, while the rest of us mull over how one of the key recommendations of Justice Denise Bellamy\u2019s inquiry<\/a> into the MFP computer leasing scandal came to such an ignominious end.<\/p>\n The aforementioned report is a follow-up to a 2010 commissioner’s investigation which concluded<\/a> that Ford, then a councillor, violated council\u2019s code of conduct by \u201cimproperly\u201d using his office and influence to raise money for the football charity.<\/p>\n During the final session of David Miller\u2019s term in office, and in the midst of an election campaign, council adopted Leiper\u2019s recommendations. She has spent the year since trying to persuade Ford to comply with the decision, as is his \u201cobligation,\u201d in her words. The recommendation before council this week gives him a month to prove that he\u2019s reimbursed the donors, as per her original council-approved finding.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The caricature version of the integrity commissioner\u2019s actions, promoted by some Ford supporters, is that the 2010 council decision was a nakedly partisan gesture, as were earlier attempts by Leiper and her predecessor David Mullan to rein in Ford’s intemperate behaviour and his unwillingness to adhere to council rules.<\/p>\n A closer reading of the IC\u2019s record since 2006 suggests the story is far more complicated. Few now remember that Mullan, council\u2019s first integrity commissioner, actually supported Ford\u2019s practice of involving himself in other councillors\u2019 ward business and helping their constituents deal with city-related problems. The issue first arose back in 2004, amidst a spat between Ford and Howard Moscoe, who had succeeded in getting speed bumps built in Ward 2, a.k.a. Fordville.<\/p>\n Ford demanded that Mullan investigate, and his subsequent report<\/a>, released in September, 2005, not only approved of the practice, but dressed it up, noting that such incursions both improved transparency and reduced the temptation for councillors to treat their wards like personal fiefdoms. It\u2019s not an overstatement to say that Mullan\u2019s ruling helped lay the groundwork for Ford\u2019s mayoral victory.<\/p>\n As is well known, the integrity commissioners also took aim at Ford\u2019s antics \u2013 refusing to properly report office expenses, admonishing his public drunkenness at Leafs game, and violating council confidentiality rules because he couldn\u2019t be bothered reading staff reports.<\/p>\n But during the Miller years, the integrity commissioner also rapped the knuckles of left-leaning stalwarts like Howard Moscoe, who was rightly taken to task<\/a> for inappropriately using a City of Toronto email address to drum up business for his sign company in the run-up to the 2007 municipal elections.<\/p>\n Nor did the integrity commissioner always go after Ford with hammer and tong. After he was accused in 2005 for sending around his City of Toronto business card to prospective Deco customers, Mullan wrote, “It is an improper use of city property for a councillor to include his or her city business card in promotional material relating to his or her outside business interests.\u201d However, he didn\u2019t recommend a reprimand. Ford, in turn, pledged to cease and desist.<\/p>\n Ford\u2019s increasingly defiant approach to the integrity commissioner seems to date to a 2009 complaint brought by Councillor Adam Vaughan. During a radio broadcast, Ford accused Vaughan of conflict of interest over the latter\u2019s alleged role in getting a campaign donor appointed to a city committee.<\/p>\n As Lorne Sossin, the then interim integrity commissioner, noted in his report<\/a> about the episode, Ford made a prompt on-air retraction and apology. \u201cI have further concluded that no sanction is necessary in these circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n But at the time, Ford was an unpopular nuisance who enjoyed making embarrassing revelations about his colleagues\u2019 office expenses. Perhaps as a result, council ignored Sossin\u2019s recommendation and passed a resolution<\/a> basically rubbing Ford\u2019s face in what he\u2019d done, ordering him to make a public apology and retraction to Vaughan and council, and also to submit a signed version of the same.<\/p>\n Ford, for sure, is one of the most verbally reckless and bellicose politicians I\u2019ve ever encountered; his brother is cut from the same cloth. But I\u2019d argue that council, in that instance, showed itself to be a little too eager to stand on Ford\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n If you read six years worth of council motions in response to integrity commission reports, that one sticks out like a sore thumb. Indeed, I\u2019d bet heavily that Ford has nursed a festering grievance over that particular episode ever since.<\/p>\n Which leads me to the issue of the independence of the integrity commissioner. While the IC reports to council, and council is the ultimate arbiter of code of conduct disputes, I\u2019d argue the only way this accountability office can truly fulfill its statutory duty (City of Toronto Act, s. 158) is for council to accept the IC\u2019s recommendations 100% of the time. Otherwise, the whole thing risks becoming a gong show, with the rulings dependent on whichever political faction prevails.<\/p>\n In other words, the IC must be totally free of the taint of politics, as is the case with the city\u2019s auditor general.<\/p>\n Independence is what Bellamy had in mind when she laid out the policy architecture for this position after the city\u2019s worst-ever corruption scandal.<\/p>\n \u201cThe City,\u201d says recommendation 46 in her lengthy report, \u201cshould give the integrity commissioner the power to recommend to Council an appropriate range of sanctions for ethical misdeeds by councillors. Sanctions should include public reprimands, public apologies, expulsion from one or more committee meetings, removal from committee posts or committee chair positions, expulsion from one or more Council meetings, or, at the high end of the spectrum, a fine or declaration of a vacancy in the councillor\u2019s seat.\u201d (The actual penalties are considerably less onerous.)<\/p>\n By contrast to the Vaughan accusation, Ford\u2019s lobbyist-donor problem is far more significant than his chronic case of gutter-mouth. Lest we forgot the lessons of MFP, this story is all about the ever-present risk of influence peddling in politics.<\/p>\n So at City Hall this week, the 45 members of council face a stark choice: they can vote to destroy the IC\u2019s moral authority with yet another politically partisan decision, or they can allow Leiper to do the job they themselves hired her to do.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n photo by Marc Lostracco<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"