A Kamloops Councillor wants the province to help the City start addressing recommendations put forward by municipal adviser Henry Braun.
Dale Bass says the city does not have a number of tools in place to tackle some of the 13 recommendations issued by Henry Braun to council as a whole.
“The municipal adviser can come in and do whatever he wants and report whatever he needs to report but he has no tools,” Bass said, during her Council Report Tuesday.
Bass suggested a letter be sent to Premier David Eby and Municipal Affairs Minister Anne Kang, asking for legislation that would help councils like Kamloops address ongoing issues.
“To address ongoing issues of breaches of conduct, ethical breaches, poor governance, decisions that are made that impact the community in an adverse way,” Bass said.
Mayor Reid Hamer Jackson – who had been temporarily removed as chair earlier in the meeting – appeared to push back, saying the city has a number of tools at its disposal like the Community Charter and the ability for 10 electors to petition the Supreme Court to disqualify a candidate from office.
He also cited reporting from Castanet and said the province was not considering recall legislation at this time.
“The province actually says that the government, that we do have a lot of tools in our municipalities,” Hamer-Jackson said.
“The province said it will not enact recall [legislation]. I deliberately did not include anything like that because there are other options,” Bass said, in response. “I don’t know where to begin with some of these things with you. Yes, there is the Community Charter, but when someone breaches the Community Charter, what can we do? Not much.”
“As for your 10-person petition, it must be a pecuniary conflict of interest. Total chaos is not qualified to go to the Supreme Court.”
While Bass’ motion did not specify what kind of legislation she wants to see, she also said Tuesday – after a suggestion by Councillor Kelly Hall – that a provincially appointed municipal ethics commissioner “would be appropriate.”
“I wonder if we need to align it with something that UBCM tried back in 2016 where they were looking at an ethics commissioner,” Hall said.
“I have no problem with that. I was looking for some guidance from council on that because I don’t know how far we want to go but I think an ethics commissioner at the provincial level to deal with all municipalities would be appropriate,” Bass responded.
She also said she hopes other municipalities reach out to the Provincial Government asking for legislation to be implemented, noting Kamloops is not the only community where there are issues around the council table.
“When we look around the province, we see several municipalities that are having issues,” Bass said. “Not quite like ours but sometimes like ours, and its time for the province to do something, and the reality is we have no tools.”
At the recently concluded Southern Interior Local Government Association convention, delegates voted in favour of a resolution from the City of Kamloops to extend WorkSafeBC policies and safeguards around bullying and harassment to local government politicians as well.
“Local governments do have Codes of Conduct, but not everybody necessarily adheres to those,” SILGA President and Oliver Councillor Aimee Grice told Radio NL of the resolution. “So I think what the community [Kamloops] is looking for is something with a little bit more teeth should these situations arise.”
“City staff would have those protections, as they are employees, but local government officials are not considered employees, so those protections are not in place.”