The following letter to the editor was submitted in response to an article about a new code of conduct for staff, which was a recommendation in the commissioner's report from the Collingwood Judicial Inquiry, which took place in 2019.
Editor,
I sincerely hope that this is the last time we will see council tied up in deliberations over the judicial inquiry. The 2014-2018 council originally brought down the motion to undertake the judicial inquiry. They, and we, were told by then deputy mayor, later mayor, Brian Saunderson that the inquiry would cost (an estimated) $1,000,000, and he suggested that some or all of that would be reimbursed by the province. (So far not one cent!)
The town’s own accounting says it cost Collingwood $8,265,000. In reality, by including all public time and money expended, the cost was actually over $10 million. The most recent, 2018 to 2022 council spent many hundreds of hours and many thousands of additional dollars (mostly on lawyers) on judicial inquiry matters. And now here we have the third consecutive council also venturing down the judicial inquiry rabbit hole. When is enough, enough?
Those 306 recommendations from the inquiry cost roughly $27,000 each. Is there value there? Personally, I don't think so, despite the last council's valiant, if ineffectual, efforts to try to justify the cost. We could have had a very comprehensive report on recommendations for improved town governance – no doubt badly needed – had we simply hired an outside consultant to come back with a report based on best practices from other municipalities. That probably could have been done for half a million dollars. Indeed, the clerk's report for the Feb. 6, 2023 council committee meeting point out that our new code of conduct was largely based on that of the City of Vaughan.
Councillor Deb Doherty now represents Collingwood on AMO (Association of Municipalities in Ontario), and she advised us that she is bringing some of Collingwood’s judicial inquiry recommendations to the AMO to ask for provincial implementation. I predict that that initiative will be given short shrift. I don't think other members of the AMO will be interested in hearing sermons on governance from Collingwood.
Surely the time has come to put this whole judicial inquiry business behind us and move on.
There are now only two sitting councillors that voted to pass the judicial motion left from the 2014-2018 council – councillors Doherty and Kathy Jeffrey, and only three councillors: Doherty, Jeffrey and Mayor Yvonne Hamlin from the 2018-2022 council, so you now have a majority who were never invested in the entire judicial inquiry saga (Coincidence? I think not.) So, I would strongly recommend that you, our new councillors now in the majority, decline to consume any more of council’s time or money in this never-ending sinkhole.
John Megarry
Collingwood, ON
