It started out as the offering of an olive branch by Councillor Kyle Cybulski to Reeve Peter Emon. It ended up being a bit of a stick in the eye for Renfrew’s longest-serving council member.
Cybulski brought forward the motion, to amend a previous motion, that would remove sanctions applied against the reeve as a result of an acrimonious back-and-forth between Emon and other members of council where each side made attempts to have the other removed from committee business.
This comes two weeks after Integrity Commissioner Tony Fleming handed down a report recommending apologies from two council members, the other being Councillor Andrew Dick. In the case of Emon, Fleming found that the reeve did undertake to retaliate against other councillors for their sponsoring of a motion to have him removed from committees.
Fleming recommended an apology. Council, at that meeting, received Fleming’s report, but decided that an apology wasn’t necessary for either council member, and it kind of looked like council was making the statement that a certain generosity of spirit was taking hold of the group as they work their way back from a time where a certain degree of incivility and disunity had overtaken the group.
Councillor Cybulski, for his part, was attempting to build upon that generosity and goodwill by offering the motion to reduce or remove any sanctions directed towards Reeve Emon.
But then it hit the fan.
Councillor Clint McWhirter was first out of the gate, apologizing to Councillor Cybulski for taking another tack, and opposing the motion. McWhirter zeroed in on Reeve Emon’s committee membership during the times when Ma-Te-Way wasn’t yet a fully-blown crisis. It was Reeve Emon’s experience on council and with municipal government that McWhirter pointed to as his greatest disappointment with the reeve. He felt that the reeve should have sniffed out rot before it came back to eventually cost Renfrew taxpayers tens of millions of dollars of cost overruns, something McWhirter says will take thirty years for the town to pay off. He compared this thirty years with the three years that Emon would not be able to serve on committees. In short, he feels the sanctions are appropriate and ought to be left in place.
Next up was Councillor John McDonald, who showed up to the party with a prepared statement at the ready, either in anticipation of Councillor Cybulski’s motion or as a just-in-case weapon in case this spirit of generosity started to gather any legs.
McDonald cited what he felt was Emon’s negligence and failure of due diligence in his roles as driver of the Human Resources Committee of the last council and his membership on the Ma-Te-Way Ad-Hoc Committee. He claims the reeve ignored pressing work that needed to be done on municipal buildings and the Fire Hall and instead joined with other elected officials to pursue a Ma-Te-Way specific vision that ultimately led to the situation as it currently stands. McDonald also says Emon should have exercised greater and more effective supervision of staff at the time, some of whom seemed to have free rein to do as they saw fit without the constraints of council oversight.
He, too, indicated he would not support Cybulski’s motion.
Councillor Jason Legris also had a prepared statement at the ready, and took up the torch from Councillor McDonald in denouncing the reeve for a number of transgressions during his stint on the last council. Legris peppered council with a number of itemized lists involving what it means to be a councillor, as per the good old Municipal Act, which never let anyone down ever. Another list articulated the shortcomings of the reeve with respect to Ma-Te-Way, and ways he allegedly let down the people of Renfrew. Legris said that, as a senior manger of a multi-billion dollar corporation, he would be fired if he was involved in a similar situation and handled it the same way as he claims Reeve Emon handled his responsibilities during his last term on council.
I’m not sure how Legris’ employment situation is an apples to apples comparison with being the reeve of Renfrew, but there it is, so I guess I can take the point.
Into the fray jumped Councillor Dick, only this time he’s coming to the defence of the reeve, citing his many years of experience as both reeve and Warden of Renfrew County. He grants that Reeve Emon was involved with some of the decision-making of the last council, but also went on to say the reeve didn’t stand alone in that, what with the entire former council, including the current mayor, sharing culpability.
Dick took aim at the section of the Municipal Act referenced by Councillor Legris and claimed that all current councillors, over two years into their current mandates, haven’t done much in their own right to solve anything having to do with Ma-Te-Way since that issue hit the fan, and so, in his estimation, the current crop of councillors are equally responsible for the whole thing.
That prompted two simultaneous points of order from Councillors Legris and McDonald who took issue with those remarks, and the mayor cautioned Councillor Dick that he may like to climb down a little bit from those remarks. The councillor took back the remarks, but then went on to say that he would be man enough to take responsibility for himself, prompting some salty body language from the other two councillors.
Councillor Dick said that he was disappointed that his hopes for council unity appeared to be falling apart this night.
Councillor Cybulski also regretted the inability for council to come together and finish out their term working towards the best interests of the people of Renfrew. He apologized to Reeve Emon for bringing the motion in the first place, only to have the reeve, as Cybulski said, have to go through all of this again. He pointed out that the current council had an issue of their own with a Town Hall renovation going well over budget, and how that, despite a difference in scale, was along the same lines as the Ma-Te-Way disaster.
Reeve Emon commented that, for as long as the investigations surrounding Ma-Te-Way continue, he would have little to say on the issue, although he did take note that there was an apparent inference towards criminal wrong-doing on his part made by Councillor McDonald, who then responded that this was not his intent.
The reeve indicated that, the the prospect of criminal charges clears, he’ll have more to say on the subject. Likewise, when the prospect of any sort of civil litigation is off the table, he’ll have a lot more to say. He did indicate that much of the Ma-Te-Way decision-making pre-dated his arrival to council in 2014.
Mayor Tom Sidney commented that he, too, was hoping that council could come together over the course of its final year and half in office, especially given the generosity displayed last meeting. He asked where it all stopped, and how long do we hold people accountable by inference, and how it’s destructive for council to be ripping each other apart. He made the point that, over time, there’s plenty of opportunities for people to be pointing fingers at other people, only to have four fingers pointed back in their direction.
The motion passed 4-3 with Councillors Cybulski and Dick joining with the reeve and the mayor in favour, with Councillors McWhirter, McDonald, and Legris opposed. But because it was a motion to amend a previous motion, it required a super-majority of 5 votes to pass, so therefore the motion was defeated.
For me, I have difficulty understanding the idea of consequencing people solely because they happened to serve on the previous council. As it was mentioned, there are any number of people who found themselves in situations where they either directly contributed to the failure of Ma-Te-Way, or were in a position of oversight when very little oversight appeared to be executed.
Yes, there were people of experience on that council, with Reeve Emon and Mayor Sidney being two of them. We also had an experienced mayor in Don Eady in place, and a former mayor serving as a councillor. Do we point fingers at these people as well? Some of them? All of them?
There also appears to have been major personality clashes between individuals serving as senior Renfrew administrative staff. Domineering personalities, perhaps pushing their weight around, possibly cajoling others into acceptance and compliance. People in charge of their own personal empires, clashing with other empires, in a place where no empires ought to be existing in the first place.
There continues to be efforts made to get to the bottom of the whole mess, and the Third Party Report was one of those steps. As well, a criminal investigation is apparently underway, and there’s no way of knowing where that might lead, if anywhere, when it comes to the possibility of criminal charges.
It strikes me that if charges were to be forthcoming involving individuals, then that might be a more suitable time for the idea of consequences, but until then, it just seems that we’re in a rush to punish people for crimes or omissions they may not have been a part of.
If Reeve Emon or Mayor Sidney were legally culpable for anything that happened during that last council, that information will no doubt come to light as investigations conclude. And if that were to be the case, I’d have to imagine that procedures exist to deal with any culpability.
In the interim, and in my opinion, stripping someone of committee responsibilities seems to be an attempt to exact justice by people who do not have the mandate to do so, nor the evidence to necessarily back that up. Such efforts ought to be left to the proper authorities.
So, at the end of it all, my view is that Councillor Cybulski’s motion was well-intended, and its passing wouldn’t have done any harm that I can see. Accountability, if necessary, will catch up to those who require it, notwithstanding anything that happens in Council or its Chambers.
Membership on a previous council is not an indicator of guilt or wrong-doing of any sort. Being in the room is enough to possibly raise questions, sure, but it’s not the kind of thing that legitimizes actions that pre-suppose guilt.
Let the accountability process play out as it should and as it will. In the meantime, let’s get on with the business of attending to the business of Renfrew.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 