Nova Scotia residents can no longer file complaints about their municipal elected officials, a move one advocate calls “dangerously undemocratic.”
Last Tuesday, the province made changes to the municipal code of conduct it said stemmed from feedback from municipalities.
Those changes included a clause stating that a complaint “may only be made by a council member” in the municipality where the subject of the complaint is also a council member.
Pam Mood, president of the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities and mayor of the Town of Yarmouth, said a few municipalities have reported a flood of complaints since the provincewide code went into effect last year.
Mood said the province needs a standard definition for frivolous or vexatious complaints, so all independent investigators handling municipal complaints are on the same page.
“It may not always be this way, but for now … I think it was a brilliant move on the part of the province to say, ‘You know what, if we’re going to get this right, we need to take a pause and see where we go,’” Mood said Wednesday.
“The most important thing is to make sure the code is used in the manner that it was intended.”
Mood said she did not have any specific examples about complaints that were frivolous, but said in general that they could be based on someone’s personal animosity toward a councillor for using a word they don’t like, or because of how the councillor voted on an issue.
When asked how many municipalities reported issues about code complaints to the federation, Mood said about six. But, she said, it wouldn’t matter if it were “just one or if it were 49. If something needs to be looked at, it needs to be looked at.”
Other new code of conduct changes include that a council member may not submit a complaint on behalf of another person, and investigators can consolidate similar complaints into one investigation.
The changes come about a month after multiple residents complained that Halifax Mayor Andy Fillmore made misleading statements about the role of a chief administrative officer.
Resident Peter Linfield was one of the people who sent in a complaint, something he now would not be able to do.
The Halifax municipal website said any public complaints received before the Oct. 7 changes will continue through the regular investigative process, but no new ones will be accepted.
Linfield said pulling the public’s ability to complain while the issue of frivolous complaints is being examined is a “weird overreaction.”
“It just seems like an unnecessary way to sort of limit accountability more broadly,” Linfield said.
All other Atlantic provinces allow public complaints about municipal officials, as do Ontario and British Columbia.
Duff Conacher, co-founder of the advocacy group Democracy Watch, said he has not heard of any province in Canada where the public cannot make complaints about municipal officials.
“For the government to take away this right is dangerously undemocratic and unethical,” Conacher said in an interview.
Conacher said the current system is also inherently flawed because an investigator always submits a final report to council, whose members make the final decision on if — and how — their colleague should be reprimanded.
He said the ideal model would be an independent provincial office handling all municipal complaints.
CBC asked the province’s Municipal Affairs Department about the concerns that the move takes away public accountability for council members.
“Citizens will continue to have the ability to hold council members accountable through the electoral process,” said spokesperson Heather Fairbairn.
Mood said the Nova Scotia Federation of Municipalities will now work with the province to improve the code, and hopes that will be done “as soon as possible.”
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