ROTHENBURGER – A short visit to SILGA in quest of the ‘bullying’ resolution

RESOLUTION 39 would be kind of funny if it wasn’t so sad.

The resolution, titled ‘Bullying and harassment by local elected officials’ was debated today (May 1, 2024) at the annual conference of the Southern Interior Local Government Association in Kamloops.

I’ve had it confirmed that the resolution was approved but I can’t give you any details of the debate because I was kicked out of the meeting. More on that later.

Resolution 39 purports to aim at safeguarding “local government staff or elected officials from bullying, harassment, and other inappropriate treatment at the hands of other local elected official(s).”

The answer, it says, is for the provincial government to amend the Workers Compensation Act to include local elected officials under the definition of “workers” so they’re included in WorkSafe BC harassment policies.

But it goes further, asking that any elected official guilty of “ethical misconduct,” i.e. bullying, harassment or “inappropriate treatment,” be subject to possible firing. The actual words of the resolution are “suspension or disqualification from participation in elected office.”

 

See also: THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: disqualify elected reps who ‘repeatedly bully’

With approval at regional branches of the Union of B.C. Municipalities like this one, resolutions are forwarded to the annual UBCM convention in the fall.

Resolutions at these things assume something is broken and needs fixing, so the question is, what’s broken that Resolution 39 intends to fix? A delegate from another community might logically assume it’s simply pre-emptive in case anything happens to come up in future.

Or, it might seem as though the Kamloops council is a snake pit in which its members are all at each other’s throats and those of staff, and need protection from each other.

But as we all know, Mayor Reid Hamer-Jackson is the only member of Kamloops council who’s been investigated for workplace bullying allegations.

Maybe I’m over-thinking some of the wording of this resolution, which talks about “repeated” bullying, “risk of continued and unconstrained bullying and harassment” and a reference to possible “significant legal exposure arising out of the unsafe workplaces in the form of costly investigations, wrongful termination claims based on constructive dismissal law, and increased legal costs”?

The reference to “legal exposure” coincidentally parrots some of the comments coming out of council aimed at Hamer-Jackson.

If the resolution is, indeed, specific to the mayor, it would actually break a SILGA rule, which states that, “Each resolution should be relative to regional issues and should not pertain to a finite local interest….”

Sponsors of the resolution would, of course, argue that other councils and regional boards might well face similar circumstances at some point in their history.

Another resolution, this one from Osoyoos, might fail similar scrutiny. Councillors there have faced some really nasty public backlash about a large budget increase this year. Resolution 40 asked for protection — via provincial and federal legislative changes — from “Personal and defamatory attacks on local government leaders.”

But, of course, such changes must also uphold “principles of freedom of speech and transparency.”

There’s no indication of how Osoyoos council members think such a thing could be accomplished. Neither does it recognize that there are already all sorts of laws protecting people from violence and defamation. Regardless, that resolution was approved too.

But back to the reason I can’t report for you any details of the debate, and must leave you to find out from the mainstream media. During a break in the resolutions session, as I was chatting with TNRD director Mike Grenier, I was approached by Alison Slater, who is the SILGA general manager for Kamloops.

She said she’d been told I wasn’t an accredited member of the media and would have to leave because it was a “closed” meeting. I explained that, yes, I’m no longer affiliated with CFJC as of last Thursday but was there for ArmchairMayor.ca and, as such, was basically a freelancer.

Slater said the conference couldn’t be admitting bloggers but, after some discussion, she kindly provided me with a name card and lanyard and I was good to go.

Except that, a short time later, she returned, this time with backup, to say the decision to grant me media access had been reversed. So, my accreditation lasted all of about 10 or 15 minutes. Clearly, somebody had complained about me being there but she declined to say which delegate or delegates had done the complaining.

At any rate, I said I disagreed with the decision but would certainly leave. It was all amiable enough — they have a right to interpret their own rules after all, even if that interpretation changes from one minute to the next.

On my way out I stopped to talk to a couple of folks and, before you know it, the SILGA president herself, an Oliver councillor named Aimee Grice, was in front of me, obviously concerned I wasn’t leaving quickly enough. She wanted to escort me out the door, a gesture I said wasn’t necessary as I was leaving in a different direction. Thus ended my afternoon at SILGA.

Back to the Kamloops resolution, though. Neither Coun. Bill Sarai (who was deputy mayor for April) nor corporate services officer Maria Mazzotta has responded to my request for information on who proposed the resolution and who wrote it.

I wonder if councillors ever think about the consequences of their actions. Do they think Resolution 39 will do anything but highlight once again how dysfunctional things are at City Hall? Does Kamloops really need more attention paid to the fact its civic government is a laughing stock?

As I said, funny but sad. But it did cross my mind out in the parking lot that Mayor Hamer-Jackson and I now have something in common — we’ve both been barred from meetings.

Mel Rothenburger publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor.  He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.