Knee-Jerk Ex-Council Couldn’t Judge Its Peers: BENN
The previous council established in the eyes of a member of the judiciary that it was incapable of standing in judgment of former College councillor Rick Chiarelli.
The judge found that a majority of councillors made public statements of condemnation, when those same councillors were, by statute, required to be an objective “jury of his peers”. To further exacerbate that error in judgment, former Somerset Councillor Catherine McKenney stated that, notwithstanding the findings of the judge, she would do it again.
Not a contempt of court level of insolence, but insolence nevertheless.
Sutcliffe Was Wrong To Support Blais’ Abuse Bill
Very simply put, the knee-jerk reaction of too many politicians is to make public statements to curry favour with the electorate without sufficient thought as to the consequences of those statements.
With the previous Ottawa council’s behaviour as a precedent, how could a responsible province pass legislation that would allow a “jury of his/her/their peers” comprised of politicians who are either unaware of their duty to be impartial or incapable of thinking prior to speaking before the facts are established by an objective arbiter?
It would be far better to require the municipality to apply to a court for proceedings to have a councillor disqualified for conduct unbecoming.
Digital image on front created by AI generator DALL-E.
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Two wrongs do not make a right. The councillors are political animals above all and could not fulfil that semi judicial function.
An addendum to my mini-column.
One of the fundamentals of the administration of law (as contrasted with justice) in Canada is the separation of the roles of the passing of the law, the investigation, the prosecution and the judgement. The four roles are set up structurally to be independent of each other. How independent they actually are is in the eyes of the beholder.
Elected officials, be they parliamentarians, members of the provincial legislature or municipal councillors propose and pass the laws.
The police are tasked with investigating the transgressions of those laws.
The Crown evaluates the material collected by the investigators, and if it deems it appropriate, prosecutes the case.
The courts, judge and or jury, hear the case, including the defense of the accused, and determine guilt or not guilt (note that the court does not find the defendant innocent).
To circle back to the “demands” of Ottawa’s city council. It appears that council wants to pass the law, investigate, prosecute and judge it. A one stop shop, so to speak. The complete lack of separation of duties is just another example of how out of touch our local elected officials are when it comes to their role in the administration of the law.
Which brings me to my final set of questions. Where in all of this virtue signaling was the City Clerk, you know the city’s senior in house legal counsel? Did it even occur to council to seek his/her/their input prior to drafting this waste of electrons , ink, paper and postage? If his/her/their input was not sought, why didn’t the City Clerk pull Mayor Sutcliffe’s Chief of Staff aside and provide something approximating advice? Or, was the advice given but summarily rejected because council has no expectation of the province acting on their request. As is so often the case when it comes to virtue signaling – which is the only thing that city council excels at.