NEW OMBUDSMAN NOT MUCH HELP

Thank You Paul Dube, our new provincial Ombudsman. You have managed to give incompetent and corrupt municipal Councils across Ontario a blueprint for avoiding the rules regarding in camera meetings. In your decision to let Woolwich Township escape accountability for their behaviour last March 22/16 you have set out frankly ridiculous criteria and loopholes such that as long as Councils pretend that their in camera meeting is over they can discuss anything in private meetings, make decisions and overall flaunt the Municipal Act yet again.

The issue concerned citizen Dr. Dan Holt appearing before Council as a registered Delegation to speak about the "Downstream Canagagigue Creek". Council led by Murray Martin and strongly supported by Sandy Shantz behaved like unaccountable autocrats. Fortunately Dr. Holt has an I.Q. double that of the entire Council combined and he simply and quickly reduced them to blithering idiots. The issue was that Council and Chair Martin had already decided privately that they weren't going to let Dr. Dan speak. This they did in the in camera session prior to the public Council session. Their Agenda however indicated an in camera session dealing with Heritage Committee appointments only. They simply and illegally piggybacked their discsusion to drop Dr. Holt along with that. The Municipal Act clearly states that all topics of the in camera session must be written down and availble to the public so they know the subject matter of what is being discussed in private.

Our new Ombudsman stickhandled around the law by suggesting that despite there being a quorum of Councillors present and that some of them both commented and discussed Murray Martin's plan to dump Dr. Holt as a Delegate; nevertheless it wasn't a real discussion or a real meeting. It was "individual discussions" not group discussions. Really? So apparently the Ombudsman believes that if only some members of a Council speak versus all and if they speak "individually" rather than all at once then it doesn't qualify as an in camera meeting. There was a quorum present and Councillors were still sitting at the same table out of sight and hearing of the public. Rubbish on top of rubbish.

The final stupidity is the Ombudsman's claim that no decision was made in the in camera meeting. Bullshit! Murray Martin didn't engage Dr. Holt in a discussion or debate he simply ordered him not to speak! Murray Martin claimed that Dr. Holt's Delegation was a "technical" one and that that was against the mythical rules of Woolwich Township. Sandy Shantz came to Murray's defence after Dr. Holt ignored the direction from Murray not to speak. Dr. Holt engaged Council (or at least the stupid ones arguing the indefensible) and made them look like monkeys. Our Ombudsman then in the course of his investigation made no attempt to intervew either myself or other citizens involved including Dr. Dan Holt. If he had he would have learned that Council had indeed made their decision in their in camera meeting and they did it contrary to the Municpal Act.

Woolwich Council unfortunately consist of a group of incompetent and ignorant individuals who routinely break rules and laws, essentially with impunity. I am doing my best to make them accountable for their behaviour. This is for the benefit of all Woolwich citizens. When our elected Councillors behave like that it certainly is not for our benefit but for theirs.