The chair of Niagara Region is calling for a St. Catharines, Ont., councillor to resign after an email containing a pornographic picture was circulated to an email list that includes elected officials, staff, area municipalities and multiple radio stations.
According to a Niagara This Week report, the incident began to unfold on Monday after regional staff sent an email about lane closures of a street at the Burgoyne Bridge in St. Catharines. A St. Catharines councillor replied to the list saying “it will be nice to see the final touches on the new bridge.”
“(Andrew) Petrowski then sent out an email about “multimillion dollar, taxpayer-funded, non-functional arches” with the image of the naked woman with her legs spread open,” the report said.
Petrowski sent a follow-up email shortly after that response.
“I apologize to everyone for the previous e-mail just sent… this was sent in error as a terrible message by someone who was using my iPad I thought to send a private message,” Petrowski wrote.
“I am very sorry for this unacceptable and inappropriate transmission.”
However, in a written statement to Global News Monday afternoon, Niagara Regional Chair Alan Caslin said that he “demand(s) better when conducting business on behalf of the region” and that the “councillor’s comments do not represent” Niagara Region.
“I have spoken directly to the councillor about this egregious conduct and have requested that he resign from Regional Council,” Caslin said.
“The content of the email from Councillor Petrowski earlier today is reprehensible and the conduct is completely unacceptable for a regional councillor.”
Caslin said he “insisted” Petrowski meet with him Tuesday “to discuss limits on his use of Regional devices and email accounts.”
Global News attempted to contact Petrowski for comment, but he was unavailable Monday.
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