‘Nonsense’: Warring Ontario councillors trade accusations, while police watch meetings

The emails between bickering councillors in Pickering began to fly back and forth as the workday was ending one Wednesday in June.

Around 5:30 p.m. on June 12, Coun. Lisa Robinson sent a message complaining about the city’s mayor, copying almost 100 local officials, journalists and the general inboxes for various government ministers.

Robinson claimed Pickering Mayor Kevin Ashe had a “temper” and alleged she had chosen not to attend his annual gala because she believed it was “particularly directed towards women.”

The replies that followed flew in thick and fast.

Pickering Coun. Linda Cook told her colleague the allegations were “slanderous” and said Robinson’s decision to copy 95 people who don’t work for the City of Pickering “reveals your character.”

“I respect the office of Mayor, I respect Kevin. He’s no misogynist,” Cook wrote. “Everyone on council is done with your behaviour.”

Another member of the Pickering council, David Pickles, also voiced his annoyance with the author of the original email.

“The disruption, frustration and nonsense at Council is caused by Councillor Robinson and her followers,” he wrote.

One of the slew of local Durham Region councillors copied on the thread was confused, asking what Robinson was hoping to gain from her lengthy, late-night emails.

“Councillor, I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve here, but I feel certain that a group email to every councillor in Durham isn’t the way to do it,” Coun. Lloyd Rang from Clarington, Ont., wrote.

“Please add me to the chorus of your colleagues and take me off this list.”

The email chain is the latest symptom of a deeply fractured council in Pickering, to the east of Toronto.

The issues — which at least one councillor and advocate argue Robinson is at the centre of — have spiralled in Pickering, with the city saying police now “consistently” attend council meetings and concerns the legislative agenda is in danger of stalling.

Abdullah Mir, a Ward 1 resident and an advocate, has watched the chaos on Pickering council unfold for more than a year.

He said he believes the problem stems from Robinson — his local representative — and says they have slowly developed since the municipal ballot in October 2022.

“I think in the background, it’s been going on since shortly after the election,” Mir told Global News.

“But the flashpoint when it started to derail a little was last year, I would say around this time, maybe a little bit earlier, when she started with these totally nonsensical and illogical motions” that she planned to bring before council.

Robinson has caused controversy with a number of motions she planned to bring forward and comments she has made during council meetings.

In May 2023, Robinson read out “several motions” at a local school board meeting using a megaphone that she intended to bring before council, according to the town’s integrity commissioner. The planned motions “would have had the effect” of removing Pickering’s support for drag queen story time and for flying either the Pride or the trans flags.

Specifically, according to the integrity commissioner, the planned motions said: “only ‘federal, provincial and municipal flags to be permitted to be raised in all public spaces,’ with an exception to also allow the Poppy flag and Veterans flag.”

The proposed motion claimed that flying non-government flags would mean the city was “favouring one group over another,” the integrity commissioner said.

The second planned motion considered drag shows and pride parades, calling both “adult live performances,” according to the integrity commissioner. It asked Pickering to stop “a person from knowingly admitting a child” to either event.

Another proposed motion related to changing rooms at a city facility, the Chestnut Hill Reactional Complex. The planned motion looked to restrict male and female rooms to be used only “individuals of the corresponding genders” but also allowed for a co-ed changing room to be used by “all genders and/or families,” the integrity commissioner said.

Robinson told Global News she “unequivocally” rejected the idea the planned motions were nonsensical and said, as part of a lengthy answer, that “children must be protected from adult-themed entertainment, and this measure strikes a vital balance between inclusivity and safeguarding young audiences.”

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She said her proposed motions were about ensuring the government was neutral, referencing a 2015 Supreme Court decision. Robinson said it was “not about devaluing any group’s importance but about preventing a hierarchy of beliefs.”

She said the aim of the motions was to foster “an environment of respect, safety, and neutrality” within the City of Pickering.

Robinson sent a 1,100-word document in response to questions from Global News, requesting her answers be printed in full and not summarized. Relevant extracts have been included in this story.

In October 2023, Robinson’s council colleagues decided to suspend her pay over the motions she had planned to bring. It was the second time her pay had been suspended in as many months, after a separate integrity commissioner investigation into a Facebook post in which local residents were named found she had breached the code of conduct.

Robinson is seeking two judicial reviews for the integrity commissioner rulings and the pay suspensions, saying the investigation was “severely lacking.”

“This has all arisen from one councillor,” Cook, who brought one of the motions to suspend Robinson’s pay, told Global News.

At the start of the year, Robinson filed for a judicial review, arguing the integrity commissioner in investigations “failed to meet the standards of a thorough comprehensive inquiry.”

Robinson said the problems on Pickering council were not her fault. She said residents were “waking up” to how government money was being spent and the rules that govern how members of the public speak at council meetings.

“The Mayor and Council is uncomfortable not because of my voice, but because the people are finally standing up and speaking out against this misuse of power,” she said.

Cook told Global News the place she and her colleagues now find themselves in is both unusual and unsustainable.

“The situation we’ve arrived at now is not normal,” she said. “It is not standard for any council, I should think, in any municipality to operate that way. But this is the level of where things have currently escalated to and the situation we find ourselves in — which is unique.”

The late-night emails in June were just one of the examples of the mistrust and bickering that is taking place around the council table.

In the emails, Robinson laid out a series of problems she said she had with her colleagues.

The email chain was titled “Mayor Kevin Ashe’s behaviour at Executive Meeting on Monday.”

She accused the mayor of an “evident fondness for alcohol” — a claim called “false” by another councillor in the email chain — and said her council colleagues did not follow the rules at council meetings.

“May I suggest anger management classes Mr. Mayor,” Robinson wrote.

A spokesperson for the mayor said Cook had “aptly responded” to Robinson’s claims and did not comment further when asked by Global News.

Cook told Global News she had advised the mayor to consider legal action against Robinson after the attacks.

“The personal allegations and attacks that are being made — at present our mayor has chosen not to file defamation or slander suits against Coun. Robinson, even though several of us have urged him to do so, myself being one,” she said.

“I do think it behooves him to at least seek legal council and understand what his options are because this is a continuing pattern that we’re seeing.”

Robinson said Cook’s interpretation that she said the mayor had an issue with alcohol was “misguided” and accused the mayor of “relentless bullying and intimidation towards me in public at council meetings.”

Ward 1 advocate Mir told Global News he had seen the dynamic in council chambers change since the issues appeared on council, with some “aggressive and kind of conflict-loving people” being attracted to the city to make presentations to councillors.

Robinson said she was “tired” of people “branding my supporters as unloving, disruptive, or racist.”

“Not everyone who criticizes council is a supporter of mine, but even if they are, what’s wrong with that? Is it because I don’t follow the narrative or the status quo? Because I think for myself and speak the truth?” she said.

Tense scenes at public meetings — which have dragged late into the night — have also meant police are being stationed at Pickering council meetings.

A spokesperson for the city told Global News that, between January and July, Pickering spent just over $18,000 on police officers to help manage its council meetings. Before the last election, the city said there were only a “handful of times” police had attended meetings, something which is now happening “consistently.”

Trouble around the council table goes beyond late-night emails and bickering during debates, according to Mir and Cook, and threatens to upend the process of governance itself.

Mir is at pains to point out that many things “are working” in Pickering and the city council has a lot of achievements it can point to over the past two years.

“While the highlight of the story is this individual who’s been making negative light of this situation, Pickering council is working for the most part,” he said. “That’s the beauty of democracy … it’s not just one person who can necessarily derail everything.”

It is hard, however, to ignore the impacts of disruption on the council process as well.

Meetings which generally start in the evening have dragged on longer and longer, sometimes crossing into the next day, Cook said. Council sessions are also being paused at times for the chamber to be cleared, further delaying things.

Cook said it was a “growing trend” that meetings were having to end before everything had been addressed, pushing the agenda to the next session. That is delaying some important decisions, like purchasing contracts, she said.

“Chambers are being cleared, we now have police that come into our chambers and are issuing trespass notices,” Cook said. “It descends into chaos and this is not how municipal procedures should work; there’s a lack of decorum, there’s a lack of respect.”

Mir agreed that an “unbelievable” amount of taxpayer money was being wasted through delays and disruption.

Robinson said it was “flat-out wrong” to suggest business had been delayed by issues on council.

“If our meetings run a little long — which has only happened a couple of times — so be it. That’s our job, and no city business has ever been delayed because of it,” she said.

“We have a responsibility to our constituents to fully debate and question the issues at hand. People have a right to participate in our meetings and hear us debate, not just see us rubber-stamp decisions without any scrutiny or discussion.”

Both Mir and Cook said they hoped things could be resolved and work could flow better moving forward.

“I am an eternal optimist, I feel like we can repair and rebuild,” Cook said. “I think the most pressing thing, aside from our council, is rebuilding public confidence.”

With a decision in Robinson’s judicial review expected around September and the next election when all councillors will have to recontest their seats scheduled for 2026, there are few immediate options to solve the dysfunction.

At Queen’s Park, opposition parties have long been calling for the creation of a law to increase accountability for municipal councillors and strengthen the accountability measures when they are seen to have broken the rules.

Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Paul Calandra said in April that work on such a bill was “complex” but was still underway, a promise from the provincial government that dates back to Calandra’s predecessor, Steve Clark.

“Even the regime surrounding the integrity acts throughout municipalities across the province of Ontario, each of them operates in a different fashion,” Calandra said in April after being asked about progress on the proposed law.

“There is a lot more work to do on this because the more I look into it, the more disjointed and fragmented the process is and I want to make sure that whatever we do, it is effective, it meets the goals that we’re trying to accomplish.”

The government has rejected opposition suggestions and drafted bills in favour of crafting its own, a process that has already taken years.

In Pickering, Cook believes that a stricter municipal conduct law is important — and urgent. Pointing out that almost every other profession has a human resources department and rules for those found to be breaking workplace codes, Cook said that protection is missing in the municipal sector.

“Why would it be different because I’m a politician? Why would that same treatment not be applicable at any level of government?” she said.

“So to me, it is sort of like playing catch-up that we need this in place, that this is not aimed at any one politician in particular. It’s aimed to protect those that support us in our roles.”

Robinson, on the other hand, disagreed and said politicians calling for “more measures” to protect them and their staff are “misguided and out of touch.”

She suggested that politicians “are elected to serve the people, and part of that job is listening to their concerns, even when they are uncomfortable or inconvenient for us.”

— with files from The Canadian Press