‘I will not apologize’: Whitman won’t back down from complaints as council deals with them without him

Controversial Halifax councillor Matt Whitman is refusing to apologize despite complaints that he retweeted a letter from a white supremacist organization protesting the removal of the Cornwallis statue in Halifax.

Whitman is one of three Halifax councilors who were the subject of complaints over public statements they made about the municipality’s removal of its statue of Edward Cornwallis, the city’s founder.

Halifax Regional Council dealt with the complaints against Whitman, Shawn Cleary and Waye Mason during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

Whitman refused to join the in-camera meeting. Speaking to reporters outside the meeting, he refused to apologize for his decision to retweet a letter from a white supremacist organization, even though he did later delete the tweet after Global News contacted him to tell him what the organization stood for.

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Whitman told reporters he won’t apologize, even if council orders him to.

“I will not apologize,” Whitman said on Tuesday, speaking to media as the discussion continued in-camera without him.

Whitman had promised that he would not take part in any in-camera discussion on complaints against any councillor, not just his own. He had asked council to consider a motion to deal with all complaints in public, but it was swiftly ruled out of order after all the councillors involved in the complaints did not consent to discussing them publicly.

“Let’s do it all or nothing,” he said during the regional council meeting.

“The complaints have been in the public. … Why not discuss them in public?”

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Dealing with complaints in public

Although Whitman and Mason said they would consent to having the discussion of complaints against them be held in public, Cleary said he would not.

“I think (Cleary) did it for the right reasons, administrative reasons, so you won’t hear me say anything about that,” Whitman told reporters.

Cleary had argued that since the complaints were made under a process that had promised they would be discussed privately, council had no right to change that.

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Council could have chosen to deal with a redacted version of the complaints, if they decided to deal with them in public, but many of the councillors seemed to agree with Cleary.

“You don’t move the goalposts halfway through the game,” said councillor Stephen Adams.

Although originally scheduled to be dealt with later in council, a motion was brought forward to deal with all in-camera business right off the top.

As of 11 a.m., council is still in-camera and the results may not be made public.