An apology from Ottawa’s mayor doesn’t go far enough for the city councillor whose microphone was muted during a tense debate at council’s meeting on Wednesday, unless the topic of a judicial inquiry into the city’s light-rail transit system gets put back on the table.
Disputes during Wednesday’s city council meeting, during which councillors opted to ask for an auditor general probe into the Confederation Line LRT rather than a full judicial inquiry, continued Thursday with many around the council table and on social media crying foul about how the debate was moderated.
One particular heated moment over council procedure is shown in the video below:
Gloucester-Southgate Coun. Diane Deans’s mic was cut off while she was arguing with Mayor Jim Watson about whether the audit request amounted to a replacement motion for Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney’s call for a judicial inquiry or whether it should stand alone and be debated afterwards.
The clerk never weighed in with his opinion and a challenge to the mayor’s ruling fell to an even split, with Watson winning a tie.
The judicial inquiry motion was never debated and council instead approved the call for a more limited but cost-effective auditor general inquiry at a vote of 14 to nine.
“What happened yesterday, I think, was disgraceful. The mayor used a procedural trick to shut down debate that was probably one of the most anticipated city council debates of the term,” Deans told Global News in an interview on Thursday.
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Speaking to reporters after council on Wednesday, Watson initially defended muting Deans’ microphone, saying his “job as mayor is to maintain order.”
He said that the deputy clerk silenced Deans’ microphone but that he supported the decision.
Watson walked back that position on Thursday, however, tweeting that he had written to Deans to apologize.
“It was the wrong call on my part and I take full responsibility,” he said in the tweet.
While Watson said he takes responsibility for muting his colleague, it’s still unclear whether he was the one who pressed the button or, as he suggested yesterday, the deputy clerk.
City clerk Rick O’Connor told Global News in a statement that before COVID-19 pushed meetings to be virtual, committee chairs had the ability to override microphones of other councillors during in-person debates.
On Zoom, chairs — and the mayor, in the case of full council — typically will have the “co-host” role that gives them the ability to mute participants, as does city clerk staff, he said.
Global News has reached out to the mayor’s office for clarification about who exactly used the mute function but did not hear back on Thursday.
Deans confirmed she received Watson’s apology, but stopped short of accepting it.
“I wrote back to him this afternoon and I said to him that from my perspective, the apology would best be made to the public, as his actions prevented a debate and vote on the merits of a judicial inquiry,” she told Global News.
“And you know, if he’s really serious about the apology, then I would ask him to allow councillor McKenney’s motion for a judicial inquiry to be debated and voted on at the next council meeting.”
Deans said she’s not sure Ottawa needs both an audit and a judicial inquiry into the LRT, which remains down for a fourth week since its most recent derailment with no timeline yet for when trains will be back on the track.
She does see the value in a more targeted review via the city’s auditor general, Nathalie Gougeon, and a more sweeping inquiry led by an Ontario Superior Court Justice, as McKenney’s motion proposed.
“A judicial inquiry has a lot more teeth and can question members of council and the mayor as well, an auditor can’t,” she said.
Asked whether she thinks the vote would fall any differently should council consider the judicial inquiry directly at its next meeting, Deans said the pressure is growing on individual councillors to be accountable to their constituents rather than staunchly supporting the mayor’s position on any given topic.
“I think it would be an interesting outcome,” she said.
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