The City of Surrey’s ethics commissioner could find himself prohibited from investigating any new ethics complaints before the next election, should a bylaw amendment be approved at Monday’s council meeting.
The proposed change to the city’s Council Code of Conduct Bylaw would “suspend the processing and investigation of complaints by the Surrey Ethics Commissioner in the period leading up to the 2022 Local General Election,” according to Monday’s agenda.
Coun. Jack Hundial, who spearheaded the creation of an ethics commissioner’s office in 2019, called the idea “profoundly troubling.”
“(It) is really quite remarkable considering we just put through a series of bylaws to get this thing up and running,” he said.
“What is the real reason behind Mayor (Doug) McCallum trying to … silence the community, in trying to get any sort of complaints in when they feel there is wrongdoing by elected officials?”
The mayor declined to comment for this story.
McCallum is facing an ethics complaint over taxpayer funding of his legal defence on a charge of public mischief, related to statements he made following an altercation with police transition opponents in September.
At the time, he alleged one of the transition opponents ran over his foot with a car.
Hundial said his understanding is that the bylaw change, if passed, would not scrap that investigation but would apply to new complaints after Jan. 31.
But he said that putting any kind of restrictions on ethics complaints was problematic.
“We’ve still got eight, nine months before the municipal election here, we already have a mayor who is facing charges. What other behaviour are people going to see coming out of elected officials leading up to the general election?”
Bill Tieleman, a strategist with the Surrey Police Vote group which filed the ethics complaint, said he was not as confident the bylaw changes wouldn’t affect the process.
“That could be put in grave doubt,” he said, arguing that commissioner Reese Harding could either be fired by council or decide to quit.
“The only thing I can think of that’s remotely like this is when former president Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor who was investigating Watergate. That didn’t turn out well either.”
Tielman said the provincial government needs to step in and create recall provisions or other accountability measures for municipal officials accused of or charged with crimes, something for which the Union of BC Municipalities has been advocating for several years.
Hundial said he’s yet to hear a explanation for why the bylaw needs to be changed, and will press for answers on Monday.
– with files from Catherine Urquhart