Follow Ontario's lead on open meetings

Published Wednesday March 25th, 2009

The municipal council of LaSalle, Ontario, found itself in the hot seat recently. At a closed-door meeting of council, it voted to sell the town hall.

Ontario, like New Brunswick, has an open meetings law. Council and committee meetings must be open to the public unless the statute specifically provides otherwise. There are reasonable exceptions, of course. But the intent of the law is that council and committee meetings should be in public.

Ontario's law used to be identical to that of New Brunswick. Not long ago, Ontario took it a bit further. Now, when someone complains that a meeting was closed when it should have been open, an investigation must take place at the expense of the municipality.

The Windsor Star tried to get documentation of the alleged sale. It was told that the meeting had been held in camera. Thus, no documentation had to be released. The Star complained.

According to Amberley Gavel, the firm hired by LaSalle to look into the closed-meeting complaints, councillors didn't discuss or vote on the sale of the town hall at the meeting complained of. But certain comments of the mayor led it to believe that if the sale wasn't discussed at that closed meeting, it was discussed at another. This should have been done "at a duly constituted public meeting, open to the public."

Why do we mention this? Because if it had happened in New Brunswick, there wouldn't be any real remedy outside of a lawsuit. We have an open meetings law too. Unlike Ontario, there is no responsibility on the part of a municipality or the provincial government to see that it is obeyed.

There is no exception in the statute for so-called "working sessions" or "committee of the whole" meetings of council. Save for the listed exceptions, which are admittedly vague and badly undefined, the meetings must be open to the public.

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