Integrity commissioner admonishes Central Elgin council

Central Elgin addressed municipal code of conduct complaints against Councillors Morgaine Griffin and Michelle Graham on Oct. 6, amidst integrity commissioner (IC) admonitions that “enmity” between members of council seems to have sparked a total of 13 code complaints in the past six months at a cost to taxpayers of about $16,300.

A report on a third code complaint against Mayor Andrew Sloan was “withdrawn from this evening’s agenda as requested by the integrity commissioner,” said Mayor Sloan. The municipality had already released that report to the public on Oct. 2, but it was not included in the online agenda package for Monday’s meeting.

Central Elgin Integrity Commissioner Suzanne Craig dismissed allegations of wrongdoing against Mayor Sloan in the missing report. The complaint received in April alleged the mayor offered to “sell” his vote to support both candidates in the December 2024 election of an Elgin County Warden. In exchange, Mayor Sloan was alleged to have asked for the transfer of ownership of White’s Station from Elgin County to Central Elgin.

In his submission to the IC, Mayor Sloan denied the allegations and suggested they were “vexatious.” The property in question is a leased drop-off point for the Municipality of Central Elgin’s tree and yard waste collection programs. It’s owned by the county, which also stores materials on the site.

“ … This office is not prepared to engage in a full investigation process without sufficient basis,” Ms. Craig said in her report to council. “The complainant (unnamed in the report) has not set out any particulars of the ‘private advantage’ gained by the respondent or another person by his actions. This office will not investigate based on suspicion alone.

“Additionally, I use this opportunity to express concern about the types and volume of complaints received by my office in Central Elgin at great expense to taxpayers,” she added.

In an interim annual report also submitted to council on Oct. 6, Ms. Craig mentions other critical observations of council’s behaviour.

“During this reporting period (from March 17, 2025 to Sept. 26, 2025), this office has received and reviewed complaints that underscored an absence of members working together,” said Ms. Craig. “The enmity between certain members of council has become increasingly pronounced over the course of the past six months.”

There was one code complaint which resulted in an informal resolution, two were dismissed, one abandoned, one involved a full investigation and was sustained, and eight code complaint investigations are ongoing.

“The integrity commissioner is not the arbiter of personalities or whether council votes in blocs, except if the actions are tantamount to a violation of the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, human rights legislation, or Central Elgin bylaws and policies,” she added.

“I urge members of council to carefully review and consider the purpose of (the) code before filing a complaint with my office and to consider their representative role to work together in the best interests of the municipality,” the report added. “While I will endeavour to reduce the time put into the many complaints outstanding, I conduct thorough investigations and typically this will incur significant cost to the municipality.”

However, Ms. Craig also ruled that a “dressing down” of Chief Administrative Officer Carey Herd by Crs. Griffin and Graham during a closed session of CE council in April was “disrespectful, demeaning, and intimidating.” The IC recommended that council reprimand them and order the councillors to submit written apologies for the CAO.

Council endorsed the recommendations and also supported a motion requiring “that all members of council participate in training in gender equality and inclusive government,” as was also suggested by the IC.

“To be clear,” Ms. Craig said in her report to council, “I have found that it was not (Crs. Griffin and Graham) asking questions seeking clarification but rather the disrespectful tone and manner in which the comments were delivered and what they suggested.”

A written or otherwise recorded summary of the alleged interaction over an issue that’s still deemed to be confidential, is not available because none exists, but the incident was described from varying witness perspectives identified in Ms. Craig’s report to council.

In their submissions to the IC, both councillors denied “yelling” or “exploding” at Ms. Herd in rapid-fire questions. Both instead suggested in separate statements that they are victims, as Respondent One put it, of “an informal bloc of male councillors engaging in exclusionary conduct and using gendered language to marginalize female councillors.

“The CAO was given a specific financial limit authorized by a majority of council with respect to the [legal matter],” according to the IC’s report, using square brackets in her quotation of Respondent One’s response to the code allegations. “In unilaterally [making a decision] without seeking further direction from council, the CAO acted outside the bounds of her mandate. My comments during the closed session reflected legitimate concerns about process, governance, and accountability, not personal hostility.”

In her statement to council on Oct. 6, Cr. Graham said: “My comments during closed session regarding this matter were firm and direct. There’s no denying that. I was focused on governance and accountability of staff, and it was not a personal attack … I continue to raise concerns about gendered language, misogyny and unequal standards and I welcome the IC’s recommendation for gender equity and the respectful engagement training for council.”

Cr. Griffin was also given an opportunity to address the matter at council’s meeting.

“I have brought motion after motion to this council urging better accountability,” she said. “In February of 2023, I moved that we should record closed sessions, a policy which is recommended by the ombudsman, so that if a complaint about a closed session were to arise, we would have footage. My motion was defeated.

“I brought another motion in March of 2023 asking that we receive written overview of our closed session matter rather than receiving verbal only reports,” added Cr. Griffin. “If that had been available for this meeting in question, Cr. Graham and I both might have had time to send questions in emails, or to ask them in one-on-one phone calls in advance.

“These options would probably have felt far less hostile than the deluge of questions that follows the sudden awareness of possible legislative conflicts, the formation of precedents, and a sense of urgency to absorb a great deal of information too quickly and without preparation,” she said. “Even now these policies are not being recommended to us as a lesson learned the hard way.

“I swore an oath to the 13,000 people who live in Central Elgin,” Cr. Griffin continued. “I promised to work faithfully and diligently. I cannot uphold that oath without asking questions about the way that public money is spent, about the rules that our staff and our council follow. That commitment to the public must be the cornerstone of the work we do here.”

Regarding Cr. Griffin’s allegations of a voting bloc on council that frustrates many of her initiatives, the IC stated: “It’s a complex question councillor. If a group of members of council, for example, are acting in a way that’s intimidating or otherwise harassing to one or more members of council, it’s not so much the voting bloc that I would be looking at, but the pattern of conduct of a group of councillors. That is within my mandate to determine.”

In her statement to the IC, Respondent Two states: “Prior to our swearing in, the mayor invited a group of councillors-elect to a dinner where he proposed that we agree in advance to support one another’s ward motions, a form of strategic alignment that would have violated quorum rules once we were officially sworn in.

“I stated that such discussions were inappropriate even before the oaths,” added Respondent Two. “From that moment, I have faced consistent resistance to my participation: motions I bring forward are routinely blocked regardless of merit, and my objections to procedural deviations are often reframed as emotional or combative dissent.”

Mayor Sloan, Deputy Mayor Todd Noble, as well as Crs. Norm Watson and David Conners, did not comment or ask questions about the IC reports. Cr. Dave Baughman was absent.

Council also approved three recommendations contained in the IC’s interim annual report: that the IC work with municipal staff to update the code of conduct’s complaint protocol; update council-staff relations policies; and develop a policy for council members’ use of social media.

by Joe Konecny, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter