No common sense

Dear Editor:

Anyone checking recent meetings of City Council will have noticed a growing concern on the part of councillors about the cost of the Judicial Inquiry they launched.

Much has been made of Mayor Hazel McCallion’s failure to declare a conflict of interest in a matter that was on the agenda of a council meeting. It is acknowledged that, on two previous occasions, she had declared a conflict with respect to the same transaction. On the occasion in question, the issue was not discussed.

Given council’s prior knowledge of (Mayor McCallion’s) conflict of interest on this issue, why did none of them draw to her attention her failure to again declare that conflict? Do they not read and understand the agenda before attending the meeting?

Some of the expense of the Judicial Inquiry could have been avoided by using common sense and common courtesy. This is especially the case considering that a legal opinion that council requested indicated there was no evidence of a conflict occurring at that meeting.

Comments by others - 2 - to this web-page at time of posting;

ComeOn May 27, 2010 12:11 PM

Hazel brought this inquiry upon all of us

The writer fails to understand that the declaring of a conflict of interest is each elected official's personal responsibility. However, the inquiry is not about the conflict of interest as such. It should be noted that Hazel missed declaring a conflict of interest at DOZENS of meetings where OMERS (son's business partner and city's partner) was being discussed. One this point I do not know how she will wiggle away. Oh bye the way, she herself launched an inquiry years ago and she has been CONVICTED of abusing her office in the past even after she appealed. Now I am ready for your abuse. Fire away.

* Agree 2 Disagree 1

Uatu May 26, 2010 10:14 PM

This letter completely misses the point

The point here is NOT that the Mayor failed to declare her conflict; everyone agrees that was an oversight and not important because there was no discussion of consequence on the matter. What was significant is that someone altered the minutes to record that she had declared a conflict when she had done no such thing. This is a serious breach of the public trust, but sadly the terms of reference for the Inquiry dropped investigation into the matter. We are therefore left to wonder who made the change, whether anyone asked for the change, and most importantly, whether the minutes (sparse as they will be from now on) can be trusted to be accurate.

* Agree 3 Offensive 1

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