ABSTRACT

At the April 2, 2024 Committee of the Whole Meeting, Administration introduced its draft revised Procedural Bylaw for Council’s input ahead of it being brought forward for first reading at the Regular Council Meeting on April 8, 2024. The draft Procedural Bylaw was examined for how sections 4.2(c) and 7.2 (Notices of Motion) in the existing Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 were handled given the failure of Council to abide by those portions of the existing Procedural Bylaw, as discussed at length in previous blog posts, for example.

With respect to section 4.2(c) of the existing 2019 Bylaw, namely, “When the Presiding Officer wishes to participate in the debate on a question or motion properly before the Meeting, the Presiding Officer shall vacate the Chair and request the Deputy Mayor to assume the Chair”, the Administration claimed that “as written it is not clear”. The fact that their ‘revision’ of this clause to supposedly make it ‘clear’ was simply to delete it, and, for good measure, to add a clause to the draft 2024 Bylaw that negates the removed clause, revealed that they fully understood its meaning, as anyone with a basic working knowledge of the English language should. Nonetheless, when confronted with their failure to uphold this aspect of bylaw, they continued to use the bogus claim of a lack of clarity as an excuse for it not being properly followed.

After the presentation of the draft Procedural Bylaw at the Committee of the Whole Meeting, Mayor Genung acknowledged with respect to the handling of notices of motion that, “we have stumbled over that in past”. To say that the town has ‘stumbled’ over that in the past, would be an understatement. The Council has been all over the map in how they have addressed notices of motion and rarely in accord with the language of Section 7.2 of the existing 2019 Bylaw. Instead of Administration encouraging Council to follow what is clearly written with respect to notices of motion in the existing Procedural Bylaw 19/2019, they have chosen to radically rework that section such that they have created a new entity which no longer resembles what constitutes a notice of motion.  As well, contrary to their declared objective in the rewrite to improve clarity, that rewrite of the notices of motion section of the revised procedural bylaw is “prone to misinterpretation” (ironically Administration’s description of the existing procedural bylaw). Of course, encouraging the Council to follow the current instructions as written wouldn’t do, as that would have entailed having to acknowledge that they haven’t been followed in the past and Administration did nothing about it.

The course for this fiasco was set over a year ago on January 12, 2023, when the Mayor’s response to my drawing attention to his violating 4.2(c) of the 2019 Bylaw was that, “That section of the bylaw is specific to the Mayor making motions within the meeting”, although no such words were included in the bylaw. As the mayor seems unable to conduct the Council meetings without coaching from the Administrative staff, over time it has become clearer that it most likely was the Administration that furnished the mayor with that bogus argument, tantamount to gaslighting me.  Once they set out on this course they ginned up the narrative that the wording of the procedural bylaw, which they themselves authored, was confusing or open to interpretation to cover for their failure to ensure proper application of this clause.

The bottom line is that Cochrane’s municipal government, bottom to top, namely, Administration up to elected Council and Mayor, has been remiss in ensuring compliance with aspects of the Procedural Bylaw and Council Code of Conduct. And that is unacceptable.

While some may question my doggedness on this matter, the point is that if they are lackadaisical and negligent with respect to following the rules that they themselves developed, adopted and which they are mandated to follow, one presumes that such an approach will carry over to  how they manage the town’s affairs in general.

The revised Procedural Bylaw 17/2024 comes up for second reading at the April 22, 2024 Regular Council Meeting, a time where Council may debate and propose and consider amendments to the bylaw. The current Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 was approved in March, 2019 with first, second and third readings taking place in short order on the very same day with limited discussion. Now there are claims that some aspects of the existing bylaw are unclear. However, in an email seeking clarity sent to Ms. Jaylene Knight, Director, Legislative & Administrative Services, the author of the revised Procedural Bylaw, with a copy to the entire Council, I pointed out, “While the new version in the draft 2024 Bylaw is supposedly intended to clarify what is clear in the existing version, it only corrupts the meaning of a notice of motion and adds confusion”. While the draft, revised version claims to establish “clear guidelines for Council”, several questions were raised with respect to the confusion in the rewrite. However, to date, no response has been received from Ms. Knight with respect to my effort to seek clarity. Hopefully, the council in its second reading discussion, unlike in 2019, will give serious consideration of the proposed bylaw and ensure that it is clear, especially with respect to the questions I raised. Addressing those questions will likely require further changes to the draft Bylaw 17/2024, such that it will need to be brought back with amendments at a future meeting..

FULL BLOG

At the April 2, 2024 Committee of the whole Meeting, Ms. Jaylene Knight, Director, Legislative & Administrative Services, introduced its draft revised Procedural Bylaw for Council’s input ahead of it being brought forward for First Reading. According to the Town of Cochrane’s Committee of the Whole Report for the draft  Procedural Bylaw 17/2024, the revision was needed to deal with “challenges with the existing bylaw being too prescriptive and prone to misinterpretation”. The reality, however, is the “prone to misinterpretation” or confusion argument was brought forward as a smoke screen to cover for the fact that elements of the current Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 were not being followed. The reference to “This Bylaw establishes clear guidelines for Council and Council Committee processes while also providing clarity for residents observing Council” is gaslighting suggesting that aspects of the current bylaw were unclear or confusing to residents like me when they were, in fact, perfectly clear for anybody with a reasonable working knowledge of the English language.

While according to Section 145 (1) of the Municipal Government Act, “A council may, by bylaw, establish procedures to be followed by the Council”, it also requires pursuant to section 153 of the Act that councillors “have a duty to adhere to the code of conduct established by the council”, which includes the requirement according section 7.1 of the Council Code of Conduct to “uphold the law established by the Parliament of Canada and the Legislature of Alberta and the bylaws, policies and procedures adopted by Council (emphasis added)”.

There have been a long series of blog posts over the last year or more related to the arduous task of trying to make the Council and Administration accountable with respect to violations of the town’s Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 and Code Code of Conduct:
Mayor Genung Plays the Role of Winston Smith(February 8, 2023)
Quest for Town Council Accountability (March 20, 2023)
Procedural Mess at Town Council Meeting (September 29, 2023)
Review of the Spin at the Town’s “Procedural Bylaw Review and Update” (October 6, 2023)
Complaint Lodged Re Improper Procedures Followed By the Town of Cochrane (October 10, 2023)
Seeking Clarity from the Town’s Administration (December 12, 2023)
Stonewalled by Town Administration (December 18, 2023)
Stonewalled by Town Administration – Part 2 (January 11, 2024)
Total Chaos and Inconsistency in the Town’s (Mis)Handling Notices of Motion (February 29, 2024)
I have been banging the drum on this matter for a long time with no accountability forthcoming.

Now some may say, Ron why are you making such a big deal of this? Besides not appreciating being gaslit by our town’s municipal office, if our town (both unelected Administration and elected Council) have no problem in violating their Procedural Bylaw and Code of Conduct, then why wouldn’t such behaviour carry over to how they manage the town’s affairs in general? Thus, it is noteworthy in a recent interview with Jeff Colvin, Chestermere’s former mayor who claims to have unjustly been removed from office by Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver, observed (starting at 1:41:32 minutes in the video) that when it came to expenditures, the Town of Cochrane was “way out to lunch” compared to other municipalities. Using as a basis for comparison the municipality’s budget divided by its population, giving a per person expenditure in the budget, one ends up with about $1600 per person in Chestermere, and $2300, $1800, and $2600 expenditure per person, respectively,  for Calgary, Edmonton and Cochrane. With Cochrane, roughly the same size as Chestermere, spending about $30 million more, he observed that there is “something odd going on there”. 

After going through a litany of examples of financial waste and malfeasance in the municipal office of Chestermere, Colvin, opined that “this is happening everywhere” at the municipal level.

The draft Procedural Bylaw 17/2024, found as an attachment to the Committee of the Whole Report, was reviewed from the perspective of seeing how the Administration covered up the fact that they failed to ensure that aspects of the existing bylaw were being followed. Of particular interest was how 4.2(c) and 7.2 (Notices of Motion) in the existing Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 were handled. The side-by-side comparison of sections of the 2019 Bylaw and 2024 Bylaw below will show how the Administration tried to explain away the clear meaning of section 4.2(c) of the existing 2019 Bylaw.

Section 4.1 of the existing 2019 Bylaw (not shown) corresponded to the Quorum, which appeared as Section 4.4 of the draft 2024 Bylaw. Our first observation is that the entire section 4.2, including clause 4.2(c) dealing with the Presiding Officer, was expunged from the draft 2024 Bylaw and with that the deletion of 4.2(c), supposedly according to the Administration to get rid of any ‘confusion’ as to the wording, the mayor or chair will ipso facto no longer be in violation of the Procedural Bylaw. Clause 4.2(c) is abundantly clear as to its meaning for anyone with a working knowledge of the English language, which one would hope to be the case for the town’s administrative staff and elected councillors. In fact, the inclusion of Section 4.2 in the draft 2024 Bylaw, a negation of what was said in 4.2(c) of the 2019 Bylaw, is tantamount to an admission by the Administration as to the clear meaning 4.2(c) of the existing 2019 Bylaw, So much for Ms. Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services making the bogus claim in January 2024 that they recognized that 4.2(c) of the 2019 Bylaw “as written it is not clear”. It is perfectly clear for anyone with a basic knowledge of the English language and they know it, but they continued to use this bogus argument to shield the mayor and themselves from their blatant failure to follow 4.2(c) of the 2019 Bylaw.

In a blog post, Complaint Lodged Re Improper Procedures Followed By the Town of Cochrane, on October 10, 2023, I had explained anticipate how I thought Ms. Knight would ‘amend’ the Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 with respect to sub-section 4.2(c), namely, “One expects that she will simply expunge it (“removal of processes that no longer fit our organization “), and then, magically, it will clear the mayor from any violation of the bylaw. She will offer the questionable argument for doing so that the current wording “contravenes the direction within the MGA which is our guiding document”. Remember that she was the author of this document in 2019 and somehow, she wasn’t ‘guided’ by the MGA (Municipal Governance Act) then? Although she claims that the MGA speaks “very clearly” as to the role of the presiding officer, it didn’t speak to her “very clearly” in 2019 when she drafted the current Procedural Bylaw 19/2019?

Interestingly, in the Q&A that followed the presentation (see video from 1:42:33 to 1:48:00 minutes with the Q&A to follow) of the draft Procedural Bylaw by Ms. Jaylene Knight, Director, Legislative & Administrative Services, Councillor Susan Flowers said, “I like that the chair can debate”, clearly indicating that she understood that there were conditions whereby he could do so as per 4.2(c) of the existing 2019 Bylaw. Also noteworthy that when I made my presentation to Council on March 20, 2023 in the discussion afterwards Councillor Morgan Nagel, admitted that the procedural bylaw had been violated by Mayor Genung, acknowledging that I had “pointed out an area where council has not been following it (its procedural bylaw)”. Nonetheless, he and the other councillors would not agree to my request to lodge a complaint against the mayor for violating the Procedural Bylaw, and thereby the mayor had the councillors violated the Council Code of Conduct which requires according to Section 7.1 that, “Members (of Council) shall uphold the law established by the Parliament of Canada and the Legislature of Alberta and the bylaws, policies and procedures adopted by Council (emphasis added)”. As well, according to Section 7.3, “A Member (of Council) must not encourage disobedience of any bylaw, policy or procedure of the Municipality in responding to a member of the public, as this undermines public confidence in the Municipality and in the rule of law”, which is exactly what they and the mayor did..

Section 4.3 of the 2024 Bylaw is a new clause, not to be found in the 2019 Bylaw. However, I had heard it before on January 12, 2023, when the mayor’s response to my drawing attention to his violating 4.2(c) of the 2019 Bylaw was that “That section of the bylaw is specific to the Mayor making motions within the meeting”. However, no such wording existed in the 2019 Bylaw. Noteworthy that in her January 9, 2024 response to my December 18, 2023 email, “Seeking Clarity from the Town’s Administration”, Ms. Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services, essentially repeated what the mayor had said a year earlier, namely, “that the intent of this section when drafted was that it apply to instances where the Presiding Officer wished to bring forward a Notice of Motion, or place a motion on the floor for debate”.

While the expectation was to receive input from Council ahead of it being brought forward for First Reading, there was limited feedback, in general, and only four of the councillors (Mayor Genung and Councillors Flowers, Reed and Wilson) were present, barely reaching quorum. As an indication of the quality of the feedback, at one point, Councillor Flowers asked what the word “censure” meant as apparently she had “never seen that word before”.

The side-by-side comparison of sections of the 2019 Bylaw and 2024 Bylaw below will show how the Administration tried to explain away the clear explanation of how to address notices of motion as per Section 7.2 of the existing 2019 Bylaw.

Section 2, the Definitions section of the draft 2024 Bylaw, contained a rather unusual change in the definition of a notice of motion. Whereas, previously in the 2019 Bylaw, a notice of motion was defined as “the means by which a Member of Council may bring business before Council for consideration”, it was changed to “the means by which a Member of Council may bring a topic before Council for consideration” in the draft 2024 Bylaw. As far as a revision of the bylaw supposedly intended to bring about clarity, this odd definition just adds confusion. Thus, when Councillor McFadden brought forward a notice of motion to restore the comments at the Town’s Facebook page, an exercise of business, according to this odd definition she should, for example, only have  used a notice of motion to raise the “topic” of ‘Comments at the Town’s Facebook Page before Council’.

As explained numerous times, it is clear from Section 7.2 of the town’s existing Procedural Bylaw 19/2019 that a notice of motion is not to be subject to discussion or vote when it is first presented or read at a Regular Council Meeting. The example of section 32(4) of the City of Edmonton’s Procedural Bylaw, couldn’t make it any clearer, “The giving of notice of motion is not debatable”.  While the new version in the draft 2024 Bylaw is supposedly intended to clarify what is clear in the existing version, it only corrupts the meaning of a notice of motion and adds confusion.

The new version raises many questions. For example, while a notice of motion in accord with 7.2(b) of the 2019 Bylaw “must be given without discussion on the matter”, 7.2(b) of the draft 2024 Bylaw declares that “A notice of motion may not be discussed or debated prior to putting a Motion on the floor”. When a notice of motion is read or presented at a meeting, it is not thereby a motion that is put on the floor. Is the mere giving or reading a notice of motion at a meeting to be construed as having put a motion on the floor? What constitutes “putting a Motion on the floor”? As described by section 7.2(a) of the 2019 Bylaw, a Member may make a motion, that is, put a motion on the floor for debate and vote, “only if notice is given at a previous Regular Council meeting.”

When it says in 7.2(c) of the draft 2024 Bylaw that, “A Member may move a Motion whether or not the Member intends to support it”, does this mean that any Member of Council, not just the author of the notice of motion, can put a motion on the floor related to the notice of motion? With the reference to “may” is one option that no Member of Council puts a motion on the floor?

According to 7.2(d) of the draft 2024 Bylaw, “The Member who submitted a written Notice of Motion is not required to be present when the Notice of Motion is read”. Again, does the reading of the notice of motion mean that a motion has been moved or put on the floor for debate and vote?

According to 7.2 (e) of the draft 2024 Bylaw, “No action will be taken by Administration on a Notice of Motion until a Resolution has been passed by Council”. Does “until a Resolution has been passed by Council” refer to actions taken under 7.2(b) and 7.2(c) of the draft 2024 Bylaw?

When Councillor Fedeyko brought forward a Whistleblower Policy notice of motion at the December 11, 2023 Regular Council Meeting, instead of following the Mayor’s normal, improper procedure of inviting debate and vote debate on the notice of motion that day (which Administration observed and said nothing) , Councillor Fedeyko appears to have worked out an arrangement in advance with Administration whereby she could request that it be held off for a later date. In fact, on querying Councillor Fedeyko, I was told that she had spoken to Ms. Jaylene Knight, Director, Legislative & Administrative Services, who had advised Councillor Fedeyko that it was her decision as to how the notice of motion was to be addressed To confirm if that was the case, a FOIP request was made on February 8, 2024. However, as discussed in a recent blog post, “Town Administration’s Handling of Notices of Motion Much to be Desired”, the retrieved records received on April 9, 2024 were disappointing as far as providing an answer to that question. Don’t see how this approach of giving the author of a notice of motion such authority, as invented by the Administration, would  fit the procedure described in section 7.2 of the draft 2024 Bylaw. By not being included in the revised, draft Procedural Bylaw once again reveals the arbitrariness with which the notice of motion process was followed to date.

Among the variety of approaches that have been used to deal with notices of motion, the most common approach (and improper approach as per 7.2 of the existing 2024 Bylaw) that has been used by the mayor is to invite the council members to discuss and vote on the notice of motion once it has been read or presented by the author of the notice of motion. Does the new version described in the draft 2024 Bylaw fit this more common approach that has been used by the mayor?

While the Council with its variety of inconsistent approaches has not been properly following the procedure for dealing with notices of motion as spelled out in section 7.2 of the existing 2019 Bylaw, the effort to provide some consistency in approach with the version to be found in the 2024 draft Bylaw, seems doubtful as it is likely to be “prone to misinterpretation”.  In an effort not to acknowledge the clear process for dealing with notices of motion as described in Section 7.2 of the 2019 Bylaw, Administration has created a confusing version that no longer properly describes how to handle a notice of motion.

As reported in a separate blog post, there has been considerable inconsistency in the handling of notices of motion. In the Q&A that followed the presentation by Ms. Jaylene Knight, Mayor Genung quipped, “I like the notice of motion section that really clearly outlines how and what we have to do as council members to action something”. He acknowledged that they “have stumbled over that in past and glad that’s been clarified”.  No kidding with respect to “stumbling”, as documented in a previous blog post, the Council has been all over the map in how they have addressed notices of motion and rarely in accord with the language of Section 7.2 of the existing 2019 Bylaw. Mayor Genung expressed the view that the “procedural bylaw should actually allow us to do the work of council in an unencumbered fashion”, a viewpoint which makes sense as that is largely how he has functioned not feeling that he should be encumbered by rules, especially 4.2(c) of the existing 2019 Bylaw.

The course for this fiasco was set over a year ago on January 12, 2023, when the Mayor’s response to my drawing attention to his violating 4.2(c) of the 2019 Bylaw was that, “That section of the bylaw is specific to the Mayor making motions within the meeting”. As the mayor seems unable to conduct the Council meetings without coaching from the Administrative staff, over time it has become clearer that it most likely was the Administration that furnished the mayor with that bogus argument, tantamount to gaslighting me. Section 4.3 of the 2024 Bylaw, namely, “The Chair may make a motion on any matter on the agenda but before doing so they must relinquish the Chair until the vote on the motion has been taken”, is a new clause, not to be found in the 2019 Bylaw. Support for that my hypothesis that the mayor in responding to me on January 12, 2023 received coaching from the Administration came a year later when Ms. Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services, in her January 9, 2024 response to my December 18, 2023 email, “Seeking Clarity from the Town’s Administration”, essentially repeated what the mayor had said a year earlier, namely, “that the intent of this section when drafted was that it apply to instances where the Presiding Officer wished to bring forward a Notice of Motion, or place a motion on the floor for debate”. While that may have been their intent, no such wording existed in the 2019 Bylaw. The councillors need to abide by what is in the procedural bylaw and not what by what the Administration ‘intended’ to put in there.

Once they set out on this course they ginned up the narrative that the wording of the procedural bylaw, which they themselves authored, was confusing or open to interpretation to cover for their failure to ensure proper application of this clause, since the failure to comply with the requirements of the procedural bylaw was as much or more the responsibility of the Administration.

I have come to realize that the councillors can’t think for themselves, but largely rely upon Administration to guide them on these procedural matters, such that ultimately the failure to comply with aspects of the town’s Procedural Bylaw and Code of Conduct rests with the Administration. Based upon disappointing interactions with Ms. Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services, in response to my efforts to seek some clarification on these matters, I concluded a previous blog post, “Stonewalled by Town Administration – Part 2“, with the observation that “the bottom line is that Cochrane’s municipal government, top to bottom, namely, elected Council plus Administration, has been remiss in ensuring compliance with aspects of the Procedural Bylaw and Council Code of Conduct. And that is unacceptable”.

On April, 4, 2024, an email seeking clarity with respect to the questions raised above was sent to Ms. Jaylene Knight, the author of the revised Procedural Bylaw, along with a copy to the entire Council and MLA Peter Guthrie. I sent an additional email saying, “I wanted to add the suggestion that the town consult with our MLA Peter Guthrie with respect to how the Alberta Legislature handles notices of motion”. Previously, on October 10, 2023 in response to my email, “Complaint Re Proper Procedures Not Followed”, Ms. Knight brushed me off saying, “I have received your email, but will not be providing any further comment”. However, hopefully my recent email will prompt the council members themselves to seek clarification from Ms. Knight.

For the first reading (really just bringing the bylaw to floor without debate or vote at this stage) of the revised Procedural Bylaw 17/2024 at the April 8, 2024 Regular Council meeting, Ms. Jaylene Knight, Director, Legislative & Administrative Services, explained that the Administration “had tried to take the processes that Council has been following (even though they were violating and not properly following them) and ensure that the new procedural bylaw reflected those processes”.

As discussed in a previous blog post, “Total Chaos and Inconsistency in the Town’s (Mis)Handling Notices of Motion“, as part of that confusion, Council, under the mayor’s direction, normally proceeds to a discussion and vote on notices of motion, which is at odds with Section 7.2 (Notices of Motion) of the town’s current Procedural Bylaw 19/2019, according to which there should be no discussion nor vote on a notice of motion. At the December 11, 2023 council meeting, backed up by support from the Administration that improper procedure was suspended simply because Councillor Fedeyko had requested that there should be no discussion of her Whistleblower Policy notice of motion. Because Ms. Stacey Loe, jumped in to support Councillor Fedeyko’s request, one suspects that Councillor Fedeyko had worked out such an arrangement in advance with Administration. In fact, on querying Councillor Fedeyko, I was told that she had spoken to Ms. Jaylene Knight, Director, Legislative & Administrative Services, who had advised Councillor Fedeyko it was her decision as to how her notice of motion was to be addressed. To further confirm that such a prior arrangement, a further example of arbitrariness in dealing with notices of motions, had been made with Ms. Knight, a FOIP request was made on February 8, 2024. That FOIP request contained no record of an exchange between Ms. Knight and Councillor Fedeyko to confirm what Councillor Fedeyko had told me. However, I subsequently learned from Councillor Fedeyko that that conversation had taken place in person.

UPDATE, May 3, 2024

In her Town of Cochrane Committee of the Whole Report for the May 6, 2024 Committee of the Whole Meeting in response to Councillor Fedeyko’s Whistleblower Program and Policy motion passed at January 8, 2024 Regular Council Meeting, Stacey Loe, Executive Director, Corporate Services referred to the “January 8, 2024 Notice of Motion debate”, again misrepresenting how a notice of motion is to be handled. According to 7.2(b) of the town’s existing Procedural Bylaw 19/2019, “A notice must be given without discussion of the matter”. That was done at the December 11, 2023 meeting.

An email, Administration’s Ongoing Misrepresentation of Notices of Motion, pointing out her misrepresentation of the situation was sent to Ms. Loe with a copy to Town Council.