On April 27, 2022, Cochrane mayor Jeff Genung accepted a framed copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a gift to the Town of Cochrane with a broad smile.

Presentations received by mayor Jeff Genung on April 27th, 2022. (Photo by Barry Blick.)

In mid-September, after nearly five months of silence and stonewalling by the mayor and Council, finally receiving a response from the Mayor and Town Council and with a majority of the Town council members declaring that they were okay with having the gifted framed Charter hung in the Council Chambers, it looked like this drawn-out saga was finally coming to a satisfactory close and the Charter of Rights and Freedom, the supreme law of the land, was going to be mounted in the Council Chambers.

However, then there was an abrupt change of course as explained in an email received from Councillor Patrick Wilson on October 21st, according to which, the previous so-called majority in favour of posting the Charter in the Council Chamber had seemingly evaporated and become a minority. Patrick wrote:

Hi Ron, I wanted to take a minute to respond to you regarding this Framed Charter topic today. I again appreciate your passion on this subject and your Framed Charter document gift to the town.

I took some time following last Mondays Committee of the whole meeting to collect group opinion on hanging the gifted Framed Charter inside Council Chambers. Again, group consensus clearly seems against this action.

As I’ve emailed about previously, I don’t see the wisdom in making this subject a public meeting debate item and will defer to majority colleague opinion on this.

I understand that you disagree with this course of action, but I will respectfully remove myself from further discussion on this, unless or until group opinion changes here.

As asserted with my last email, where the document hangs or doesn’t, has no bearing on my personal commitment to the noble principals contained within the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.   

Hope to talk soon and I always appreciate and value your opinion, even when we disagree.

What a merry-go-round dealing with Cochrane’s town Council. This shocking reversal prompted me to send the following email on October 21st to Patrick and the rest of the Town Council:

I appreciate your ‘taking a minute’, as you say, as no one else on Council took it upon themselves to take a minute to reply to my email of September 29th from four weeks ago, again evidence of a concerning trend, as expressed in my October 7th email to Town Council, “Commitment to Give Staffing Updates”, of restricted engagement with the Town.

I must confess that I am perplexed and frustrated by this topsy-turvy response to the framed Charter that was gifted to the Town on April 27th, about six months ago. After nearly five months of silence and stonewalling by the mayor and Council, a majority, five out of seven, of the Council members responded to my email of September 19, saying that they were okay with posting the gifted framed copy of the Charter in the Council Chambers. On that basis, I assumed that this matter had finally been brought to a satisfactory resolution. With the majority of the council members expressing that they were okay with it, my expectation was that it would be incumbent on them to make their majority support a reality. 

Now, I am taken aback by your explanation that through your efforts to collect a group opinion on hanging the gifted Framed Charter inside Council Chambers following last Monday’s Committee of the Whole Meeting, “Again, group consensus clearly seems against this action”. “Again”, when previously a majority expressed that they were okay with hanging the gifted framed Charter inside Council Chambers? “Seems”? What does that mean? This discouraging report comes on the heels of Councillor Nagel declaring at his Facebook page a week ago, “I believe we will be hanging the a charter up”. What happened? It ‘seems’ to me that several of the Council members have had a change of heart since last replying to my September 19 email. I hope that it wasn’t a situation where the mayor believed that he has a veto vote on the matter.

After the response from my September 19 email showing majority support, disappointingly, we have now come back full circle with uncertainty as to the position of each Council member on this matter. Accordingly, I need clarification as a result of this sudden, unexpected change so that your positions on this matter are on record. 

My question for each member of Council is as follows: 

Do you support having the gifted framed copy of the Charter mounted on the wall of the Council Chambers?

Again, given my disappointing past experience with your unwillingness to reply to my queries, if I do not receive a reply to my query above by the end of day on Friday, October 28th, I will take a non-response to my query to be a “No”, namely, a rejection of placing our gifted framed Charter on the wall of the Council Chambers.

Patrick, I am not sure that I understand your final statement, “I always appreciate and value your opinion, even when we disagree”. I assumed that you were in support of having the gifted Charter to be hung up in the Council Chambers, so where is the disagreement? Am I correct with that understanding that you were and continue to be in support putting the Charter up in the Council Chambers?

On October 25th, Patrick Wilson responded as follows:

Hi Ron, yes I am in favour of hanging the framed Charter within Council Chambers but it isn’t the prevailing opinion amongst the group. 

As stated before, I don’t see this topic as productive in exploring further and I’ll discontinue further inquiries.  
Apart from Councillor Patrick Wilson, only one other Council member, Marni Fedeyko, deemed to reply to my query as follows:
Let me be the first to respond other than Patrick. 
A gift is a gift. 
I don’t personally think of bestowing something to another person or group with a particular agenda as being a gift. 

As a councillor, I thank you (and your group of representatives) for your gift.  I really don’t believe it is appropriate or in your privy to hold this council hostage to display it in the way ‘that is acceptable’ to your group only. Giving a gift to the mayor and council with a ‘must do agenda’ is no different then bestowing a gift to a friend and demanding them to use it in the way you see fit.

Patrick has responded many times, and if you look back again at council’s comments (that you previously deadlined us on), it was never about your gift… it was about you dictating how and what we do with it. Which seems no longer a gift to me (personally speaking), but rather an agenda of a different sort. 

I am not responding further. 

On October 30, 2022, I sent the following reply to Councillor Fedeyko and the rest of the Town Council

Hi Marni,

Disappointed that you have changed your tune since a month ago when you encouragingly said, “I have no problem with the Charter in Chambers”. 

I reject your claim that there was a “must” involved in posting the gifted framed Charter. When Deborah and I presented the framed Charter to mayor Genung on April 27, 2022, as a gift to the Town, not to the mayor, you, and the other councillors as a personal gift, and he accepted it with his big smile, we expressed the desire that it be hung up in the Council Chambers, and he understood that

Shortly after our presentation on April 27, 2022, Mayor Genung told Cochrane Now, that he hadn’t “decided where the framed charter of rights will be displayed”. It can’t be ‘displayed’ if it is in a storage closet or wherever else he has put it and hopefully not in the trash. Interesting that in November 2019 Mayor Genung had no problem in deciding to have four EV chargers, essentially monuments to Klaus Schwab and the WEF, installed at taxpayer expense on Town land, the parking lot across from the new station on Railway Street. 

When Council had some discussion in July about what to do about the framed Charter and convinced Patrick Wilson not to bring a Notice of Motion forward to bring an end to the logjam, I understand that Mayor Genung told Council that he would reach out to me, but he must have lost my contact information. After nearly five months of silence and stonewalling, in mid-September when pressed by Cochrane Now, Mayor Gerung eventually replied that there was one up in the Administrative Offices and that should be sufficient. 

I would contend that our Charter, the supreme law of the land guaranteeing our fundamental rights and freedoms, is highly valuable and therefore the Council Chambers where Council makes decisions on behalf of the community very much seems an appropriate place to put it to remind Council of the oath you took to “diligently, faithfully and to the best of my ability, execute according to the law”, and thus be guided by the Charter. Where else would you put it? Hide it away in a storage room or perhaps in the garbage bin?

To use the word “must” implies that the Council had no choice but to accept placing it in the Council Chambers, which I categorically deny. Your choice was simple, yes or no. Trying to get a clear answer from Town Council over the last 6 months has been like pulling teeth.

While I disagree with your perspective that there was a “must” involved in posting the gifted framed Charter, I appreciate that you answered my recent query unlike five other members of Town Council, namely, Mayor Genung, and Councillors Flowers, Reed, McFadden, and Nagel, who disrespectfully refused to answer my query, which I took as a no. One is inclined to conclude that their shameful unwillingness to weigh in and declare themselves on this matter, speaks volumes about their regard for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The back story to this drawn-out saga, now into its sixth month is the stonewalling by Cochrane’s Town Council. This highly disrespectful behaviour by Town Council is tantamount to passive aggressive behaviour, essentially treating a citizen of this Town as persona non grata. I suppose ‘Mr. Positivity’ and others only reply when they receive accolades as that is all that is permitted in ‘Mr. Roger’s neighborhood’. 

I take your reply as a no, which means that the final record will show that 6 out 7 members of Cochrane Town Council, namely, Mayor Genung, yourself, and Councillors Flowers, Reed, McFadden, and Nagel, do not support having the gifted framed copy of the Charter mounted on the wall of the Council Chambers?

The refusal to answer supports my contention of a concerning trend of restricted engagement with the Town of Cochrane as expressed in my email of October 7, 2022 sent to Town Council. After three weeks, nothing but crickets from Town Council. Laughable that the Administration, which often acts as a gatekeeper when a citizen wishes to appear as a delegation to the Town Council, encourages citizens to pursue the option of emails to the Town Council. Your recent failed attempt as a result of a tied 3:3 vote on a Notice of Motion (with Mayor Genung and Councillors Reid and Flowers opposed and yourself and Councillors Nagel and Wilson in favour) to get Council to instruct the Administration to allow the public to comment on the Town’s official Facebook page is telling. 

Sincerely,

Ron Voss

Essentially disenfranchised citizen of the Town of Cochrane

Whereas previously a majority of the Town Council members, namely, Councillors Wilson, Fedeyko, Reed, McFadden, and Nagel, had indicated that they were okay with posting the gifted framed copy of the Charter in the Council Chambers, now with this abrupt turnaround, only Councillor Wilson remained in support of doing so.

So, this saga, long drawn-out over six months, has finally come to a definitive end – a far from satisfactory end. This saga has been punctuated by silence and stonewalling on behalf of Cochrane’s Town Council. In light of this disrespectful behavior and games (at one time being in a majority to post the Charter and then a few weeks later switching to a minority) by our Town Council over this drawn-out period, it is abundantly clear that they do not hold our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the supreme law of the land, in high regard. This despite that in their very oath of office, they declare, “to diligently, faithfully and to the best of my ability, execute according to the law, the office of mayor (or councillor)”. Surely, that commitment to execute their duties “according to the law”, would apply to the supreme law of the land, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and a reminder of such a commitment, a framed copy of the Charter, would be best positioned in the Council Chambers, where our elected representatives make decisions on behalf of our community. Disappointingly, this was not to be. 

Let the record note that Mayor Genung along with Councillors Flowers, McFadden, Reed, Fedeyko and Nagel, were unwilling to hang the gifted frame copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Council Chambers.