Surrey’s council to vote on pausing new ethics complaints until next election – BC | The Canadian News

The City of Surrey’s ethics commissioner could find himself prohibited from investigating any new ethics complaints before the next election, should a bylaw amendment be approved at Monday’s city council meeting.

The proposed change to the city’s Council Code of Conduct Bylaw would “suspend the processing and investigation of complaints by the Surrey Ethics Commissioner in the period leading up to the 2022 Local General Election,” according to Monday’s agenda.

Coun. Jack Hundial, who spearheaded the creation of an ethics commissioner’s office in 2019, called the idea “profoundly troubling.”

“(It) is really quite remarkable considering we just put through a series of bylaws to get this thing up and running,” he said.

“What is the real reason behind Mayor (Doug) McCallum trying to push through, really try and silence the community, in trying to get any sort of complaints in when they feel there is wrongdoing by elected officials?”

The mayor declined to comment for this story.

McCallum is currently facing an ethics complaint over taxpayer funding of his legal defense on a charge of public mischief, related to statements he made following an altercation with police transition opponents in September.

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At the time, he alleged one of the transition opponents ran over his foot with a car.

Hundial said his understanding is that the bylaw change, if passed, would not scrap that investigation but would apply to new complaints after Jan. 31.

But he said that putting any kind of restrictions on ethics complaints was problematic.

“We’ve still got eight, nine months before the municipal election here, we already have a mayor who is facing charges. What other behavior are people going to see coming out of elected officials leading up to the general election? ”

Bill Tieleman, a strategist with the Surrey Police Vote group which filed the ethics complaint against the mayor, said he was not as confident the bylaw changes would not affect the process.

“That could be put in grave doubt,” he said, arguing that Ethics Commissioner Reese Harding could either be fired by council or decide to quit given the restrictions put on his office.

The only think I can think of that is remotely like this is when former President Richard Nixon fired the special prosecutor who was investigating Watergate. That did not turn out well either. ”

Tielman said the provincial government needs to step in and create recall provisions or other accountability measures for municipal officials accused of or charged with crimes, something for which the Union of BC Municipalities has been advocating for several years.

Hundial said he’s yet to hear an explanation for why the bylaw needs to be changed, and will press for answers at Monday’s meeting.

– with files from Catherine Urquhart