1 2 3 TORONTO COMPUTER LEASING INQUIRY 4 GOOD GOVERNMENT PHASE 5 6 7 ******************** 8 9 10 BEFORE: THE HONOURABLE MADAM JUSTICE DENISE BELLAMY, 11 COMMISSIONER 12 13 14 15 16 Held at: East York Civic Centre 17 850 Coxwell Avenue 18 Toronto, Ontario 19 M4C 5R1 20 21 ******************** 22 23 24 February 4th, 2004 25

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  1                        APPEARANCES
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  3  David Butt                 )Commission Counsel
  4  Daina Groskaufmanis (np)   )
  5  Zachary Abella             )
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  7  Linda Rothstein (np)       )City of Toronto
  8  Andrew Lewis               )
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 10  Janet Smith                )Registrar
 11  Carol Geehan               )Court Reporter
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1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Page No. 3 4 Presentation by Mr. David Hutcheon 6 5 and Mr. Roy Wiseman 6 7 Presentation by Mr. Myer Siemiatycki, 104 8 Ms. Patricia Petersen and Mr. Ronald Vogel 9 10 Certificate of Transcript 251 11 12 13 14 Please note Exhibit 80 provided by Mr. Hutcheon on February 15 the 5th, 2004 will be inserted in the February 4th transcript 16 as noted below. 17 18 No. 80 Bound document titled A Grand 19 Experiment in Municipal Governance, 20 Toronto's Board of Management 1996-97. 21 MPA Research Report dated August 2003. 251 22 23 24 25

1 --- Upon commencing at 10:00 a.m. 2 3 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry is now in session. 4 Please be seated. 5 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Good morning. 6 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Good morning. 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: Good morning. 8 MADAM COMMISSIONER: I understand Mr. Peter 9 Pomeroy who was to be here is ill today and we have these two 10 (2) wise men instead. Mr. Butt...? 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you, Madam 12 Commissioner. Yes, today, two (2) out of three (3), which is 13 more than ain't bad, it's great. We have Mr. David 14 Hutchinson -- Hutcheon with us and Mr. Wiseman and today 15 we're going to be able, I think, benefit from two (2) 16 different perspectives on municipal issues. 17 The perspective of distinguished service as an 18 elected official and the perspective as a long and ongoing, 19 for Mr. Wiseman, distinguished service as a senior staff 20 member in a -- in a municipal context. 21 First of all, Mr. Hutcheon is currently Vice 22 Chair of the Environment -- or, I'm sorry, was until 2002 23 Vice Chair of the Environmental Review Tribunal and is now a 24 mediator but prior to that aspect of his career he spent ten 25 (10) years in provincial and municipal government.

1 He's been -- served as Deputy Mayor, Budget 2 Chief and Executive Council Member on Toronto City Council. 3 And has been a Commissioner of the Toronto Harbour Commission 4 and long been active in the community -- various community 5 groups, so we're again, privileged to have somebody with long 6 elected Municipal experience with us. 7 And Mr. Wiseman from the staff side, has been 8 with the Region of Peel since 1975 and Director of Peel 9 Region's Information and Technology Services since 1986. And 10 last year he also assumed responsibility as the Region's 11 Chief Information Officer. 12 His -- his work in Peel has been primarily in 13 the technology field, leading Peel to lead the way in terms 14 of the effective use of Information Technology to improve the 15 delivery of Municipal services. 16 Both, incidentally, are -- are well trained 17 from the academic perspective, both have Masters Degrees in 18 -- in public administration. So, they've both taken that 19 foundation in -- in different directions and very 20 accomplished directions, Madam Commissioner. 21 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Good morning and welcome. 22 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Thank you. 23 MR. DAVID BUTT: And what -- I'd like to just 24 start off the discussion by again drawing on your differing 25 perspectives on this -- this issue, and that is the role of

1 staff and then we'd like to talk -- I'd like to talk a little 2 bit about the relationship between staff and -- and elected 3 officials. 4 And first of all, just in -- in terms of the 5 senior levels of staff and setting the tone for the -- the 6 functioning of a -- of a Municipality. I -- I'd like to 7 know, in terms of setting that tone and taking responsibility 8 for the overall direction, what is the role of senior staff 9 in doing that, and what is the role of the Mayor in setting 10 that tone, providing that -- that leadership for the -- the 11 discharge of -- of staff functions? 12 Mr. Wiseman, would you like to start off on 13 that? 14 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Well, I think I'll -- I'll 15 focus on the -- on the role of senior staff, and I think it's 16 -- it's absolutely critical in terms of setting the tone, and 17 I think that that's done through both the formal processes of 18 developing things like statements of values for the 19 organization and codes of conduct, and you know, all of those 20 things that need to be in place, the process of developing 21 those is as important as I think I mentioned in previous 22 testimony, as the product itself and it says that these 23 things are important to the organization. 24 But more important than those documents is 25 what happens everyday, and recognizing that the senior staff

1 set the tone for the organization and they have to be seen as 2 incorporating those values in everything that they do, not in 3 the big things, in the little things, in the way that we 4 treat each other in the organization, in the -- in the 5 respect that we show for each other, in the way that we deal 6 with other organizations, the -- the form of communication. 7 And you know, the people that join the 8 organization develop an understanding of behaviour and the 9 goals of public service, I think, by watching those who are 10 around them at the senior staff level, and it doesn't matter 11 what is written down on paper, if the actions of those senior 12 staff don't model what's on paper, most people in the 13 organization are not going to spend a lot of time on the 14 paper; that's not where they get their cues, that's not what 15 ultimately their -- determines what -- what their behaviour 16 is. 17 I think within a Municipal organization, the 18 role of Council and the Mayor sets a framework as well, in 19 terms of you know, providing an overall environment, but 20 there is a -- a separation between the two (2), so that it is 21 quite possible to have an effective internal culture with 22 strong values, with a political environment that's not 23 entirely in tune with that, it's perhaps more difficult, but 24 there is -- I'm not sure that staff pick up their cues 25 primarily from the elected officials.

8
  1                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Mr. Wiseman, any thoughts on
  2  the respective roles of senior staff and the Mayor, and
  3  particularly, the -- your thoughts on the comments made by
  4  Mr. Hutcheon that -- or -- I'm sorry, Mr. Wiseman, that there
  5  are -- there's a bit of a separation there that perhaps lead
  6  to two (2) different cultures existing?
  7                 MR. ROY WISEMAN:  I think it is possible.  I
  8  think it is, you know, it would be more effective if you did
  9  not have that different culture and therefore that that same
 10  culture did exist at both levels.
 11                 But, at times, we control what we are able to
 12  control, if you like.  The -- I think one (1) of the tones
 13  that's set by the Mayors and Members of Council is a tone of
 14  respect for the staff organization and of valuing the staff
 15  and valuing public service, in general.
 16                 So, they can create an environment, in which,
 17  working for the public service, is something that a member of
 18  the public would aspire to, that they would see that this is
 19  a valuable role within society.
 20                 Or, they can create an environment, in which,
 21  effectively somebody would say, why would anybody want to
 22  play that role?  And you know, I think it's really important
 23  to create a positive public impression of the public service
 24  and the role of public service.
 25                 And that the elected officials have a large

1 part to play in that and that if you create that environment 2 that says, we want the best people and the people that we 3 have are the best people, then you will attract more good 4 people. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Hutcheon, thoughts on 6 that? 7 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Yes, first and foremost, 8 the Mayor and Council collectively together, set the policy 9 for the municipality. Secondly, and most importantly the 10 Mayor and Council appoint the Chief Commissioner, whether 11 he's called City Manager, Chief Commissioner, CEO, CAO, and 12 they also appoint the other senior managers. 13 Now, with different municipalities, it varies 14 as to how deep you go into the organization, but, at the end 15 of the day, the tone is set by really what is more of a 16 marriage or a family relationship than you would find in the 17 Province or the Federal, where you have Commissioners 18 appointed by the Premier or the Prime Minister. 19 The importance as -- as Roy has stated, of 20 respect is essential. There must be respect between those 21 who are elected and those who are staff. 22 And there must be -- an important part of good 23 municipal government is the collegiality that each share. 24 Obviously, you will always have elected officials coming in 25 who come in as advocates for their constituency and, in

1 effect, see themselves more as the outsider trying to get the 2 insiders to do the deeds they require them to do. 3 But, for government to work -- for municipal 4 government to work well, both the staff and the elected 5 officials must have a respect for each other and indeed, a 6 common purpose. 7 Now, the important role, I think, that staff 8 serve is that, invariably, they've been there longer than the 9 elected officials, although, this is a little different, in 10 that we've got a New City. 11 But -- and so they, under normal 12 circumstances, they in effect, have the long term memory. 13 And the long term traditions that a municipality acquires 14 over its -- its time and where the politicians tend to bring 15 in newer thoughts and new approaches. 16 The tone really, I find -- I have found from 17 my experience, is set to a large degree in a mutual way, 18 between the Councillors that have been there the longest or 19 shall I say, the Councillors who have -- who appear to have 20 the most power and therefore can command the most votes and 21 the Mayor and senior members of staff, and those people who 22 inter-react with the Councillors. 23 In their own right, for example, an area 24 planner or an area transportation planner, can be extremely 25 influential, in their specific disciplines, with the way a

1 Councillor thinks about those issues, but, ultimately, it's a 2 relationship that the Councillor has with Commissioners, that 3 have the greatest influence. 4 I think what singularly required is a common 5 understanding of a common ethical approach. And I think if 6 you're building a new municipality and I think we have to 7 really think of Toronto, in many ways, as a new municipality, 8 you have to set the tone early. 9 It has to be something that both the Mayor, 10 the Council and staff and the public are -- are in agreement 11 with and, indeed, have participated in. And it has to be a 12 living code. It can't simply be a document as -- because as 13 -- as Roy simply said, and it's very true, if -- if -- if the 14 Commissioner is -- is doing things against the code or if the 15 top politician's doing things against the code then that will 16 dictate the code. 17 So it's not -- it's not good enough simply to 18 have a document on a wall and politicians and staff are 19 extremely good at putting documents on walls, it's making 20 those documents live and ultimately the politician has to be 21 the person making the major decisions because, ultimately, 22 they are the ones who are responsible to the electorate and 23 ultimately they are the ones who appoint the senior managers. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: Could I just follow up, Mr. 25 Hutcheon on -- on the notion of the Council setting the tone,

1 in part, by making the appointments of senior managers, for 2 example, the City Manager or the CAO on some models and then 3 sometimes also the Commissioners. 4 Do you have any thoughts, and Mr. Wiseman I'll 5 ask you your views on this after too, do you have any 6 thoughts on how deep into the appointment process it's 7 appropriate for Council to go in setting that tone and 8 establishing the values of the organization by virtue of the 9 people you bring in? 10 Should it be just the CAO? Should it be the 11 CAO and the Commissioners or should it be deeper? Any 12 thoughts on that? I know different municipalities do do it 13 differently. 14 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Yeah. And -- and I don't 15 think you can regiment it one way or the other because at the 16 end of the day it's what works best. Each municipality is a 17 product of its own involvement and it's involvement in the 18 community and what the community wants it to do. 19 If you've got a community that wants the clean 20 roads then obviously you're going to spend a lot of money on 21 cleaning roads and your Commissioner of Roads is going to be 22 a very powerful person, but if you couldn't care about the 23 roads then that -- that office will have less impact and that 24 has an impact on the hiring policies as well. 25 Invariably Council will want to have a leading

1 role in hiring the top people. I don't think it's helpful 2 for a Council to get involved in going too deep into an 3 organization unless the organization within the bureaucracy 4 has, in fact, gone awry or isn't responding to Council's 5 needs. 6 When I was on the City of Toronto Council, for 7 example, we had a system where the Commissioners reported in 8 vertical silos to Council and they ran their own fiefdoms. 9 We, as a Council, had a financial problem to deal with and we 10 found that the system couldn't respond adequately and the 11 Council before us under Rowlands -- Mayor Rowlands had had a 12 similar experience. 13 And so many of the Councillors who were on 14 Council that I served on had gone through the experience 15 already and here it was a repeat and the Commissioners simply 16 couldn't respond adequately. So, in the end, what Council 17 which was revolutionary, if you will, we fired them all and 18 we created a whole new system based on that experience and 19 based on experiences of other municipalities, but essentially 20 it was an evolving system of -- of how to do things better. 21 And rather than have one (1) City Manager, we 22 had four (4) Commissioners who were each given a quarter 23 responsibility, if you will, of being a CAO. Those four (4) 24 Commissioners met as a caucus and had to agree on the 25 recommendations they were making to Council and they were

1 each given a responsibility which they were told -- an area 2 which they were told would be changed in two (2) years to 3 ensure that neither one built up a fiefdom. 4 That, in part, was designed to ensure an 5 equilibrium within the governing system of the municipality 6 and a responsive system so that staff worked cohesively 7 together. 8 And while I'm talking about the, sort of, top 9 down, it permeated through all of the levels because it -- 10 the whole approach was taken to each of the levels and what 11 Council did, essentially, is they appointed the Commissioners 12 and said, here's what we want you to do, go do it. 13 And that's really the best way government 14 works in the municipal setting is when the Council and the 15 Mayor say, this is what we want done; staff, how do we do it? 16 Give us the options. Okay, here's the options. We now will 17 collect the money and we will agree that that's -- that's the 18 direction we go in and that's when it works best when staff 19 and Council are working together to solve a common problem. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Wiseman, thoughts on -- 21 on you know, how deep in the appointment process, and -- and 22 Mr. Hutcheon's views about how any particular model needs to 23 be responsive to the -- to the individual needs of a 24 Municipality? 25 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Well, I think I'll deal with

1 the second question first, and you know, I clearly have to 2 agree with that, and -- and if there's anything that comes 3 through in most of the papers that have been prepared for the 4 Commission, it is that the -- the specific forms and 5 structures don't by themselves determine success or -- or 6 otherwise; that most of the structures that are out there can 7 work and can be shown to be working -- to work successfully. 8 So, there's a little bit of you know, the -- the culture that 9 builds up around those structures. 10 I certainly would expect Council to be 11 involved in the appointment of the senior -- most senior 12 level of the organization, which would typically be the CAO, 13 City Manager, and the Department Heads. I would expect if -- 14 if you have a CAO structure, I would expect the CAO to be 15 participating as well, in the decisions of hiring the 16 Department Heads, and perhaps to have, you know, perhaps the 17 key role in -- in certainly a lot of the process leading up 18 to the final selection. 19 But I think any CAO that is trying to foster 20 that collegial working relationship with their Council is 21 going to welcome Council involvement in that selection, so 22 that there isn't going to be that sort of feedback at the end 23 that says, well, how did we happen to choose this person 24 anyway, and it's not a good fit for the organization, and not 25 what we expected and we can all use second and third advice

1 in those decisions that we're making, and I think most of us 2 welcome it. 3 But I -- I do agree that it's less appropriate 4 for Council to be involved in hiring decisions below that top 5 level. And one (1) of the reasons is, it starts to erode the 6 authority of the person to whom that next level reports. 7 And if they're ever feeling that, you know, 8 they're being asked to hire somebody that wasn't their 9 choice, it's likely to affect the whole relationship from 10 thereon, where they're not able to take responsibility for 11 the actions in that particular area, because always in the 12 back of their mind they're saying, well, really this wasn't 13 my -- you know, wasn't my decision, my choice, so I -- I can 14 distance myself from it a little bit. 15 And -- and that creates, I think an unhealthy 16 situation and that's true at all levels in the organization, 17 I mean, I -- I have to be very careful in the people that 18 report to me, that they are able to make the hiring 19 decisions, you know, for the people that report to them, so 20 that they can assume that responsibility for the actions that 21 follow. 22 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: An important point, if I 23 might add too, is -- 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: Sure. 25 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: -- is the manner in which

1 the Councillors treat the staff and the staff treat the 2 Councillors in Council. In -- in Toronto, under the new 3 system, more than just the Commissioners would speak to 4 Council. And it was important that -- that the -- that there 5 was a sign of respect between the two (2), if they disagreed 6 strongly. 7 You can disagree strongly with a person 8 without basically -- without denigrating them and that's 9 important, because as soon as you get into that slinging 10 match, and I think the -- the current City has had some 11 experience with this, more so than the old Cities, you -- you 12 lose the respect between the two (2) powers and you in effect 13 start operating in different spheres. 14 And Commissioners tend to sort of divvy 15 themselves up in terms of their loyalties, and they will 16 court the politicians, and in courting the politicians that 17 further undermines the -- the cohesiveness of the political 18 group, so that you get people doing what the Mayor told them 19 to do, because the Mayor told them to do, and you get people 20 telling -- telling senior Councillors telling Councillors to 21 get telling the staff to do what they want them to do. 22 And -- and before long, you've got a sort of 23 in built anarchy happening, because all of a sudden the staff 24 are jockeying for jobs, and the politicians are trying to 25 jockey for power within -- within the context of Council and

1 the votes in Council and -- and you have a very fragmented 2 system, and that happens from time to time. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: What -- what steps can one 4 (1) take, I mean you've described very well how this forming 5 of alliances, informal alliances between particular staff 6 members and particular politicians sort of behind the scenes 7 can be a recipe for anarchy. What steps can be taken to 8 prevent that kind of -- those sorts of side arrangements from 9 happening? 10 And in asking that question, I think back to 11 the metaphor that you, Mr. Hutcheon, used earlier, if it's 12 sort of a family relationship, well then isn't it natural to 13 have that kind of contact and make those sorts of alliances? 14 Can we prevent that in any way and perhaps Mr. 15 Hutcheon and then Mr. Wiseman? 16 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: It is natural to have 17 those relationships in any business and organization you have 18 those relationships, even in the law their will be Crown 19 Counsels and Counsel that get on better with one (1) another 20 and they'll seek certain Judges, because they think they rule 21 a certain way or they're more favourably disposed to their 22 approach. 23 So, yes, the trick though is that it be done 24 -- is that there be a unified opinion, that while you may 25 have relationships and friendships, ultimately the decision

1 is made at Council, ultimately the staff are told, what the 2 decision is and are participating in that decision process. 3 And ultimately, they -- they -- then go off 4 and do it. The worst thing a Council can do, is to micro- 5 manage, but, when you have micro management, it generally 6 means that Council's lost its faith, in staff and so it's a 7 delicate relationship. 8 And I think an important way of stopping that 9 from happening, quite frankly, is to ensure that Council is 10 appointing the senior bureaucrats and that -- that they 11 appoint all the senior bureaucrats. 12 I agree with, Roy, when he says, the City 13 Manager or that person should be a participant in the 14 process. He should certainly be there to assist and advise, 15 but, ultimately, the decision rests with the Council and the 16 Mayor. 17 And I want to stress that I -- I talk about 18 the Council and Mayor, because to me, the Council and Mayor 19 and legally, they make the decision. The Mayor is very 20 important, very integral to the leadership, because the 21 Mayor, in effect, is the public spokesman. 22 And the Mayor, by virtue of winning a large 23 majority, has for the first year, generally speaking, a very 24 large prestige and is, in effect, the leader of Council. 25 After that first year, when the honeymoon is over, the

1 leadership can break down. 2 Or, if it was a contentious mayoralty fight, 3 the Mayor may never actually assume the true leadership 4 mantle, it may be a Mayor and a group of Councillors who have 5 a leadership of what Council's direction is. 6 In the present case, obviously we have a Mayor 7 who has won a majority and has -- and is in the process of 8 gaining the respect and is showing leadership for his 9 decision. 10 Mel Lastman went through the same experience, 11 but, it didn't last. The key thing is the respect has to be 12 there between the Mayor and the elected politicians, because 13 it's a collegial process and they have to be in agreement 14 that that's the direction they're going. And it works the 15 same way with the City staff. 16 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: If I can just jump in for 17 one (1) second, Commissioner. I think in a previous panel, 18 it might have been a little unclear as to the appointment 19 power. 20 And just to make sure that it is clear, the 21 bylaw states that as far as the appointment of senior staff 22 goes, that of course, the CAO was appointed by Council. In 23 addition, it says that for Commissioners, the CAO can 24 recommend the hiring and firing of Commissioners, but, the 25 decision ultimately does lie with Council, just to go along

1 with what Mr. Hutcheon was saying. 2 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you very much, Mr. 3 Lewis. 4 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Okay. Now, I'll back up a 5 little bit and talk a little bit about, sort of, the 6 municipal corporation and it's often been described as a 7 strange kind of business. And in the business world, it 8 follows most closely to something called a conglomerate, 9 which is a bunch of loosely connected businesses. 10 And at times, there appears to be very little 11 in common, between the activity that takes place in a public 12 works department, and in the long term care program. And 13 what this tends to mean, is that you have, within individual 14 departments a very strong, sort of, culture or professional 15 specialization and even at the Council level, that's 16 reflected in Council committees. 17 So there will be Members of Council, that are 18 very concerned with social policy and you know, the set of 19 issues, perhaps related to children or seniors and there will 20 be others that are very concerned with planning issues, or 21 public works issues. 22 And you know, that's normally reflected in a 23 committee structure. So, as a senior member of staff, the 24 relationship that you have with -- is likely to be, for 25 instance, with the Chair of the Committee that matches your

1 line of business. And what you're really trying to do is 2 first understand what the Council priorities are in that 3 particular area, so that, you know, the advice that you 4 provide is related to those priorities. 5 And also, to some extent, as you're working 6 through the process, you may want somebody that you can 7 bounce some ideas off and say, you know, this -- this looks 8 like where it's headed; how do you think that would be 9 accepted at Council? 10 So, you know, that's the kind of relationship 11 that takes place typically between a department head and 12 perhaps the Chair of the Committee associated with the 13 Department. And it's just an effective way of -- of gauging 14 ultimately, are we on the right track? You know, of keeping 15 our expectations in line. 16 And, you know, I think that's -- that's a very 17 useful process in terms of those kinds of relationships. And 18 the -- the tricky part of municipal government, and this is a 19 little bit of this theory of strong CAO or City Manager 20 versus weak CAO or City Manager, the weak CAO role 21 effectively says, the program decisions that are being made 22 are being made by the department head largely. 23 They are treated as independent decisions so 24 the decision in Children's Services is not related to a 25 decision in Public Works and the -- the CAO's role is more

1 around the administrative structure, the human resources 2 policies, those common policies that cross organizations. 3 In a stronger CAO role, the organization 4 itself and the, you know, the team of department heads is 5 saying, what are our priorities? Where -- where do we want 6 to put our focus? 7 Now, those priorities are ultimately 8 recommended to and approved by Council but that discussion 9 takes place at the staff level as well and all department 10 heads are, to some extent, involved in decisions that take 11 place in any one of the businesses and they're not seen as 12 separate businesses, if you like. 13 And the more you move to the strong CAO role 14 then the more the relationship is between the CAO and Council 15 rather than individual department heads and Council. I think 16 in any municipality both exist. It's really what's the 17 strength, what's the primary method of doing that kind of 18 check back between the staff level and the Council level. 19 MR. DAVID BUTT: Can you tell me, based on 20 your experience and, Mr. Hutcheon, I'll want to ask you this 21 question as well but Mr. Wiseman to start; do you have any 22 sense of which works better typically or can you say there's 23 a typical distinction between the weak and the strong that 24 works better? 25 MR. ROY WISEMAN: I think I'd first hide

1 behind the, both processes work. I mean, they do reflect the 2 culture of -- you know, that has developed over time. I 3 think that one of the things that's happening is that there 4 is more of a corporate approach to issues that is evolving in 5 municipal organizations. 6 So there is a trend to say, we can't make 7 these decisions in isolation, that they do have a level of 8 interaction and, you know, to -- to take an example that if 9 we're dealing with crime that there is a social services side 10 to this issue. 11 There's a way that we can address this by 12 putting more funds into social programs. There's a way that 13 we can address it by putting more funds into policing 14 programs and you have to have that -- that dialogue rather 15 than treating the -- the decisions as isolated. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Hutcheon, earlier you 17 mentioned how you had experience in breaking down the silos, 18 as you described them; does that reflect your views in terms 19 of preference towards a stronger CAO that would tend to 20 integrate these discussions more? 21 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: My personal preference is 22 a balance of power. I feel -- and that's why I was a 23 proponent of the Toronto Board of Management. And what I 24 mean by "a balance of power" is that the Mayor and Council 25 must work together so the Mayor is not more powerful than the

1 Council. 2 And if the Council don't -- if the Mayor and 3 Council can't agree then it doesn't happen, but obviously 4 it's not like a -- a Provincial or Federal Government, the 5 Government doesn't fall if the -- if the Mayor is -- is on 6 the wrong end of the vote. 7 The -- I think it's important that staff give 8 solid advice, honest advice, and I think that's important, 9 you've got to maintain that integrity of staff giving real 10 advice, as opposed to what they think the politician needs to 11 hear, and you've got to maintain the integrity of the 12 politicians being able to make their decisions as honest and 13 frank decisions, not decisions that have been overly 14 influenced by other things, lobbyists or whatever. 15 I just want to come back to one (1) thing, you 16 asked how can a staff -- you asked earlier about staff, and 17 the idea of sort of setting the tone. 18 MR. DAVID BUTT: Hmm hmm. 19 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: One (1) of the most 20 effective experiences I had where staff set the tone was the 21 creation of the new -- was the -- was the evolvement of the 22 new elected Metro Council, where we went from a Council which 23 had been appointees, to people directly elected. 24 And in 1988, I was -- I had the privilege of 25 working for the Mayor of Etobicoke and being the first

1 Executive Assistant for the Mayor of Etobicoke, and what 2 staff did, and this was staff driven, with the agreement of 3 the Chairman, however, the Chairman at that time was in a 4 state of flux, because there was actually a competition 5 between Dennis Flynn and Alan Tonks, as to who would be 6 chairman. 7 So, the staff took the role, and it was the 8 City Manager, although he wasn't -- he had a slightly 9 different title then, who -- who took on the role, and what 10 every department did is for two (2) weeks, all of the City -- 11 all of the staff of the elected politicians and the 12 politicians, including the Chairman, were given lectures and 13 by each individual department. And the lectures took the 14 form of the Department Heads and their directors, leading the 15 discussions and leading the -- the review, and it was very 16 much like being back in University again. 17 But basically what they did, is they each laid 18 out each Department's challenges, as they foresaw the 19 challenges. They explained what the Department did, they 20 said, here are the challenges, here's the problems, here's 21 the weaknesses, here's what you expect us to do, here are the 22 realities. 23 As a result of that -- that experience, and it 24 should actually be a mandatory requirement that everybody be 25 there, because politicians have a habit of not being in

1 places they ought to be at times like this, but it was -- it 2 -- as a result of that, the new Metro Council started with a 3 united will, to get stuff done, and an approach based on 4 their common understanding of what the problems were and what 5 were the sort of challenges. 6 The single biggest -- other biggest experience 7 of that is the creation of the budget, because it's at the 8 budget process where you set your priorities of your 9 spending, and so the issue of how do you balance off 10 children's programs versus rock salt programs of salting 11 roads, that happens in that budget process. 12 And while you've got ongoing Committees 13 meeting and talking about the importance of children's 14 issues, and I use these as an example, extreme examples, 15 versus salting roads, you have a Committee that will talk 16 about salting roads, and a Committee that talk about 17 children's services, and they will push their view, which 18 will go to Council and Council will approve it, but then you 19 come to the budget, and that's -- that's -- that's where the 20 proverbial rubber hits the road, you have to -- you have to 21 make the decisions about how much money you'll spend, and how 22 much resources you'll put into doing it and that process 23 happens in public. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: I'd like to follow up on -- 25 on something you mentioned there, a very interesting idea in

1 terms of the -- if I can call them orientation lectures, that 2 you described, where each Department would present to the 3 Council at large, and I'd -- I'd like, Mr. Hutcheon, your 4 thoughts first, and then, Mr. Wiseman, your views on this, 5 that they appear as you've described them a very practical 6 utility. Would those be public or -- 7 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: No, the -- the -- the -- 8 and they weren't public, because it was an opportunity for 9 staff to be frank. And the important thing is you've got to 10 involve the -- the Councillors and their staff, because their 11 staff have to a large degree to assume many of the roles that 12 the Councillors have, albeit they're not elected, they -- 13 they work hand in glove with -- with the Councillor. 14 And so an Executive Assistant sometimes will 15 be better versed on this topic than the Councillor, but then 16 it's the Executive Assistant's job to bring that Councillor 17 or Mayor up to speed. 18 So, you need the whole office involved, and 19 you need it in-camera, because quite frankly, you know, there 20 are times when they'll say listen, we think you need to do 21 this, you know. We -- we think you need to allow everybody 22 to get married, regardless of their sex and then you can have 23 a frank discussion about the political impact of that, though 24 that's not a topic that would have come up, because it's 25 another jurisdiction, but, that's an example.

29
  1                 Where the public comes into it, is in the
  2  budget process.  You need to know what the public expects and
  3  you need to involve them and also the different groups that
  4  are dependent upon municipal government or need to be
  5  involved in that process, the client groups, if you will.
  6                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Okay.  Mr. Wiseman, I do want
  7  to get to you, but, just to follow up and again this is
  8  something I'd like you to explore, as well, Mr. Wiseman.
  9                 If I could play devil's advocate a little bit,
 10  someone might say, of this orientation lecture, that it's
 11  going a long way towards Council making decisions.  Now, it's
 12  obviously not a formal decision making body, but, they might
 13  argue that this has real influence in the decision making
 14  process and, therefore, should be in public.
 15                 Do you have thoughts on that perspective on
 16  this type of orientation meeting?
 17                 MR. ROY WISEMAN:  I'm sorry, I thought Mr.
 18  Hutcheon was going to speak first -- I think this whole issue
 19  of you know, the form of meetings that need to take place in
 20  public, versus not in public, is a very delicate one (1) to
 21  start with.  
 22                 And the practical reality is, that the
 23  discussion will be different in the two (2) forms.  And so
 24  that, you know, as much as we would like to assume that we
 25  can have that same frank exchange in a public forum, what

30
  1  will tend to happen, is department heads for instance, are
  2  likely going to put the best face on the programs that
  3  they're responsible for and are less likely to talk about
  4  some of the real problems that need to be addressed, in the
  5  way that, you know, somebody might say, well, you know how
  6  come you haven't done something about that.
  7                 And I think that there is a time when you need
  8  to have that frank discussion, with the people who are your
  9  Board of Directors, and be able to, you know, sort of
 10  describe some of those warts and not feel, you know,
 11  intimidated or afraid to do that.
 12                 So, I think it's just a practical reality that
 13  some of those discussions will work better in a different
 14  type of forum, but, I think your point is exactly correct,
 15  that when we are moving away from what we might call,
 16  orientation, here's the background, here's some of the issues
 17  that we're grappling with, here are some of the problems,
 18  when we're moving into decision making mode, then those --
 19  those discussions have to take place, in a public forum.
 20                 And the budget process is a very important
 21  part of that and I must say, that I think other
 22  municipalities have been very interested in the recent City
 23  of Toronto experience, in encouraging more public involvement
 24  and discussion, in the budget process.
 25                 And you know, I expect that will be a trend

31
  1  that will pick up some steam and typically what happens when
  2  we talk public involvement, is it is often, sort of, the
  3  organized interest groups that are really providing their
  4  input.
  5                 And I think the City, at this time, is trying
  6  to ensure that, you know, public discussion means public
  7  discussion and I think that's a very healthy evolution.
  8                 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON:  I just want to add
  9  something too.  When I was studying public -- public
 10  management at the University of Western Ontario, I sort of
 11  assumed that everybody did what the City of Toronto did.
 12                 You become very Toronto central, because you
 13  think you, literally, are the best in the world and you do
 14  the best.  And I discovered that a lot of things that I took
 15  for granted, such as, public participation, which has been a
 16  long tradition in the City of Toronto, the old City of
 17  Toronto, was the norm and I found to my shock and horror that
 18  it wasn't.  
 19                 And the old City of Toronto, June Rowlands and
 20  Barbara Hall, under both those Mayors, had very public
 21  processes of trying to get citizen input into the budget
 22  process and the current Mayor is taking that another step
 23  further.  We also involved the public in very real process of
 24  planning decisions, when official plan amendments were made
 25  and when City wide zoning changes were made.

1 And there was a culture and I'm hoping that 2 this new Toronto will have the same culture, of fostering 3 citizen involvement and David Crombie, when he was Mayor, was 4 very partial to the concept of neighbourhoods and that was an 5 integral part of how the City did business. 6 So there were an enormous amount of committees 7 that involve citizens with politicians and involved ways in 8 which citizens could be involved in the political process 9 more directly than just simply having to come and lobby their 10 Councillor every five (5) minutes. 11 And -- and I think that's integral to a city 12 the size of Toronto, making Toronto work. You've got to have 13 that citizen involvement. There will be ebbs and flows. I 14 mean, let's face it, the '70's was a greater period of 15 activism, perhaps, than -- than the current period, the 16 '90's. 17 But -- but there have -- during that time, 18 there have been times where the citizen have felt very 19 involved and they become very involved. And while they tend 20 to be driven by -- more by issues, the Mayor and Council have 21 to be there for all of the issues and staff have to be there 22 for all of the issues. 23 So I think that involvement is healthy and 24 whatever structure is in place it needs to enhance citizen 25 involvement and it needs to cherish and it needs to encourage

1 the concept of neighbourhood and taking responsibility for 2 your community and being a part of that community. 3 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: Sorry, I wonder if I could 4 jump in for a second on two (2) points. The first is that 5 I'm advised that the City does have a process which is 6 administered by the CAO's office with new Councils -- when 7 the new Council elected on briefing -- there are a series of 8 briefings that are made to Councillors who -- by each 9 department and so on and then there are binders and so on 10 that they take away with them so that they know what the 11 status is, and so on, of each department. 12 So I think to an extent that -- anyway, that 13 that is the process that -- that is gone through at the City. 14 Secondly, and this relates to an earlier point in the role of 15 the CAO and -- vis-a-vis the Commissioners and following on 16 the point about who hires, who fires and that being the final 17 role of Council and the advisor after recommendations of the 18 CAO, as far as the reporting relationship goes, the 19 Commissioners do report directly to committees as it stands 20 now. 21 And, although the CAO does become involved in 22 certain cross-departmental initiatives and issues, it's not a 23 situation where the Commissioners -- sorry, where the CAO 24 only, if it was of course, reporting to Council and so on. 25 So it's a bit of a mixed model at this point just to follow

1 up on what the panellists were saying. 2 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Thank you. Could I just 3 respond to that. 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Sure. 5 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: First and foremost, while 6 the City attempted to do what we did at Metro, it was a 7 failure because there was a lack of participation from the 8 City of the elected officials and that's why, I think, there 9 needs to be a stronger emphasis on the need for that. 10 It almost has to be a requirement to make it 11 work, to get them to put their seats -- themselves into the 12 seats. And -- and secondly, my experience with the old City 13 of Toronto, and we were moving away from silos and towards a 14 collegial CAO where the -- where we had four (4) people doing 15 the job of a CAO, the old -- the new City reversed that 16 direction and it went back to the concept of a City Manager 17 with strong -- with strong Commissioners. 18 So, in a sense, it -- it reverted back to the 19 past. I'm of the opinion that that will evolve out again as 20 they -- they begin to have problems with it in the future and 21 the City Manager will have more influence, perhaps, than they 22 currently do. 23 I think a lot has had to do with the chemistry 24 of the first City Manager and the first Mayor and a lot has 25 had to do with the fact that the staff -- the senior staff

1 that were put in place when the new City was created were, in 2 fact, appointed through a Provincial entity that was created 3 to appoint them and they were not chosen by the -- the 4 Councillors of the day. 5 They were not chosen by -- they were 6 essentially handed to them as the -- as part of the toolkit, 7 if you will, of the new Council and there was a great deal of 8 dissatisfaction as a result of that process. 9 Not necessarily individuals, but there was a 10 great deal of dissatisfaction and so once all of that's got 11 out of the way, I'm -- I'm hopeful that the -- the new City 12 will start to move back to some of the greener pastures that 13 the old City of Toronto had acquired. 14 But it's styles of management and styles of 15 experience. The -- the Mayor of the day happened to like 16 that approach. It worked for him in North York and so he 17 bought it back to -- to the new City -- brought it down to 18 the new City. 19 MR. DAVID BUTT: I'd like to ask a question 20 on, again, the day to day practicalities of the relationship 21 between Council and staff, and -- and Mr. Hutcheon, I'd like 22 your views on -- on this, Mr. Wiseman had mentioned earlier 23 that it's very important during the course of developing a -- 24 a staff report on a particular issue, that the staff member 25 be able to talk informally with the -- perhaps the Committee

1 Chair or an experienced member of the relevant Committee, to 2 say, this is where some of the issues lie, or are we in the 3 ballpark, are we going in the right direction? 4 On -- on the other hand, we -- we heard from 5 David O'Brien, the City Manager for Mississauga, who spoke to 6 this issue of the relationship between staff and Councillors, 7 and -- and expressed the view that it would be quite wrong 8 for a Councillor to say, well my constituents value X, I 9 value X, because that will enhance my political career, put X 10 in your report. 11 Do you -- do you agree with -- with those 12 kinds of observations about what you can do in a -- in a day 13 to day relationship between staff and Councillors and -- and 14 where the line should be drawn, what you cannot do? 15 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I -- I think any 16 Councillor wants to see a report reflecting that Councillor's 17 point of view, because it makes it easier for that Councillor 18 to sell it at Council and get the money for it and get it 19 done and then go back to the community and say, see, I did 20 it, and having done some of that myself, I don't see anything 21 wrong with it, but that being said, I don't have any qualms 22 about staff talking to Council, I think that should be 23 permitted, in some Municipalities it's not. 24 I think the key thing though is that in 25 talking with Council, staff not represent themselves as the

1 opinion of the Department Head and of the Department. And I 2 don't see anything wrong with a Commissioner saying 3 informally to a Chairman of a Committee, or even a member at 4 Council, because there are pockets of power, and it's 5 different with each Council, because different Councillors 6 have an ability to bring people together for certain issues 7 that others don't, and some are very successful at it, and 8 then they become complete flops later on in Council on 9 different issues, because they don't have the interest 10 usually and so that will happen. 11 I think at the end of the day though, the 12 report that is written has to be the report that Council 13 approves, and so I don't have a problem with a Councillor 14 having an input into that report, but providing the Council 15 itself and Mayor, have adopted that report. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: And I -- I'm just wondering 17 if we're -- in terms of process, is it appropriate for a 18 Councillor to advocate that something go into a report before 19 it goes to -- to Council for a debate and -- 20 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well -- well that 21 happens, that should happen naturally, because you see, as 22 Roy pointed out, you have standing committees, and its those 23 standing committees where that report is hashed out. 24 So, the report is presented or a Councillor 25 brings his own report, and then the -- the Committee then of

1 elected officials, then determines what should -- whether 2 those recommendations should go forward. And -- and it's in 3 that process that that report is -- is effectively created or 4 moved on forward. 5 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: I think the question is 6 more addressed as opposed to the Committee process itself, is 7 that a particular Councillor, who may have an interest from 8 its -- from their own ward or so on, or whatever their 9 interest is, and apart from the Committee process itself, 10 goes to the particular staff who's writing the report and 11 says, I don't like this, I like this, I want you to put that 12 in the report, that sort of thing. I think that's where the 13 question is addressing is that appropriate? 14 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, it really depends 15 who has authority, if you will, or ownership of the writing 16 of that report, and if that report is written in the name of 17 the Commissioner, then it's the Commissioner who has to 18 decide what goes in it or doesn't go in it. 19 And ordinarily reports are signed by a 20 Commissioner, and -- and bear the names or the signatures of 21 people who have been involved in it and I don't have a 22 problem with Council putting in their own report to say, I 23 would like this to be part of that report. 24 A Councillor shouldn't have the undue 25 influence of -- of simply going to a Commissioner -- going to

1 a staff person and pressuring them to put something into 2 their report, the staff person doesn't accept, but at the 3 Committee level, at the Standing Committee level, that is a 4 place where that report can -- can be massaged, because the 5 Councillors have the ability to say, we don't like this, send 6 it back for a rewrite. 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: And -- and what I hear you 8 saying, correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's a place to 9 -- for Councillors to have input into -- 10 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Definitely, definitely. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- and -- and the place is -- 12 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Ultimately it's -- it's a 13 report that they have to make a decision about. 14 MR. DAVID BUTT: Right, and the place to have 15 that input, is at the committee level, where it's all debated 16 and open, as opposed to an earlier private visit to pressure 17 a staff member. 18 Is that a fair distinction, in terms of what 19 you've said? 20 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I think the situation 21 dictates it, frankly. If, for example, a report is being 22 written as a result of a response to an issue in a community, 23 then obviously the City Councillor should be involved to a 24 degree. 25 I think the -- the working -- the report

1 itself should go -- I don't believe a Councillor should be 2 able to dictate what goes in that report, because that is 3 contrary to the will of Council. 4 But, I do believe that Council -- will of 5 Council, should have the ability to dictate what's in the 6 report and what comes out of those reports and I believe, 7 that Council should have input into them, but, there are many 8 other ways in which those things are influenced. 9 For example, I talked earlier of citizen's 10 committees, take the bicycling committee, for example. And 11 awful lot of reports are written by that committee, written 12 by citizens, with a staff member and then that is passed onto 13 another committee and that is input into another report. 14 And so you have citizens and Councillors, at 15 that level, having an influence in writing of a report. So, 16 there's many ways of doing it. 17 I think where a Councillor says to somebody 18 they should write a report in the Councillor's way, I don't 19 think that's an appropriate way to handle oneself because 20 there are other, more effective and frankly, more fair ways 21 of doing it. 22 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Wiseman -- 23 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Yes. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- your thoughts on this 25 relationship and when it's appropriate to have input -- the

1 Councillors have input and -- 2 MR. ROY WISEMAN: I think a couple of points. 3 I think one (1) is that this kind of dialogue between the 4 senior member of staff and Council is not going to happen 5 around very many reports. 6 They're typically going to happen around 7 reports that might represent a major change in direction or 8 policy and you do want to understand, you know, have you 9 covered off all of the issues and concerns that might be, of 10 interest to Council? Are you missing something in the report 11 rather than necessarily what the recommendation is, itself? 12 I agree with Mr. Hutcheon, that clearly, if 13 Council says, well, I don't agree with this recommendation, 14 you would likely -- I mean that decision will ultimately be 15 made at committee and at Council and the Councillor, is free 16 to either, you know, vote against the report or move an 17 amendment to the report. 18 And that's where that kind of -- sort of 19 individual perspective comes into play. What you're really 20 looking for, is somebody to give you some kind of feedback 21 that you're really asking, does this respond to the needs of 22 Council? 23 Does this report respond to the needs of 24 Council and you as a Member of Council? I'm asking for your 25 opinion, because I can't go to all fifty six (56) of them and

1 ask that question, so that's really what it's all about. 2 And remember, as well, that certain of these 3 reports will have been requested by Council and they will 4 sometimes, the direction given by Council, will not be 5 entirely clear. 6 We want a report that addresses this issue. 7 And staff is going afterwards saying, well, we're not sure 8 exactly what they're getting at here. You know, what part of 9 the issue do you want addressed in the report and that's 10 again where these kinds of dialogues take place. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: Are there differences in the 12 appropriateness of that kind of dialogue, if we're talking 13 about major procurements? 14 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I think -- I think there 15 is, because I think you need to handle the purchasing of 16 services a little different than the policy of Council. 17 In other words, the policy should be set by 18 the Council, but, I think the Council have to basically take 19 more of a hands off and -- and give staff more ability to do 20 things. 21 Simply put, a Councillor shouldn't be involved 22 in -- in bringing in all of the suppliers of a product. They 23 shouldn't be involved in necessarily deciding which one (1) 24 of those suppliers is elected. 25 I think you need to have a system, in place,

1 that is public, fair and has an appeal process. The appeal 2 process being to go back to Council and attend Council to 3 hear that appeal process. 4 I think it needs to be an open and above 5 process and more importantly, I think staff need to take 6 responsibility for their actions. I think a person needs to 7 be responsible for each -- for ensuring each contract is -- 8 is -- is done right and carried through and that the contract 9 requirements are then met and the role of the politicians in 10 that regard is much more an overview, supervisory, then to -- 11 and also if something goes wrong then -- then an 12 investigatory role. 13 I -- I think -- I think, you -- as we said 14 before, you've got to have faith in your staff. You 15 basically set out to them how much money you can spend, or 16 ways in which money can be given to -- to acquire the 17 product, whatever it is and -- and how it will be used. 18 And I think there needs to be an honest flow 19 of information between Council and staff and I -- I think -- 20 I think Roy, quite frankly, is probably the more expert in 21 this matter than I am, so I think I'll let him answer most of 22 these questions. 23 MR. ROY WISEMAN: First, I'd agree entirely 24 with your comments that, you know, that -- that is a 25 particular type of report where you would not expect to see,

1 sort of, prior direct interaction between Council and staff. 2 They -- there is, I think, a need for a bit of 3 a hands off process. Councillors will occasionally be 4 contacted by a supplier and, you know, the supplier has got 5 the impression, for one reason or another, that they're not 6 going to be awarded the -- the contract and so they're in 7 there saying, you know, what can you do to take a look at it 8 and -- and, you know, review the process before this 9 recommendation is made? 10 And I think the appropriate response at that 11 point is to direct the -- the supplier back in to those 12 responsible for the process. The supplier will always have, 13 in -- in today's situation and I was interested in -- in some 14 of the literature on the appeal processes, but in -- in 15 today's world appeal and I think at Toronto a supplier who is 16 not happy with a decision can still be a delegation at 17 Council and explain why he feels that he -- he hasn't been 18 treated fairly through that process. 19 But we -- beyond, you know, a Councillor, sort 20 of, directing that -- that inquiry to the right place, I 21 think that it's still -- the process is going to work best if 22 -- if that's the level of involvement, it's fairly important 23 to keep that clean. 24 The only other variation is that occasionally, 25 and this, I think, would be a rare situation but it certainly

1 does happen or I'm aware of some situations, is that a member 2 of Council may, in fact, be part of the bid evaluation 3 process; so that would be, at that point, they're acting in a 4 different role if you like. 5 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: There is one point I 6 would -- I would add too, I think it's important that 7 municipalities not be hamstrung by -- by having to take the 8 lowest bidder. Invariably, the lowest bidder is not the best 9 bidder so there has to be some ability to choose. 10 And there also has to be some ability to use 11 track records as -- as part of the experience of choosing 12 your bidder as well. 13 MR. DAVID BUTT: And just -- I -- I don't want 14 to go into too much technical detail in the procurement area, 15 but just more as a matter of policy and, you know, a question 16 that really talks about the role of -- of Council, if 17 somebody does wish to take advantage of an appeal process as 18 -- as you've mentioned after a procurement has happened -- or 19 procurement contract has been initially awarded. 20 Do you have any thoughts on, Mr. Hutcheon, you 21 mentioned Council as the appeal body, do you have any 22 thoughts on an independent Fairness Commissioner, whether 23 that -- that is a good idea or whether it's better to leave 24 that kind of appeal process in the hands of -- of the elected 25 officials? Mr. Hutcheon...?

1 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: The reason I have more 2 faith in the elected process is because ultimately it's the 3 public that decides and ultimately they can get out the guy 4 if he's not doing what he's supposed to be doing. 5 With staff it's far more difficult to find the 6 bad eggs and move them. Bureaucrats have a way of looking 7 after their people and sometimes the bad egg may end up being 8 a Commissioner of another unit and, lo and behold, five (5) 9 years later they're back in the old position, everybody's 10 forgotten why they were moved in the first place because all 11 the politicians have moved on. 12 So I'm -- I'm not adverse to an independent 13 group doing it either. I -- I don't have a problem with 14 that. I think -- I think the thing though is -- is that 15 you'll have to -- regardless of what it is, it has to be open 16 fair and honest so that a person making a bid knows what 17 they're required to do and knows if there's a problem with 18 the bid, what that process is, and that has to be set out 19 right up top, and it has to be carried on throughout the 20 process. 21 And invariably where that sort of thing starts 22 to fall apart is on the biggest contracts and the major 23 contracts, and you know, I think you've got to be very 24 careful that bidders aren't allowed to, in effect, once 25 having got the bid, rewrite the bid. And I think that's a

1 major problem, and I think the -- the more professional 2 approach you can take on it the better, and the more -- I'm 3 -- I would be supportive of an independent commission, if -- 4 if it made sense. 5 But I would suggest to you that if you're 6 going to do that, that should be for all municipalities, not 7 just for a City like the City of Toronto. We may be unique, 8 but we shouldn't be singled out. 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Wiseman, thoughts on for 10 an appeal process; Council is the appeal body, or some kind 11 of independent Fairness Commissioner or Councillor? 12 MR. ROY WISEMAN: I can certainly see some 13 advantages to an independent Fairness Commissioner, and I 14 think what's important is that what we're evaluating here is 15 the process not the decision, so it's not, did we make the 16 right choice of product or vendor, it is was the process one 17 (1) in which, you know, all of the participants were 18 evaluated fairly, and you know, other aspects of the process 19 have been followed correctly. 20 And you know, I -- I think that that's 21 something that's -- you know, somebody with some expertise in 22 the area, a Fairness Commissioner, can in fact provide some 23 assurance and it's not entirely clear who is best positioned 24 to play that role, and who's interested in the discussion 25 around, you know, an audit function involvement in that, and

48
  1  I can see both sides of that discussion as well.
  2                 So, you know, and I -- I think a Fairness
  3  Commissioner can work, whether that then becomes the end of
  4  the process is another dec -- decision that needs to be made,
  5  because there's always a feeling that ultimately Council is
  6  the final arbiter of issues, and I think it's somewhat
  7  dangerous to create a situation in which you say no, they --
  8  they're out of the process.
  9                 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON:  I think it's important to
 10  remember that Council is put in place by the public and it's
 11  the public you represent when you sit on Council.  So,
 12  ultimately the public has the right to decide, and if you
 13  take it away from Council, then give it to a third party, you
 14  run the risk of basically going against the will of the
 15  people of the City.
 16                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  So, I -- as I -- as I hear
 17  these last comments unfolding, if there were some kind of
 18  Fairness Commissioner, then perhaps that Commissioner might
 19  make a finding, a recommendation, but ultimately it would be
 20  a recommendation only that would report to Council -- go back
 21  to Council for their ultimate decision as -- do -- do you see
 22  that as a way of respecting Council's role in that -- in that
 23  process?
 24                 MR. ROY WISEMAN:  I guess what I have in mind
 25  more is that the -- you would hope that the Fairness

1 Commissioner could resolve many of those situations 2 satisfactorily, could provide an answer to whoever is making 3 the appeal, that -- that has been accepted. 4 And that's probably my greatest hesitation 5 about the processes that -- that I do find, when you've 6 created a situation in which there's this level of -- of 7 passion about whether I have been treated fairly or not, that 8 the Appellant is unlikely to be satisfied with the answer of 9 a -- a Commissioner, if he's got another level of appeal. 10 So, it may very well just create another step 11 in -- in the bureaucracy and -- and still end up in the same 12 place. 13 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I -- I think ultimately 14 you -- you need the -- the person who's doing the review 15 needs to be able to determine if -- if there was corruption 16 involved, or if the process was faulty, and if the -- and if 17 the process was faulty, then they should be able to send it 18 back to Council to ensure the process is done again, in a way 19 that isn't faulty. 20 I think if you're dealing with corruption 21 then, that's a whole other area, and that involves -- that 22 should begin to involve the Courts. 23 I think the important thing is not to take 24 away the decision making powers from Council, because 25 ultimately if Council wants to waste money, it has the

1 authority to waste money, though none of us obviously would 2 want it to waste money. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: Gentlemen, I -- I diverted 4 you a little bit, by getting into this procurement area and 5 if I can bring us back to our earlier topic of discussion, 6 that is the role of Council and -- and staff, a little more 7 generally and talk about a couple of things. 8 First of all, we have this comment earlier, 9 Mr. Hutcheon, you mentioned about micro management by 10 Council, being -- 11 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Yeah -- 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- not -- not a good thing. 13 Sometimes as you say, when there's a breakdown of trust 14 Council feels it's necessary. 15 I'd like to come at the micro management issue 16 from a slightly different perspective. Could it be argued 17 that indeed it's -- it's inevitable -- an inevitable part of 18 Council's role to micro manage, in the sense that Councillors 19 will want to deal very directly with particular narrow 20 issues, in their constituency, like where to put the stop 21 sign, and the speed bumps or where to plant the tree? 22 And so I'm wondering if that kind of micro 23 management is perhaps, not only inevitable, but, a -- a good 24 part of local politics. But, on the other hand, with a city 25 and a -- and a government, as large as -- as we have here,

1 whether that kind of detailed involvement is practical and -- 2 and how you resolve the tension between those two (2) ideas? 3 Any thoughts, Mr. Hutcheon, from a political 4 perspective, and then Mr. Wiseman, from a -- a staff 5 perspective? 6 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, I'm going to make a 7 prediction. I'm going to predict that, effectively, what 8 will happen, is we will evolve into a Metro type of 9 government. 10 And you'll recall that Metro made the big 11 decisions in its mind, and the City's made the City 12 decisions. And I think what will happen, is the four (4) 13 area Councils will inevitably become the four (4) Cities of 14 Toronto and the bigger decisions will get made at Council. 15 And I think that's a very apt and appropriate 16 way to handle those kinds of things. I would see the 17 division of labour being very similar. I don't say that they 18 will be setting up themselves as independent governments. I 19 -- I'm not predicting that this -- this room that we're in 20 today, will become the next Council chamber, far from it 21 because ultimately the whole Council will -- will be the 22 arbiter. 23 But I -- and in saying that, I think you 24 needed to draw a distinction between the very local issues 25 and the bigger issues. I think there needs to be policies

1 about what size roads are, how you put a stop sign in. 2 But, on the other hand, I think a community 3 needs to have an involvement in that process. And after 4 you've -- you've set the policy, which has been approved by 5 the whole Council, about how you go about getting stop signs 6 put in, for example, then -- then that needs to be applied on 7 the local level. And I don't think a Council should be 8 allowed to undermine that process. 9 And indeed, you know, don't -- Councillors 10 sometimes hide behind those process, too, so don't assume 11 that Councillors are actively looking to change the process 12 and get therein. 13 You know, they -- they do start off as fair 14 minded people, for the most part, and -- and hopefully they 15 remain somewhat fair minded. And they -- they have to 16 balance the problems of -- of each street. 17 You know, one (1) of the great problems with 18 stop signs, is if you put stop signs on one (1) street, the 19 other street has no stop signs, so that street becomes the -- 20 the speeding lane. And then you put stop signs there and you 21 just keep moving the problem around. So a Councillor has to 22 learn to balance the wishes of their community, also with the 23 policy of the whole. 24 There is a natural -- there is a natural 25 desire among Councillors to run their own -- to rule their

53
  1  own roost.  And there is a natural desire by other
  2  Councillors sometimes to let -- let that happen, because
  3  quite frankly, what do they have to do with a stop sign in
  4  West Toronto, when they represent Northeast Toronto? 
  5                 And I think there's some validity to that,
  6  but, the Community Councils would be the place to ultimately
  7  decide and the larger Council would have the power, I think,
  8  to -- to change that decision, if necessary, if it violated
  9  the greater good.
 10                 MR. ROY WISEMAN:  I take a -- a little bit
 11  different perspective.  I think first, it is possible to
 12  avoid micro management in a general sense and that that is
 13  part of the culture and values of the organization.  It's
 14  part of the -- the orientation for Councillors by, you know,
 15  those who were on Council before and certainly by the Mayor,
 16  in terms of what the role of Council is.
 17                 And you know, just as it's possible to avoid
 18  micro management at a staff level, you know, of -- of people
 19  making decisions for, you know, for staff that are two (2)
 20  and three (3) levels down from them in organizations.
 21                 And I'm a great believer in people being
 22  accountable for their decisions and they can't be accountable
 23  if they can't make them.  You know, if they're always making
 24  them with somebody looking over their shoulder then they're
 25  not accountable and they always have that out that says,

1 well, you know, really I just did it because you told me to, 2 so, if it didn't work out, well, you know, I'm not 3 responsible and I think you have to create that 4 accountability. 5 You have to say to a staff member at any level 6 in the organization that, you know, when we're dealing with, 7 for instance, an administrative decision, how to implement a 8 program versus whether to implement the program which is the 9 responsibility of Council. 10 Then you have to provide people with the 11 latitude for -- for doing it in the way that they think best 12 because that way they are accountable for the results and I 13 think that's -- that's fundamental. 14 The other point I was going to make is that it 15 is a role of any elected official to represent their 16 individual constituents. So, not only to sit as a member of 17 Council and debate the broader issues of the municipality, 18 but an individual constituent is having -- constituent is 19 having a problem with some part of the bureaucracy and goes 20 to their Councillor and says, I'm having a problem, can you 21 help me with it? 22 And it is appropriate for a Councillor to take 23 that role and to provide that assistance and that will 24 involve contacting members of the bureaucracy and -- and 25 members of staff will, quite frankly, understand that that is

1 an appropriate role and, you know, that the Councillor is 2 acting as an agent, if you like, and an advocate and it's a 3 rather different role from the -- the broader, you know, 4 sitting on Council. 5 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: As Roy says, Councillors 6 -- elected officials are the ultimate lobbyists at Council. 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just to follow up, Mr. 8 Hutcheon, your -- your comments on -- of community council, 9 by way of background to this question, we -- we've heard from 10 others who speak of the -- the hundreds and hundreds and 11 sometimes into the thousands of pages of reports that have to 12 be read, at least reviewed to some extent or other or perhaps 13 not as -- as some people who have come before us have -- have 14 mentioned, before each Council meeting and -- and the concern 15 that arises from that volume. 16 A couple of concerns, first of all, it's -- 17 it's just the impractical. It can't be done. Second, is 18 that there's a risk that this volume of information 19 effectively surrenders control to staff who are preparing all 20 this volume because only they know about it. 21 Do you have thoughts on -- on how to address 22 that problem and, I -- I guess, just to give you another 23 piece of information, Mr. Prue, who was here a couple of days 24 ago, a former Councillor, expressed the view that -- that a 25 considerable percentage of that volume of paper is community

1 council issues that have come to the full Council for 2 decisions. 3 And --and so I'll ask both of you in terms of 4 that, just that kind of sheer management issue of volume? 5 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, it -- it is an 6 immense problem and I think anybody who can't read and wants 7 to run for Council better find somebody who can read all 8 those reports for them because it's awesome. 9 One of the problems we're -- and I'm -- I'm 10 not sure exactly how they're doing it today so City Counsel 11 may want to correct me here, but one of the problems is that 12 the reports tend to be built on the report before the report 13 before the report. 14 So you tend to get a report that is written at 15 a comm -- a lower committee level, reported to the -- the 16 larger committee, the Standing Committee, and then reported 17 on to Council and Council tends to get the bits of paper. So 18 if you could find a way of short-circuiting that so you end 19 up with one report rather than a report of reports, that 20 would help reduce some of the paper. 21 Also the -- changing the -- the format could 22 help as well, where you put the recommendations right at top 23 and the reasons for the recommendations; so, almost the 24 executive summary on the top of the report. 25 The reality is though that you have to deal

1 with that paperwork and it's why, in many ways, politicians 2 will let a local politician deal with the local items so they 3 don't have to worry about it unless it's brought to their 4 attention through the media or through their constituents or 5 through people calling up and complaining. 6 And, also, by putting it -- filtering it 7 through the -- the committee structure, the formal committee 8 structure, that too reduces the amount of -- of people 9 reading through all that information. They tend to rely on 10 each other to be advocates and to be vigilance -- vigilant 11 about the reports. 12 If you sit through a Council, generally what 13 happens at most Councils is that the first thing they do is 14 they go through the agenda and they say, okay, well what 15 items do you want to hold, and the items -- and -- and in 16 that way they weed out immediately the items that are -- that 17 are there. 18 And invariably, Councillors won't hold items 19 that -- they won't -- unless a Councillor is trying to put 20 one (1) over on another Councillor, they won't hold items 21 just for the sake of holding them and because they realize 22 they've got to sift through that amount of paper for the next 23 three (3), four (4) days. 24 You know, it's very hard to -- to really 25 reduce that paperwork, because essentially Council has to be

1 the final maker of the decision, and unless you reduce the 2 amount of decisions they have to make, and give the Community 3 Councils the right to make certain decisions, and use the -- 4 the larger Council as an appeal body in that regard, 5 Council's always going to be faced with that massive amount 6 of paper. 7 And the budget, quite frankly, when I was on 8 Council, we would have separate hearings, separate days of 9 Council just for the budget, because the amount of material 10 generated by the budget was as much, if not more, than a 11 normal Council session. 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: Would you see then allowing 13 Community Councils to have final decisions on -- on local 14 issues, subject to an appeal to full Council -- 15 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Yes. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- as -- as a way of -- 17 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I would advocate that. 18 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- addressing that? 19 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I would advocate that. 20 And that -- that that be done, that the full Councillors have 21 the same authority throughout the City, to do that, so that 22 you wouldn't have one (1) Councillor having more authority. 23 The -- the key thing is -- is a balance I 24 think. I think if -- if a member of Council feels somehow 25 that they're not being treated properly, then they'll kick up

1 a fuss and -- and you'll have a disruptive Council situation. 2 So, you -- and -- and the -- the anger will 3 rub off in different decisions, they'll start voting in 4 different directions because they're upset with somebody. 5 It's a very personal thing, and each issue is -- is generally 6 a different group of people supporting it. 7 So -- so you need to ensure that everybody has 8 their fair -- has a fair process, and they're participants in 9 a fair process. 10 We might get to the issue of -- of Executive 11 Committees later on and -- and I'll be happy to talk more 12 about that then. 13 MR. DAVID BUTT: Yes, I -- I do want to ask 14 about that. 15 MR. ROY WISEMAN: A couple of additional 16 comments on that, one (1) is I think the -- the whole notion 17 of Committee structure is -- is very important on -- on this 18 issue, and you know, creating an effective Committee 19 structure that does allow you to divide up the work, so that 20 the reports are being reviewed by a group of Councillors that 21 have particular interest in that set of issues and then you 22 know, minimal redebate at the full Council level. 23 I think the other thing that can be done is to 24 look at the reports that are in fact presented to Council. 25 You know, for somebody to take a look through that process

1 and say, why are they here? Do they need to be here, because 2 you know, as much as we want to respect the -- the fact that 3 Council is the final decision maker and needs to be the final 4 decision maker, if you inundate them with too many decisions, 5 it means that none of those decisions are getting the 6 appropriate amount of -- of attention. 7 So, it may be appropriate to say, you know 8 what, there are certain decisions and procurement issues are 9 one (1), where you can reduce the amount of paper that does 10 need to go to Council, because we're prepared to have those 11 decisions made at another level in the organization. 12 And again, you know, there's going to be a 13 process that says when -- when it goes wrong, then there's 14 going to be an appeal, and it's, you know, eventually going 15 to hit Council. 16 But an awful lot of the reports, and I mean, I 17 read Council agendas as well, as do most senior members of 18 staff, and -- and structure of report is important, that -- 19 that you're reading the first page or the first couple of 20 paragraphs and you're saying, this is routine, you know, you 21 move on to the next one (1). 22 And if that's what's going through everybody's 23 mind, then there's a question of well, do they actually need 24 to be there at all. And I think that staff sometimes in -- 25 with a lack of clarity about when there's some issue needs to

1 be made by Council, are in most cases going to err on the 2 side of caution, and say, well, I'm not sure if we have the 3 authority to do what it is we're thinking of doing, so we 4 better do a report to Council and often Councillors will look 5 at it and say, why is this even here? And it's that lack of 6 clarity that causes it. 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: We've had an exchange of 8 views again in previous panels around the discussion of 9 options in reports. 10 And we've heard a view expressed that, you 11 know, if there are six (6) or eight (8) options, those need 12 to be fully discussed in a report, so that Council can be as 13 informed as possible in making their debate. 14 Another perspective that's been expressed -- 15 is that -- and it was from a former Councillor, who said that 16 in all my years of experience, we never went past option one 17 (1), except occasionally we might pick the second option. 18 So why do we have six (6) or eight (8) in 19 front of us? And that obviously gets us into questions of 20 controlling the decision making process, by virtue of how 21 much information you provide. 22 Do you gentlemen have thoughts on that issue? 23 Mr. Hutcheon? 24 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Firmly, I firmly believe 25 you have to put all options in front of Councils, even the

1 unthinkable options, but, it is a tactic used by writers of 2 these reports, that the best option is number 1. 3 And that's accepted and understood. So, for 4 those who don't like reading, usually they will read to 5 number 1 and that's it, but, a place to have a frank and full 6 and open conversation about those options is in the Standing 7 Committees. 8 The conversation tends to happen at Council 9 when people have not been involved in those Standing 10 Committees and it's the job of the Standing Committee to 11 become expert in an area like Works, like Social Services. 12 Because, as much as a Councillor's a 13 generalist, some of them do have specialities which are very 14 helpful to Council, and Council in fact, started to recognize 15 some of those specialities by appointing people, in charge, 16 of children's affairs and trees. 17 And so you -- you tend to look to your other 18 colleagues in Council for their expertise in various areas. 19 And that's a way of managing that paperwork and managing 20 what's being done at Council and participation in Council. 21 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Wiseman? 22 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Very difficult question, 23 that you asked. And I'm not sure there is a single answer 24 because I think it's going to depend on the issue and your 25 understanding of the level of interest in the level of

1 interest in the issue, at Council. 2 And -- quite frankly, I think from a staff 3 level, sometimes we have a tendency to write too much on the 4 topic, rather than too little. We've been working on it, for 5 a couple of months, and to some extent we want to describe, 6 you know, the process that we've gone through, and you know, 7 the -- all of the ins and outs of what this is all about. 8 And Councillors at times, are saying, you know 9 that's great, but, what's the bottom line and you know, have 10 you researched it thoroughly, fine, we're confident go ahead 11 and go with it. 12 And we talked earlier about that level of 13 interaction between staff and Council and I think that's you 14 know, the kinds of things that are discussed, you know, do we 15 just want to get to the -- you know -- cut to the chase in 16 this particular report, or do we need to go through all of 17 the options and how much detail and does it need to be in 18 there? 19 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: And you know, one (1) of 20 the reasons we're here, in part, is because there was a 21 failure in the system and the reason we're here, is because a 22 Councillor stood up and said, hey, I think there's something 23 wrong here, I want more information, what gives? 24 And they did a bit of their own investigatory 25 work and they got staff to answer more questions and they

1 began to ask more questions. 2 So you can never stop a Councillor from doing 3 that because at the end of the day, they may be doing more 4 benefit to us as taxpayers, than any other single person 5 working at that City Hall. 6 MR. ROY WISEMAN: And I guess maybe to pick up 7 on that, you want to ensure that you include in your report, 8 the information that would allow them to ask the questions. 9 You don't necessarily have to provide all of the answers. 10 I mean just sort of, if you're concerned about 11 this, you know, this was considered and it might be a one (1) 12 sentence, but, it might just, sort of, trigger something in 13 somebody's mind, wait a minute, I want to know more about 14 that. 15 And again, that's the fine judgment of writing 16 the report. You know, do you include another two (2) pages 17 of text, just because somebody might be interested, or do you 18 include the two (2) sentences and say, well, if they are 19 interested, they'll ask. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: I'd just like to say, 21 reference your earlier comment, Mr. Hutcheon, there may or 22 may not have been a failure, that's what we're here to 23 explore impartially. 24 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I don't mean to pre-judge 25 your decision, Madam.

1 MR. DAVID BUTT: Madam Commissioner, I'm 2 thinking that it might be an appropriate time for a break. 3 The time actually has slipped by, I've been so engaged in the 4 discussion. 5 MADAM COMMISSIONER: I know it's been very 6 interesting. All right, we'll take a fifteen (15) minute 7 break. Okay. 8 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry will adjourn for a 9 fifteen (15) minute recess. 10 11 --- Upon recessing at 11:29 a.m. 12 --- Upon resuming at 11:46 a.m. 13 14 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry will now resume, 15 please be seated. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you, Madam 17 Commissioner. 18 Just to continue on in the -- the same vein 19 that we left off after the break, Mr. Hutcheon, you had made 20 an earlier observation about how the Mayor, you know, needs 21 to -- to win and -- and maintain the respect of -- of Council 22 throughout its -- its working life. 23 And I'm just wondering, again, given a Council 24 the size of -- of Toronto's and -- and governance on that 25 scale, whether it's too much to -- of a burden on the Mayor

1 to expect that he or she should be winning and maintaining 2 that respect to -- to get things done that he or she sees as 3 important, and whether some structural changes might help to 4 streamline the flow of policy through Council. 5 And I'm thinking in terms of things like an 6 Executive Committee or would something like that assist in -- 7 in helping the Mayor to get the job done? 8 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I'm of the belief there 9 should be an Executive Committee, and it should be a Standing 10 Committee of Council. The Executive Committee should be 11 appointed by Council, and people should be -- and it should 12 not be an as-of-right Committee, but you might want to put 13 the Chairmen of committees on that Executive Committee. 14 I'm of the opinion that you're better to have 15 a -- a Committee that is not 50 percent of the Council, but 16 less than 50 percent, and closer probably to -- and that -- 17 that the people who are on that Committee be -- be respected 18 by their peers and there because they're respected by their 19 peers. 20 My experience has been that to do it in 21 another way, for example, to do it as a Board of control, it 22 creates a dissension within Council. At Metro when we had 23 the newly elected Metro Council, one (1) of the undercurrents 24 was the continual effort to undermine the Mayors, the Mayors 25 would stand up and say, I represent the City of, and the

67
  1  local Councillor from the area would stand up and say, I
  2  represent the City of, you don't represent it.  
  3                 So, you want to be very careful of creating a
  4  class of people, and indeed, the old Board of Control had the
  5  same problem.  The City Council was clear -- clearly pleased
  6  to see it go down, because it tended to create a class system
  7  within Council, and you -- every councillor likes to think
  8  they're the best in the world.  
  9                 And so if you create a system whereby you --
 10  you in effect elevate somebody above somebody else, you have
 11  to be very careful that -- that in that elevation, they are
 12  there because they're respected, not because they -- they got
 13  it through other means.
 14                 MR. ANDREW LEWIS:  And sorry, just to clarify
 15  the one (1) -- you said shouldn't be an as-of-right, do you
 16  mean like the Chairs of the stand -- other Standing
 17  Committees -- 
 18                 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON:  Well -- 
 19                 MR. ANDREW LEWIS:  -- shouldn't be on it, or
 20  is there -- 
 21                 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON:  -- you can -- you can --
 22  you can do it as Chairs of Standing Committee, but the Chairs
 23  of Standing Committees are appointed by Council, so what --
 24  what I was thinking of really in terms of as-of-right is; I
 25  don't think you want to elect people, and for example, with

1 the Board of Control, you elected specific people who then 2 automatically went onto the Board of Control. 3 Following that system you then had Metro 4 Councils and City Councils where the person with the most 5 votes in a riding -- in a ward, would then become the Metro 6 Councillor and -- and so on that way. And I think the 7 problem with that is it -- is it tends to create a -- an 8 unnecessary competition between Councillors. I think it's 9 far better that the Councillors be elected by their peers, 10 and serve because their peers put them there. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: Could I ask, you've describe 12 how it might be structured, what would the executive 13 committee do that is -- that is not being done now and that 14 needs to be done, in your opinion? 15 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, one (1) of -- one 16 of the problems, of course, is there has -- one (1) of the -- 17 the issues of the large councils, has been a proliferation of 18 chairmanships. 19 And I would say there needs to be less and 20 obviously the reason there's been a proliferation of 21 chairmanships is because a councillor likes to go back to his 22 constituents and tell him he's a chairman of something. 23 But, the -- the idea would be that you have 24 less committees and therefore, the Councillors spend more 25 time on specific committees, than lots of little bits of

1 time, on lots of little committees. 2 And the standing committees be where the most 3 -- bulk of the work is done. The Executive Committee, I 4 would see their job, as being related to financial matters, 5 personnel matters, pretty much the -- the old structure of 6 the -- of -- of most executive committees, where they take 7 the top decisions and management of -- of priorities, if you 8 will. 9 And what's happened, is each one (1) of those 10 areas, in effect, has had it's own committee created. And so 11 the executive committee has become rather meaningless. If 12 you put that it -- stuff back into the Executive Committee, 13 you would make it a meaningful committee again. 14 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Wiseman, from the 15 perspective of senior staff, how would an executive committee 16 change your relationship with Council, would it -- would it 17 be for the better or the worse? What are --what are your 18 thoughts, from your perspective? 19 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Well, I think there's 20 various comments I -- I would want to make on that. First, I 21 think the notion of calling something an executive committee 22 is itself, a little risky, in the sense that it creates a 23 sense that this is a committee at a different level, from 24 some of the other committees. 25 And if the role is to deal with some of the

70
  1  more administrative issues, then the title of the committee
  2  that reflects that, you know, administration and finance has
  3  been used, the -- would -- would be more appropriate, so,
  4  that -- that's the first comment.  
  5                 I think if you're dealing with setting
  6  priorities, that it would be helpful for each cycle of
  7  Council for all of the Councillors to be involved in the
  8  setting of priorities for the coming term and the -- I'm not
  9  sure that that's something that I would want to move off into
 10  a separate committee, but, I think it's a rather different
 11  process, from the normal business of Council and obviously
 12  difficult to find the time to do that.
 13                 But, you know, some session very early in the
 14  -- in the term to say, what is it we want to accomplish over
 15  this period, what are the issues and -- and where are we
 16  going, is useful.
 17                 There's also -- an interesting dynamic that
 18  takes place when you create a committee around administrative
 19  issues.  So, if we're dealing with, let's say a procurement
 20  award, relating to a public works project, then is -- does
 21  that go most appropriately to the administration committee;
 22  because what's being reviewed is really the process and it
 23  really has nothing to do with what the work is all about.  Or
 24  does it go to the public works committee who are likely to
 25  look at it from an entirely different perspective.

1 And, in fact, the content of the report will 2 be different depending on which one (1) of those two (2) 3 routes you're taking. So, I think it's important to know, 4 you know, what is the oversight that Council is providing in 5 relation to this partic -- particular report. 6 And if we want to say, as has been the case, 7 in some of the recommendations that they really should be 8 just looking at the process. They should be assuring 9 themselves that this procurement process has been properly 10 undertaken then to put it though an executive committee or an 11 administrative focussed committee, will kind of, keep it on 12 that particular track, rather than, well, why are we buying 13 this anyway, which is an entirely different question. 14 Another point, I'd want to make in -- again in 15 some of your papers, is that the -- you know -- there's been 16 a lot of talk about how Canada is essentially a weak mayor 17 system; that the Mayor has no, or very little formal 18 authority. 19 So, the Mayor exercises leadership by -- 20 initially because they are obviously have been elected on a 21 different basis from everybody else. They have received all 22 the attention most likely during the process and they are the 23 recognized spokesman for Council. 24 So -- but that doesn't necessarily put the 25 Mayor in the position, where they can, sort of, organize the

1 process or control it or make it effective and that's more an 2 -- an informal style of leadership that's going to vary from 3 person to person. 4 How effective can you be in -- in making this 5 whole process work? And my sense is that it is very 6 difficult to do that with a forty-four (44) member Council 7 and that the size of the Toronto Council itself is something 8 that, and this is sort of as an interested observer in the 9 political scene, when you're looking at structures of that 10 size, there is normally some structure that is imposed on it 11 from outside. 12 Whether it's a party system, or you know, 13 something that says we have to organize the work of this 14 group of people in a way that makes sense and we can impose 15 some rules on how it operates. 16 And so what we've got is a structure that has 17 very little rules and yet still involves this rather large 18 number of people. And I know there's been feedback that 19 says, well, gee, the workload would be horrendous if you 20 reduced the side (sic) of Council but that has been the trend 21 in municipalities in Ontario. City of Brampton just reduced 22 the size of its Council. 23 City of Mississauga, I believe, has a Council 24 of ten (10) plus the Mayor with a population of over six 25 hundred thousand (600,000) so, you know, the -- it doesn't

1 necessarily follow that forty-four (44) is the right number 2 for the City of Toronto. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: But Mr. Hutcheon, any -- any 4 thoughts beyond just the notion of an Executive Committee on 5 the -- any limits imposed on governance by our current 6 structure and the Mayor's role inside it? 7 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, first and foremost, 8 I do agree with Roy with regards to like what -- what used to 9 be called the Committee of the Whole which is where the whole 10 Council gets together and sets priorities and that's 11 essentially an important thing to do, indeed, before the 12 budget setting exercise. 13 And -- but on the whole issue of the amount of 14 Councillors, I, myself, am not a firm believer increase -- in 15 increasing the size of the Council, nor of, actually reducing 16 the size of Council and -- and I'm not convinced that forty- 17 four (44) is the corr -- right number either. 18 The reality is that a City Councillor's job is 19 to represent the people that elect them. And if a hundred 20 thousand (100,000) are electing a City Councillor then you 21 have to bear in mind that a hundred thousand (100,000) people 22 have very different issues than the hundred thousand 23 (100,000) who elects the pre -- the -- the Member of 24 Parliament or the Member of the Provincial Parliament. 25 A City Councillor has to deal with dogs

1 barking. A City Councillor has to deal with dogs fouling the 2 footpath and the parks. A City Councillor has to deal with 3 those mundane issues like, did the garbage get picked up 4 properly, was the blue box delivered to the person? 5 There are a million and one very local issues 6 that a -- a City Councillor does that a Metro -- that an -- 7 an MP or an MPP would never think to do and would never be 8 part of. And the important thing, I think, is to have a 9 local member who is, indeed, local and represents the local 10 community. 11 So, the more people you give that person to 12 represent the less and less ability that person has to 13 represent them and while you can hire more staff, ultimately, 14 it's the contact with the local Councillor which makes a 15 councillor more unique and more important than the member of 16 parliament or the member of the Provincial Parliament. 17 So I have grave reservations about making the 18 number of -- the number of Councillors smaller. The whole 19 issue of -- of party structure, I think, is a red herring. 20 It's a red herring because Councillors are elected to 21 represent their constituents and they're not elected on a 22 party platform or plank. 23 And each issue, invariably, you will see 24 different coalitions of Councillors coming together to work 25 together on and so the notion that we should be electing

1 people on a -- on a political platform as a party, I think, 2 is a mistake. 3 It hasn't worked in the Toronto area and it 4 hasn't really worked anywhere else in Ontario. We have a 5 traditional of, well, albeit, that people may be members of a 6 party and then the NDP may have a caucus coalition at work, 7 we have a tradition where the electorate does not like to 8 think they are electing polit -- political parties at the 9 municipal level. 10 And so I don't really see political parties 11 being in our best interests at the local level. I'm a firm 12 believer that the weak Mayor system gets a bad rap. I think 13 the weak Mayor system is a much stronger system than the 14 American strong Mayor system. 15 The American strong Mayor system is based on 16 the concept that you have one (1) person elected who comes 17 in, he appoints all of the Commissioners, and I'm -- I'm 18 being very broad in my approach here, he appoints all of the 19 Commissioners, and basically sets the tone and is the leader 20 -- is the President, if you will, of that -- that City. 21 We don't have a Presidential system, and we 22 also don't have parties, that system is based on the fact 23 that you have two (2) strong parties in the United States, 24 Democrats and Republicans. And in Great Britain it is the -- 25 invariably it's the Tory party, the Labour party, and to a

1 lesser degree other parties, British politics has changed 2 again, so -- so the individual countries like Whales and 3 Scotland have their say in things now, which wasn't the case 4 when I lived there. 5 But essentially they're running on a party 6 structure, and they are affected by what happens on the 7 national level, as our Republicans and Democrats in the 8 United States and I think that would be a mistake, I mean 9 it's to the point in the United States where you're electing 10 Mayors and Sheriffs, you're electing Sheriffs and Judges 11 based on their political constituency, and I think Canada has 12 gone beyond that and the Canadian system I think works. 13 We -- we need a collegial system in Municipal 14 politics to work, because frankly, you shouldn't have 15 somebody voting against a dog bylaw, because they are a 16 member of the NDP or they're a member of the Liberals, or a 17 member of the Conservatives, it doesn't work. 18 I said that in my mind the Canadian System, 19 the Ontario system really, the weak Mayor in my mind is 20 stronger, and I'll explain to you what I mean by that. 21 The Mayor governs -- the Mayor is the Mayor, 22 regardless. So the Mayor will always be the Chairman of 23 Council, but the Mayor's success in getting programs pushed 24 through Council, depends on the Mayor's ability to be 25 influential among the staff, because the staff obviously

1 report to the Mayor, and they have a relationship, which is 2 different, and has to be, from -- from the usual member of 3 Council. 4 And so the Mayor has an influence in that way, 5 working with the City Manager usually, or the Commissioners, 6 they tend to rely on the Mayor or the Chairman of their 7 Committees to get their -- their issues on the table. 8 So, the Mayor has that influence. The Mayor, 9 by virtue of the fact that the Mayor has such a majority and 10 is elected by the whole City, and -- and no one else is on 11 Council, is automatically the deferential leader, if you 12 will. 13 And so the Mayor -- if the Mayor is any good 14 as a Mayor, then the Mayor leads by virtue of the fact that 15 the citizens are believing in that Mayor and the Council 16 members are believing in that Mayor and staff are believing 17 in that Mayor and it seems to me a person who can walk into a 18 room and have those different and divergent groups support of 19 that person, has a far stronger mandate than somebody who is 20 elected in the American system, as -- as the so called strong 21 Mayor. 22 And as I said before, it's irrelevant in our 23 system, whether the Mayor wins every vote or loses every 24 vote. I'm sure when David Crombie was in here, he could have 25 told you he lost a lot of important votes, but it didn't stop

1 us from -- as citizens, from thinking of him as the Mayor, or 2 from being support of him as the Mayor and I'm sure John 3 Sewell could have given you some different perspectives on 4 that. 5 So, my opinion is we have the best system, as 6 far as it's concerned, in terms of electing the Mayor, and in 7 terms of the -- the amount of work for Councillors. Well, 8 personally, I was never a great believer in the single City 9 anyway, I think that was where the fault lies, and now we're 10 trying to make the best job of a -- of a bad job. 11 And in doing that, I think it's important that 12 the decision makers in the Province realize that a local 13 Councillor is not an MPP, a local Councillor is the Prime 14 Minister, he is the Cabinet Minister, he is the local Member 15 of Parliament, all wrapped up in one (1), and no one (1) 16 person has more power over that Councillor than anybody -- 17 other Councillor in that community -- in that -- in that 18 Chamber. 19 And it's up to the individual Councillors to 20 find the votes and get their issues in front of Council and 21 approved by Council to be successful and we, the electorate, 22 reward them for their success, by continuing to vote them in. 23 And it may not be a perfect system, but unless we decide to 24 devolve the City, as it is now, I think we should stick with 25 it and make what we've got work, rather than trying to

1 discard it and -- and change it every five (5) minutes. 2 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Wiseman, any -- any 3 further thoughts on -- on this topic? And one (1) thing that 4 I would like to raise for your consideration is this notion 5 that Mr. Hutcheon explained very well of the Mayor in his or 6 her leadership role necessarily developing some influence 7 with the staff, some authority, moral authority that is with 8 the staff. 9 Can that ever be problematic in the sense that 10 it might lead someone to say, well, I work for the Mayor, not 11 -- not Council, and is there a tension there? 12 MR. ROY WISEMAN: I think it is possible that 13 there can be a tension there, I don't think it is necessary 14 that that will create a tension. I think it is part of the 15 Mayor's job to present and the vision for the City. 16 And, you know, the collective view of Council. 17 And you know, this is the -- somebody has to do that. 18 Somebody at times, will be giving presentations to staff 19 saying, you know, this is what we're trying to do, as a City 20 and this is, you know, where we want everybody to get on 21 board and be working towards this particular goal. 22 And I think as long as that vision that he's 23 representing is you know, reasonably speaking, the vision of 24 Council, then there isn't that tension, at all. 25 It's when you start to create that sort of

80
  1  variance, where you know, Council has one (1) view and the
  2  Mayor is expressing another view, that staff can very well
  3  find themselves in the middle of a situation.
  4                 And I think going back to Mr. Hutcheon's
  5  various comments, I quite agree with him on the merits of
  6  the, you know, what is called the weak Mayor system and it
  7  really deals with formal authority, rather than sort of, real
  8  authority.
  9                 And you know, one (1) of the things about
 10  working in the public service, in general, I believe, is the
 11  ability to get things done through leadership and consensus,
 12  rather than through direct authority.
 13                 I mean that's is a fundamental skill that you
 14  are often working collegially with your co-workers with other
 15  levels of government and it is really important that you
 16  don't have to rely on the fact, that you will do it, because
 17  I -- I have the power to order you to do it.
 18                 You rarely have that power.  You have the
 19  power to influence and that's what, sort of, being effective
 20  in the public sector, I think, is really all about.  And
 21  that's what the Mayor's role is really all about, as well.
 22                 So, I quite agree with that and I also quite
 23  agree that the party system, I'm quite happy to keep out of
 24  the municipal government level and I don't think it would be
 25  helpful.  I think it would create a set of tensions in our

1 environment that would be unfortunate. 2 So, really my comment was that you have a 3 group of forty four (44) people and very informal processes 4 for organizing the work of those forty four (44) people to, 5 sort of, you know, set a set of priorities and to ensure that 6 the discussion, if you like, is focussing on those real 7 priorities. 8 And what we're saying, is that the way that is 9 done right now, is through that kind of informal leadership 10 of the Mayor and it often works very well. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: If I could move, gentlemen, 12 to a different topic, that is the topic of influence, by 13 outside parties on the municipal government decision making 14 processes. 15 Perhaps a short form label might be lobbying, 16 but, I don't want to imply any value judgment, just by using 17 that label. 18 Could I ask you, Mr. Hutcheon, just to comment 19 on the role of outside influences, in municipal decision 20 making and obviously, to frame the question that broadly, 21 there's very many of them, including depositions at 22 committees and public interest groups and then commercial 23 lobbyists and so on; there's quite a spectrum. 24 But, can you comment on, just where it's 25 appropriate to have outside influence and I'm speaking in

1 terms of Councillors and where it in your view, is not 2 appropriate? 3 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Lobbying is a basic, 4 essential part of Municipal politics. And it's an essential 5 part of Federal and Provincial politics. 6 And the difficulty is where -- how do you 7 define a lobbyist, because a person who wants a sign bylaw 8 changed, comes to Council goes to a committee and speaks to 9 the members of that committee, but, also probably goes to 10 their local Councillor, speaks to the local Councillor, and 11 if they know other Councillors, may do the rounds. 12 And we have very professional groups, they may 13 not make their living doing it, but, they're very 14 professional in their approach of lobbying Councillors to 15 take their point of view. 16 And the difficulty I have, frankly, with the 17 whole concept, is -- is where -- where do you draw the line 18 between the person who is coming in as a member of an 19 organized group, a ratepayers organization and where do you 20 draw the line for a corporation? 21 I think everyone of them has a right of access 22 to the elected officials and they -- they should be able to 23 talk to those elected officials. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: Could I, again, Mr. 25 Hutcheon --

1 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: The other thing too, is 2 let's not forget the fact that the lobbyists also lobby 3 staff. You know, if you want to be effective we talked 4 earlier about the importance of the report, if your 5 recommendation is in the reports that's very much -- that's a 6 far more effective means of getting your -- your side across 7 than if it's left off for it to be added to a report. 8 And so having an influence in writing that 9 report, lobbyists will, obviously, contact members of staff 10 and talk to them as well. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: And I do, you're quite right, 12 I do want to explore the staff perspective too. Just to 13 respond to something that you mentioned in your answer 14 initially, we had Mr. Erik Peters, former Provincial Auditor, 15 before us as a panellist and he expressed the view that, in 16 his mind, the distinction can be drawn between commercial 17 issues and policy issues. 18 So that he would see a role for lobbying 19 activity in the -- in the policy realm, but when it came to a 20 commercial procurement, he would say there is absolutely no 21 role for -- for lobbyists. 22 And I guess the question I have is; is that a 23 workable distinction for you? Is it -- is it a principle 24 distinction? Is it a desirable one? 25 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, the difficulty of

1 it, quite frankly, is obviously a person is lobbying 2 something -- lobbying a politician because they have 3 something they feel to gain or to benefit by. 4 And I don't think we would have a blue box 5 system if there hadn't been lobbyists. I mean, the reality 6 is the blue box system grew out of a desire to -- to sell pop 7 in anything but steel cans. 8 And, as a result of that, we find ourselves 9 with the blue box system. Well, how many constituents out 10 there would give up the blue box system. So I don't think 11 you can exclude commercialism or business people from 12 lobbying. 13 I think -- I think that's a -- that's an 14 unfair kind of distinction. I -- and I've -- I've been 15 lobbied by business. I mean, for example, we had a 16 Councillor who decided we should get rid of PVC pipes. So 17 all of the PVC industry came down and lobbied Council and all 18 of the non-PVC suppliers of pipes came down and lobbied 19 Council -- 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: I'm sorry, just to help me, 21 what is PVC? 22 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Plastic. It's a plastic 23 pipe. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thanks. 25 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: And, you know, so all the

1 guys who had pottery pipes they didn't want them gone and the 2 steel guys didn't want to lose their pipes and -- and, you 3 know, at the end of the day, we had a huge battle at Council 4 over do we keep PVC pipes. 5 And there were very few Councillors who want 6 to make a career about arguing about PVC pipes, obviously, 7 but it was an issue and the -- the technology industry tends 8 to be very prone to coming down and lobbying Council. 9 I remember when Lockheed was -- was involved 10 and -- and it got to be really intense. We -- we, sort of, 11 were treated more as if we were living in the United States 12 with the high -- high-powered lobbyists coming down. And I 13 would think the MFP process resembled some of that too given 14 some of the players were the same. 15 MADAM COMMISSIONER: I think we need to be a 16 little careful about -- 17 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: All right. I'll back off 18 that, but, -- but my point is, I don't think you can limit 19 access and I don't think we should be limiting access to an 20 elected person simply because you are a commercial interest 21 versus a non-commercial interest and the reality is, the 22 commercial interest will find another way to come at you 23 anyway. 24 So, I think you should do it as openly and 25 above board as possible and I think -- I think it's a little

1 different for staff though because staff, they -- they 2 invariably will be more involved in the decision making 3 process because they'll be writing the reports and they'll be 4 putting in the specs and how you write those specs may 5 actually put a competitor at a disadvantage. 6 And so I think there has to be a very 7 different approach taken where you're dealing with staff and 8 from where you're dealing with the politicians. 9 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: Are you talking about the 10 actual procurement process as opposed to -- because I think 11 when you're talking about, like, the PVC issue, you're 12 talking in, sort of, I mean it's always hard to make a 13 distinction perhaps, but the policy level, is the City going 14 to ban it? One or the other as opposed to once that 15 decision's made, how is the City going to -- what's the City 16 actually going to buy among competing PVC or other types of 17 pipe? 18 So when you were talking about staff, were you 19 talking about generally or in the -- because you were talking 20 about writing the specs; are you talking about in 21 procurement? 22 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: That's procurement for 23 sure, I think -- I think -- I think staff need to know what's 24 out there, but I think you need to protect staff somehow, and 25 it needs to be a level playing field for the procurement

1 process. 2 But to simply narrow it down -- to simply sort 3 of try and distinguish between policy and -- and procurement 4 is a little diff -- is problematic, because quite frankly, 5 the policy decision may decide what the procurement is. 6 As you say with PVC pipes, if we had said no 7 to PVC pipes, we would then have ensured that no PVC pipe 8 could be bought, and therefore that -- that would have had a 9 tremendous impact on -- on the procurement process. We would 10 be dictating what you could buy and you couldn't buy. 11 Now, obviously if there are -- there are cases 12 where you have to do that, I mean a blue box, for example, 13 you can't have any box just blue, you need a specific type of 14 box so it can be handled by a garbageman, and -- and the 15 content can be handled properly. 16 But I would say you need to have different 17 rules for staff who are actually more directly involved in 18 the decision of that purchase, or how that purchase might be 19 done. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: Mr. Hutcheon, any -- any 21 thoughts on some directions or -- or guidelines as to what 22 those rules might be, or any governing ideas or important 23 ideas in -- in that area? 24 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I think Roy is probably 25 better equipped to answer these questions than I am frankly,

1 he's had more experience with it. The -- 2 MR. DAVID BUTT: Obviously from what I hear 3 you say, you can correct me if I'm wrong, it's the notion 4 that there should be a more limited form of -- 5 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Definitely there should 6 be a more limited form of contact. The difficulty of course 7 though, is for a techn -- well -- well, I'll go back to blue 8 boxes, and you're buying a blue box, for example, that way I 9 can stay away from computers. 10 If you're buying a blue box, for example, you 11 have to know what's out there to be purchased, and you have 12 to know how to get it and can it be delivered in the 13 quantities you need, otherwise the program could fall apart, 14 because you haven't got the blue boxes you need. 15 And -- and so the staff have to have that 16 knowledge, and they have to have a way of getting that 17 knowledge. What they have to be able to do though is to be 18 able to treat each company fairly and equally, and -- and yet 19 keep a -- a distance, so that they're not unduly influenced 20 by one (1) company. 21 And I -- I -- you know, and I think you'd need 22 to have a Code of Ethics, which is a part of the code that 23 everybody has to be involved in, and I've talked about 24 earlier, and that -- but that code has to specify to staff 25 that there's certain things you can do, and certain things

1 you can't do. And that's very difficult obviously, when a -- 2 when a supplier might want to take a politician to -- or a 3 lobbyist might want to take a politician to a sporting event, 4 should the staff person be allowed to go to a sporting event. 5 And I -- and I think you have to weigh that. 6 The one (1) thing I would say that is very 7 different though, for -- for the politicians, the politician 8 can be voted out, a staff person can't be voted out. 9 And as long as the policy is consistent and 10 fair, so that each supplier is treated fairly, I -- I would 11 not be unhappy with that, but -- 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: Well, I'll return to the 13 issue of benefits, but first, Mr. Wiseman, thoughts on -- 14 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Well, I'm going to start 15 with the -- the same perspective or question that -- that Mr. 16 Hutcheon raised, which is I still have difficulty with, if 17 you like, the definition of a lobbyist, and the -- how they 18 would be treated differently from a paid representative of a 19 -- a supplier of a product. 20 It seems to me as a staff person, it doesn't 21 make much difference to me whether the person who comes in 22 and talks to me is an account manager for XYZ Corporation, or 23 somebody who has been hired independently by XYZ Corporation 24 to represent them, I'm not overly concerned with that 25 distinction, if you like.

1 And so you know, if that's what defines a 2 lobbyist, it -- and don't think it's the real issue, I think 3 the real issue is the form of interaction and the rules 4 around the interaction, rather than you know, whether the 5 interaction should take place. 6 And I'm -- I'm a great believer in maintaining 7 a very open relationship with our suppliers, and I know a lot 8 of the evidence of this Inquiry is in some ways trying to 9 constrain that, and I think that that's a dangerous path to 10 go down; that in our industry or I think in any of the 11 activities of the Municipality, it is important that we 12 understand what are the trends in the industry, what are the 13 products that are out there, that are available, and what the 14 various trade offs are between those products. 15 And quite frankly, open discussion with 16 suppliers, is the best way of getting the information. You 17 always need to vet that against third party sources, you 18 know, experts in the field, and that kind of stuff, but, a 19 good starting point, is just to talk to suppliers and you're 20 doing that outside of a particular procurement process. 21 This is just part of doing your job, you know, 22 as a -- a senior staff person in the organization is 23 understanding your field. And you know, I don't want to do 24 anything that discourages that kind of ongoing interaction. 25 Good rules around that interaction are

1 essential; that's fine. But, the interaction should still be 2 taking place. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: Okay and just to follow up 4 with the same question I put to Mr. Hutcheon, it's not a 5 question of whether, but, rather how. Do you have thoughts 6 on what those good rules might look like? 7 MR. ROY WISEMAN: I'm not overly concerned 8 with constraining, as I say, when they talk to me, other than 9 in the context of the procurement process. 10 It's often, I well understand those 11 limitations, okay, now we have started a new phase in terms 12 of the way we're doing our work. We've done, you know, our 13 upfront research, where we're talking to everybody who might 14 have a point of view. 15 And we're not in a much more structured 16 process and so there will be some rules around that. And 17 there are obviously rules around the whole conflict of 18 interest, you know, gifts and all of that, that are entirely 19 appropriate. 20 And the main thing is that the organization be 21 really clear about what those are and communicate what those 22 are and respect what those are. You know, that they have to 23 be -- again that leadership has to be there from the top 24 down, in the organization. 25 There's certainly been a lot of discussion

1 around disclosure for lobbyists, so I think just knowing, you 2 know, what role a person is playing when they come to see 3 you, is helpful, but, I'm not sure it would make all of that 4 much difference. 5 And I think the last thing is, a level of 6 respect in terms of the decision making roles of various, you 7 know, people within the organization. 8 It's one (1) thing for a lobbyists to come in 9 and see me and -- or a representative of a company and 10 present a point of view, in saying, you know, this is where 11 the municipality should be going, and here's why. 12 And it's another thing to say, I've spoken to 13 the Mayor, or I've spoken to Members of Council and this is 14 what you've got to do. And so, you know, it's that kind of 15 interaction and it is part of the job of the Members of 16 Council and the Mayor to, sort of, not allow themselves to be 17 put in the middle of those kinds of situations, as well. 18 And to respect that kind of distinction, if 19 you like, in the roles of the participants in the process. 20 And so, you know, not to -- not to create a situation in 21 which you, trying to do an impartial evaluation, are feeling 22 that you're already being pushed in a certain direction. 23 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Just before -- 24 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I'd concur with that. 25 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Oh, sorry, you concur?

1 Okay. Mr. Butt, I think probably we all got so excited 2 listening to what these two (2) witnesses are saying, that 3 we've all of us forgotten that this panel was supposed to 4 finish at noon. 5 And I realized that when I saw some other 6 people coming in and they're starting at one o'clock. So I'm 7 wondering if there's -- I don't want to foreclose you from 8 asking some important questions, if there is some more that 9 are coming forward. 10 I think we've probably both of us forgot that 11 the next panel is starting at one o'clock and I have to make 12 sure that the staff have an opportunity for lunch. 13 MR. DAVID BUTT: That's -- thank you Madam 14 Commissioner for reminding me of that and you're right, I did 15 get carried away. 16 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: You know we're looking at 17 a clock and it says, quarter to 11:00 and I've just realized 18 it's been quarter to 11:00, all day. So you might want to 19 get that clock fixed. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: You're absolutely right. I 21 appreciate that. And just to wrap this up, on this topic. 22 The notion of benefits being conveyed, whether they be meals 23 or events or gifts, both of you have spoken about the need 24 for rules to be clear and consistent. 25 Do you have a sense of either, what level is

1 appropriate for those kinds of benefits? In other words, 2 we've heard in a federal context, two hundred dollars ($200), 3 or we've heard other people talk about what you can eat and 4 drink in a day and other people talking about nominal or 5 infrequent. Any thoughts on the level of benefit that is 6 appropriate? 7 And, just to wrap up, I'd also like to hear 8 about any distinction that you think might be appropriate in 9 that respect between Councillors and staff? 10 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Maybe I'll jump in first on 11 that is, I think the predominant testimony that you've heard 12 has -- has dealt with nominal and, you know, they use the 13 example of pens and mugs and tee shirts, you know, that 14 generally have the vendors logo on it and most of us are not 15 really excited about anyway as being something that's -- 16 that's reasonably appropriate. 17 We, in fact, have a fifty dollar ($50) limit 18 and, you know, that's probably an order of magnitude. You 19 know, somebody might say twenty-five (25) some may -- two 20 hundred (200) strikes me as rather high at a staff level, 21 quite frankly. 22 That is a -- a significant and recognisable 23 benefit and I'm not sure any of these would necessarily 24 change people's decision but I don't think they should be put 25 in that position and, you know, certainly there's -- nominal

1 is -- is the word that most -- most commonly comes to mind. 2 I think, in terms of the interaction with 3 vendors at lunch, infrequent rather than never is where I 4 would be coming from. I can see arguments, quite frankly, on 5 both sides. But I do know that all of our time is precious 6 to all of us and vendors often recognize this and, to some 7 extent, they're saying, I know you don't have time, you're in 8 meetings all morning and all afternoon, the only time I'm 9 going to get to see you was over lunch and to make that 10 acceptable to you, I'm going to buy your lunch. 11 And, I guess, I don't have a -- an ethical 12 problem with that as an approach. I have a problem with it 13 when it's happening with the same vendor any more frequently 14 than it needs to happen and with a particular vendor for a 15 particular company, I would suspect once a year is probably 16 about right. 17 You know, what they normally want when they're 18 coming to talk to me is, it's not so much in my position that 19 they are trying to sell me a particular product, they're 20 going to say to me, what are your plans for the next year? 21 What is it you guys are looking at? What are you thinking of 22 buying? 23 So that they've got a sense, in their own 24 mind, of whether they have some opportunities or can -- can 25 describe some products then that may be of interest to us.

1 So, it's that sort of high level discussion that does take 2 place. 3 And, as I've said before, I think there is, at 4 times, a tendency to treat vendors as if they're, sort of, 5 adversaries and I think the best relationship with your 6 vendors is one in which you don't approach them that way. 7 That they have a job to do, they have a 8 product to sell and they're working under the assumption and 9 you should be working under the assumption that this product 10 is going to be of some value to the organization. 11 Now, you've got to provide your professional 12 judgment to ensure that that's the case, but if you start out 13 with the idea that our needs are fundamentally at odds with 14 each other, I think you're wrong, that they're not; they're 15 actually symbiotic. 16 You know, that the best relationships persist 17 over a period of time and they come because the vendor does 18 understand your business and is able to suggest things that 19 will be of value to the municipality and I think that you are 20 doing yourself harm by cutting yourself off from those kind 21 of interaction. 22 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you. Mr. Hutcheon, 23 just by way of wrapping up, this notion of benefits and 24 perhaps whether it's appropriate to differentiate between 25 Councillors and staff?

1 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: I think it is. Not 2 necessarily a requirement, but I think it is important to -- 3 to recognize that there are two different -- two different 4 levels there and I think it's beholden on an organization to 5 have very clear rules so that the people know what is right 6 and what is wrong in the eyes of the organization. 7 And that those rules be respected by both 8 politicians and staff as they exist. 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: The difference or, first, to 10 address the notion of level, any comments on nominal, 11 monetary amounts, the Federal's two hundred ($200) and -- 12 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Well, I -- I like the 13 idea of fifty dollars ($50) but, you know, that -- that -- 14 that obviously is a moving target because fifty dollars ($50) 15 buys a lot more today than it will tomorrow, that's another 16 prediction by the way. 17 MR. DAVID BUTT: Sounds pretty safe. 18 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Yeah, I -- I think you 19 have to treat staff differently, because -- because of the -- 20 of the fact that staff are the ones who will be writing the 21 reports, staff are the ones who will be taking a greater role 22 in deciding the vendors. 23 But that being said, I -- I think you've got 24 to treat everybody -- every vendor fairly and so if one (1) 25 vendor is getting to go to lunch and the other vendor isn't,

1 then I think you have a problem. 2 And as for politicians, I -- I think 3 politicians are a little different, because quite frankly, 4 we're there to be lobbied, I don't see staff being there to 5 be lobbied, and that's where I draw the distinction. 6 MR. DAVID BUTT: Would -- would you set limits 7 for politicians in terms of -- 8 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: You know -- 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- the amount or -- 10 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: -- well, here's the 11 problem. You can set all the limits you want, but if there's 12 no means of enforcing those limits, or it's a sort of a wink 13 and a nod, it doesn't mean anything, and it's -- and it's 14 really -- there needs to be a sense within the whole 15 Municipality that there's certain things you can do and 16 should do and can't do. You need to give people a choice, 17 but you need to give them the reason for the choice. 18 And I -- I have real problems with things like 19 lobbying -- lobbyist registration, processes and -- and 20 requiring Councillors to -- to tell you all the money they 21 earn and how they get there, not that I haven't put myself 22 through that, having been a Councillor, I have done, but at 23 the end of the day it's meaningless, because so what, you 24 know. 25 If -- if my constituents want me in as their

1 Councillor, they're going to vote me in as their Councillor, 2 and providing I'm not doing anything to break the law, I'll 3 -- I'll cont -- I would continued to be there. 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Gentlemen, again, being 5 mindful of the time and the next panel shorting -- starting 6 shortly, I'd like to thank you very much for -- for the 7 discussion that nearly -- nearly swept us away in terms of 8 paying attention to the time. 9 And I would also perhaps, Madam Commissioner, 10 with your leave, like to suggest that there are -- there were 11 areas that we might have discussed a little bit longer, and 12 -- and if -- if you would like to provide us with anything by 13 way of written thoughts afterwards, we'd be more than happy 14 to -- to receive them. 15 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you, Mr. Hutcheon, 16 and, Mr. Wiseman, both of you. This has been extremely 17 helpful to me, and I know it will be helpful in making 18 recommendations that I have to make to Mayor and Council. 19 I apologize to you too, also for having lost 20 track of the time, this is the first time Mr. Butt and I have 21 done this, where -- where we both of us have -- have been so 22 -- well, I -- I have to be careful how I say this, I don't 23 want to be insulting to all the other Panellists. 24 I think we -- we just assumed it was going 25 until one o'clock, and neither one (1) of us was paying

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1 attention to the fact that we were only supposed to go until 2 12:00. 3 I found what you both had to say extremely 4 helpful, and I know that you are probably both thinking that 5 you were going to be here longer, so as Mr. Butt said, if 6 there is anything that you would like to have addressed, that 7 you haven't had the time to address, then we'd certainly be 8 interested in hearing it and placing it on the website as 9 though it had been part of the evidence. 10 So, with that, be careful of course of what 11 you -- what you say, because it does get placed on -- on our 12 website. 13 I don't want to keep the next Panel waiting 14 necessarily long, but I'm also mindful that people have been 15 sitting in this room since about ten o'clock, so I'm 16 wondering if the staff would mind if we came back at 1:15, 17 and which would give us forty-five (45) minutes for lunch 18 roughly, is that -- is that all right for you? Okay. 19 All right, so we're making the next Panel wait 20 fifteen (15) minutes longer, but that way everybody will have 21 something to eat and will be all a little bit stronger for 22 the next session. Thank you, gentlemen, both again, very 23 much. 24 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: Thank you for inviting 25 us.

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1 MR. ROY WISEMAN: Yes, thank you. 2 MR. DAVID HUTCHEON: And if you need us again, 3 feel free to call. 4 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Okay. Thank you. 5 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry will adjourn for 6 lunch until 1:15. 7 8 --- Upon recessing at 12:35 p.m. 9 --- Upon resuming at 1:17 p.m. 10 11 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry will now resume. 12 Please be seated. 13 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Good afternoon. First of 14 all, thank you to the staff for agreeing to a forty-five (45) 15 minute lunch and accommodating all of us and thank you very 16 much to the panel for your indulgence in starting fifteen 17 (15) minutes later than we had expected to start. 18 Welcome and, Mr. Butt...? 19 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you very much, Madam 20 Commissioner. Today, this afternoon, we have three (3) 21 leading academics in the area of municipal affairs and to my 22 immediate right is Professor Ronald Vogel, who's a Professor 23 of Political Science and Urban and Public Affairs at the 24 University of Louisville. 25 I thanked him earlier, he's probably traded

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1 way worse weather for coming up here to help us. He's also 2 the director of the PhD program in Urban and Public Affairs 3 at University of Louisville. 4 Now, his teaching and research focuses on 5 urban politics and policy and urban economic development and 6 metropolitan governance. So, eminently qualified to assist 7 us with his insights today, he's the author of a number of 8 books, including one leading text on urban politics in the 9 United States entitled "Political Change in the Metropolis" 10 now in its seventh edition and is the sole author of the 11 "Handbook of Research on Urban Politics and Policy in the 12 United States". 13 And he, in addition to having studied very 14 broadly, which includes research into government 15 decentralization and reform of the Tokyo Metropolitan 16 Government, he has spent a good deal of time in Toronto where 17 he studied amalgamation and the governance model that was 18 developed during amalgamation. 19 So, he brings a -- very much an international 20 perspective to the issues that -- that we're dealing with. 21 In -- in the centre and to -- and to my second, moving to my 22 right, Professor Petersen; Patricia Petersen, Director of the 23 Urban Studies program at Innis College in Toronto. 24 And Professor Petersen has a PhD from U of T 25 where her thesis dealt with the evolution of executive

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1 government in Toronto over the City's first hundred and fifty 2 (150) years and -- and has lectured in municipal politics at 3 U of T since 1980. 4 She's the coordinator of the Internship 5 Program in -- in City Politics at Innis College which began 6 in 1985 and two (2) years later she became the Director of 7 the Urban Studies Program. In addition to her lengthy and 8 distinguished academic work, she has -- has served as a 9 Campaign Manager and Policy Advisor to Scarborough Councillor 10 Brian Ashton and from 1976 to 1983 was a member of 11 Scarborough's Planning Board, the last two (2) years as 12 Chair. 13 She's acted as a visiting planner in the 14 Hamburg District of Eimsbuttel and she continues to be 15 invited to Hamburg to lecture on urban planning issues. Has 16 lectured in Bonn and -- and China. 17 And to -- to the far right, and I -- and I'm 18 not speaking politically is Professor Myer Siemiatycki, who 19 has taught urban politics at Ryerson for fifteen (15) years 20 and is a former CBC television municipal affairs commentator, 21 an expert on municipal elections and provincial and municipal 22 relations. 23 He, too, has co-authored or authored several 24 papers on municipalities and is -- one of his principal areas 25 of research is municipal government in the Greater Toronto

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1 Area. 2 So, we're -- we're fortunate to have a very 3 wide breadth of academic perspective today, that is also at 4 the same time very deep in terms of the City of Toronto and 5 the area. 6 So, I'm pleased to be able to assist you, 7 Madam Commissioner, by eliciting the insights and views of -- 8 of our panellists. 9 And just in discussing this panel beforehand, 10 we thought it might be helpful to help you, Madam 11 Commissioner, orient yourself to the panellists perspective 12 on these issues by having each panellist make a brief opening 13 statement of -- of some of their thoughts and some of their 14 principle themes, that we'll then try to develop a little bit 15 more if we -- if we could, during discussion. 16 So, I'm wondering if I might ask Professor 17 Vogel to make some opening comments first, and then we'll 18 hear from Professor Petersen and Professor Siemiatycki. 19 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Thank you. I just wanted 20 to make a few points. I hope all of them are on target with 21 the interests of the Inquiry, but if there is any area I 22 touch on that isn't, just push that one (1) to the side. 23 First of all, I want to thank you for inviting 24 me to come and speak to you and to share some of my thoughts 25 on the issues you're studying.

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1 The first thing I want to do, and I always 2 feel it's important when I speak to a Canadian audience, to 3 sort of disabuse you of some of your thoughts about American 4 cities and the way they work, and particularly the amount of 5 Federal involvement in cities. 6 And so I always start by just saying, as 7 you're considering governance and comparing Toronto to 8 American cities, recognize that American cities don't receive 9 the amount of Federal aid you think they do, and that they've 10 had less Federal aid coming in over the last several years. 11 So, just in terms of your -- your paranoia 12 about American cities it's perhaps, for rhetorical purposes, 13 it's very useful to say we wish we had it like them to get 14 the Federal back in, but we don't have it in as much as we 15 might like. 16 And that -- and just to bring that home, 17 Federal aid to cities in the US has dropped from 15 percent 18 of city budgets in 1977 to around 5 percent in 1997. So, 19 that doesn't include everything the Federal Government does 20 that affects cities, but if we talk about direct Federal aid 21 to cities, it's -- it's been declining, has declined, and 22 it's the State Governments that play a much greater role in 23 providing inter-governmental aid than the Federal Government. 24 That doesn't mean the Feds aren't heavily involved in what 25 goes on in cities, but it's not in terms of direct Federal

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1 aid. 2 So, yes, you may need a new deal for Canadian 3 cities, but American cities need a new deal too, is what we 4 might say on our side of the border. 5 The second point I -- I want to make is that 6 given that cities, whether in -- in North America and the US 7 or Canada seem to be having to go it alone more, that's why 8 this issue of autonomy becomes even more important than the 9 question about, do they have sufficient authority and 10 resources and power. 11 And the -- the current authority provided to 12 Toronto, at least with respect to having the right to 13 restructure the size of its Council and the boundaries, that 14 seems to be -- to me to be something that Toronto ought to at 15 least have the -- the same rights that other Municipalities 16 in the Province have, and so at a minimum, there needs to be 17 some bolstering of that authority, even if one doesn't talk 18 about larger grants of authority. I personally would -- 19 would say give them, you know, more of the self-governance 20 and more of that authority, but at a minimum they ought to be 21 on a par with the other municipalities in -- in the Province. 22 So, that's one (1) issue that I think bears on 23 some of the issues that this Inquiry is addressing. 24 Third, structural changes alone usually don't 25 solve problems facing cities, and it may in fact be that the

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1 problems we're talking about here don't derive simply from 2 structural problems, but -- but may have been other factors 3 that were more important. 4 Certainly if we look at the first few years of 5 the -- of Mayor Lastman's administration after amalgamation, 6 or if we look now at -- at Mayor Miller's initial period in 7 office, they both seem to have been successful at sort of 8 taking command of the system and driving the agendas, at 9 least initially, and saying, here's what I want to do and 10 where I want to go, and having some success at least, at some 11 level, of getting the Council to go along with them. 12 So, even in the current structure it is 13 possible to do some of that, and I think your -- your staff 14 report does address some of that. That's not to say it 15 couldn't be a lot better, or that there couldn't be reforms 16 you could make, either that -- that the City might have the 17 ability to make on its own, or that it might need the 18 Province to bolster it's authority to allow it to do. 19 And that's where these issues of things like 20 the executive committee come in, or whether you want to 21 actually try to shift to more of a strong Mayor model. 22 Part of the -- and this is the fourth point I 23 want to make, is that part of the problem is that Mayor's 24 need to accept the mantle of leadership, but, they're not 25 necessarily willing to accept the mantle of leadership, if

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1 they don't have enough strength in their office to carry 2 through. 3 So, if you don't give them enough authority 4 they don't want to accept the responsibility because why 5 would you want to? It only causes you problems, but, I think 6 at a minimum, we want to think about a mayor, of an important 7 City, a big City like Toronto, really accepting 8 responsibility -- this will be kind of a personal anecdote. 9 But, when I was living here in 2001 and it was 10 when there was this big fiscal crisis and the City needed 11 money from the Province and the Province said, we don't owe 12 it and battling about re-alignment costs, amalgamation costs. 13 And in the midst of the major budget crisis, I 14 was thinking about an American City Mayor, versus the Mayor 15 of Toronto and the Mayor of Toronto comes out with a major 16 proposal to save a couple of hundred thousand dollars and 17 close a City park. 18 And you know, it might be a good, sort of, 19 budget crisis game, in your battles to get money from the 20 Province, but, it seemed to me to be not enough and then that 21 would -- in terms of the public visibility, that was the only 22 action one (1) could see, other than the battles with the 23 Provincial leaders. 24 Think an American Mayor, would say and this 25 may be, sort of a cultural difference, or a pragmatic style

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  1  difference, but, an American Mayor would say, well we're
  2  going to do whatever we need to do to make this work,
  3  regardless of the system they found themselves in.
  4                 They would say, it's up to me to figure out a
  5  way to fix this.  Now, they can't fix major structural
  6  problems, they can't fix fiscal crisis in the sense of, they
  7  don't have enough revenue per se, but, they can certainly
  8  say, we can mobilize, we can -- you know -- we're not going
  9  to shut down swimming pools for all the children for a year.
 10                 We're going to figure out a way, I'm going to
 11  create a blue ribbon commission, I'm going to work with
 12  business leaders, I'm going to raise private money, I'm going
 13  to work the Federal and the Provincial, but, we're going to
 14  -- you know, they'll come out there and say, we're going to
 15  make this happen.   We're going to figure out a way and we'll
 16  make it happen.
 17                 Now, they may go down trying, but, they're
 18  sure going to try.  And I think in the sense of Toronto, that
 19  was where one (1) of the failures seem to be, at least in the
 20  public, what we expect a Mayor to do, for providing that
 21  public leadership.
 22                 We want to see their going to take charge;
 23  they're going to make it happen.  Now, in fairness to the
 24  Mayor, you know, there's a CAO, there's a Treasurer, there's
 25  a Council and the Mayor alone, can't do this and the Mayor is

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1 fast pacing all the structural changes of amalgamation. 2 Alone the Mayor can't simply order all sorts 3 of things to happen that fix it. But, the Mayor certainly 4 can play a catalytic role in bringing some of that about. 5 And I think that was where I saw, sort of, in my just 6 personal observations, a very different style, from an 7 American Mayor and one (1) where some structural changes 8 would have bolstered a Mayor's willingness to undertake that. 9 But, it would have been nice if a Mayor, even 10 without that, would have come forward and done some of that. 11 And again, in fairness, he did seem to get quite a bit, from 12 the Provincial level, that might not have been forthcoming 13 otherwise. 14 So, I don't really imply it as simply a 15 criticism, but, it's that bigger picture of wanting that 16 Mayor to really stand up and take up a real public leadership 17 role in saying, we're going to solve our problems as a 18 community. 19 And that comes to something to consider about 20 in the reforms, whether it's through an executive committee 21 system or some other way, I really think a Mayor needs to 22 have greater responsibility for shaping the budget and the 23 priorities strategically of the City. 24 Now, again, it may be that they don't it 25 formally. Some Mayors maybe can do it just by the coalitions

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1 they build, but, in my view, I think you can't just expect 2 staff to do it, in a Council of such a size. 3 I think it is very hard to just, sort of say, 4 well, who is going to actually make the decision, we're going 5 to cut this, we're going to raise that, we're going to make 6 this change, to save money or to raise money or to do 7 something. 8 And I feel like the Mayor, at a minimum, needs 9 to feel personally responsible to put forward a proposal, 10 even if formally, they're not charged with that. I would 11 probably like to see them charged with it; that that's one 12 (1) of their duties. 13 Another comment I wanted to make regards the 14 issue of decentralization and workload. I notice in the 15 staff report and in the City of Toronto's report, there was 16 discussion about the need, perhaps to reduce the number of 17 Community Councils, and that that would help to reduce the 18 workload of the City government or of the City Council. 19 I'd just like to throw in one (1) thought that 20 may be it would be useful to consider one (1) other 21 direction, which is, for the first few years, with the 22 amalgamation, we've been focussing on rebuilding this much 23 larger, centralized model. 24 I really think we need to now go the other 25 direction. If we're going to talk about centralization we

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1 need to talk about decentralization and I would suspect that 2 the Community Councils are already too large and that we 3 would, at least, want to talk about whether we need some more 4 decentralized model or an urban village system. 5 I'm not suggesting you de-amalgamate or 6 recreate the old cities, but that doesn't mean you can't 7 really devolve and decentralize authority and resources. If 8 you did that, you would certainly get a lot of issues off the 9 City Council's agenda and they might be able to focus on more 10 strategic issues. 11 When I was studying the City of Tokyo, Tokyo 12 Metropolitan Government, they had decided to create what had 13 been administrative sub-ward governments into -- to really 14 fully create municipalities within that Metro system, so that 15 the twenty-three (23) central wards became twenty-three (23) 16 cities. 17 Now, they're still a very large population 18 because it's a much larger city but they felt the need to get 19 a lot of stuff off the Metro government's plate so that it 20 could focus on the bigger strategic things and let a lot of 21 the services, particularly services that people think of as 22 neighbourhood services go downwards and -- and that would 23 then free up the Councillors or the Assembly in their system 24 and the Governor in their system, to -- to think about the 25 bigger issues and no so much on a particular small, you know,

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1 small geographic area issue. 2 So I'd say, at least consider that. And then 3 I just want to make one final point which is, I want to 4 emphasize that we need to stop talking about a politics 5 administrative dichotomy. We really need to talk about it as 6 a complementarity or a complementary relationship. 7 And I just want to read you a very short quote 8 from an article that brings this point home. This is from an 9 author name James Svara who studied, quite a bit, the reform 10 model in the US and he says: -- 11 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Can you spell that last 12 name for us please? 13 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Yes. It's S-V-A-R-A. 14 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you. 15 MR. RONALD VOGEL: "The complementarity of 16 politics in administration holds that the 17 relationship between elected officials and 18 administrators as characterized by 19 interdependency, extensive interaction, 20 distinct, but overlapping roles and 21 political supremacy in administrative 22 subordination coexisting with reciprocity 23 of influence in both policy making and 24 administration. Complementarity means that 25 politics and administration come together

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1 to form a whole in democratic governance." 2 So that in the modern period, it's just not 3 going to be possible to make those very fine distinctions. 4 You can certainly say, this is your role, this is my role, 5 but there's going to be so much overlap that I would be very 6 careful not to create a system that -- that artificially 7 creates an illusion of a sharp separation which is impossible 8 to maintain in day-to-day city governance. 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you very much Professor 10 Vogel. Professor Petersen...? 11 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Okay. Thank you. I 12 should -- I didn't time, Ron. I should have just to see 13 whether I can take as much as you. I actually did write out 14 some comments maybe in -- in the interests to moving along 15 fast I'll read them off. 16 Don't have to worry too much about the 17 audience since I know most of them. Anyway, the following -- 18 MADAM COMMISSIONER: You mean of the ones who 19 are here, not the ones who are watching elsewhere. 20 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Oh that's -- oh, 21 that's right. I probably know a lot of them too that are 22 watching elsewhere to think of it. 23 The following are some thoughts that occurred 24 to me as I was reading the reports on lobbying and municipal 25 governance that were prepared for the Commission, so I help

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1 they're relevant to the Commission's discussions. 2 There aren't anything that's very specific, 3 it's just, you know, as I was reading and this sentence would 4 twig something and this sentence would twig something and 5 that's why I wrote them down and hopefully in some kind of a 6 coherent form. 7 One of the main purposes of Government in a 8 democracy is to allow its citizens to define themselves as a 9 community through participation, education and 10 representation. As Deborah Stone says in "Policy Paradox"; 11 "Public policy is about communities trying 12 to achieve something as communities. 13 Governments, therefore, are not just stores 14 from which we, as individuals, purchase 15 services. Even Municipal Government, which 16 some classify as an administrative agency 17 of the Provincial Government because it is 18 so tightly tied to the province's apron 19 strings, is still a government in this 20 broader sense. For example ..." 21 Oh, 22 "... in that case, theories that apply to 23 business management will not always apply 24 to Municipal Government. For example, many 25 of the broader goals that need to be

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1 articulated by a local council do not lend 2 themselves to the kinds of strategic 3 planning and cost benefit analysis as, for 4 example, a goal Toyota may have to produce 5 a reasonably priced SUV. The development 6 of civic responsibility in its citizenry is 7 as important a local government function, 8 if not more important, than plowing the 9 streets or picking the garbage." 10 And actually given the weather, I would hope 11 they would do strategic planning and cost benefit analysis in 12 plowing the streets in Toronto. I do not mean they shouldn't 13 be doing that. 14 "The changes over the past forty (40) years 15 in demographics in Toronto as defined by 16 its present boundaries has dramatically 17 altered municipal government in the City. 18 Common assumptions about Municipal 19 government, however, derive from an older 20 concept that views local government as non- 21 political, as public administration. When 22 Toronto was small and fairly homogenous it 23 was possible to imagine that local 24 government was just about providing 25 services. The more businesslike it was

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1 therefore, the better it performed. 2 Toronto's large and diverse population of 3 today has interests and goals that are 4 rooted in divergent and often conflicting 5 values, sometimes it is only through 6 politics, with its fractious debates and 7 disagreements, that these interests can be 8 articulated and met. Politics is essential 9 in governing the City, now more than ever. 10 It is important to understand how the 11 various parts of the Municipal system 12 relate to each other, even though the 13 Commission's terms of references do not 14 allow it to comment on the other parts of 15 the system, or don't ask for comments on 16 the other part of the system, these have to 17 be taken into account in any of its 18 deliberations. 19 Changes to one (1) part may have unforeseen 20 and unwished for consequences, or may not 21 achieve the desired goal because of other 22 constraints within the system. For 23 example, the reports cite the need for 24 politicians to take a citywide view on most 25 issues, yet the ward based electoral system

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  1                   forces the Councillors to think and act
  2                   locally most of the time.
  3                   The constituents primarily view their
  4                   Councillor as their Ombudsman in local
  5                   matters.  She gets re-elected or defeated,
  6                   depending on how well she performs this
  7                   function.  This is an important role for
  8                   the Municipal Councillor, and I might add
  9                   also for the constituent.
 10                   Changes to Government structure shift power
 11                   from one (1) group to another.  This shift
 12                   is not always apparent in the rhetoric used
 13                   to justify the change.  The American
 14                   historian, Samuel B. Hays, discovered that
 15                   many of the models of Government designed
 16                   by the reformists of the early twentieth
 17                   Century, models discussed in the
 18                   Commission's governance report, were
 19                   undemocratic, because they centralized
 20                   power in the hands of the upper middle
 21                   class and professional civil servants --
 22                   City officials.
 23                   The reformers maintained, however, that
 24                   their reform served the public good.  Yet
 25                   Hays found that the real intent of the

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1 reformers was to shut out the working and 2 lower middle classes from Government. We 3 have to be careful that any structural 4 changes that are recommended, do not reduce 5 the ability of all Torontonians to 6 influence their Government. 7 Two (2) examples from the number of 8 structural changes the reports examined, 9 reducing the size of Council, and a 10 directly elected Executive Committee, 11 appear to me to be both undemocratic and 12 dysfunctional. Why? 13 In the first instance, both would give more 14 power to the middle and upper middle class 15 voter in the City, because they would 16 enlarge the territory the elected official 17 represents, reducing the size of Council 18 would mean enlarging the size of the 19 present wards, a directly elected Executive 20 Committee might be elected at large like 21 the Mayor, as were the controllers on 22 Toronto's former Board of Control, or 23 perhaps from wards covering -- each 24 covering a quarter of the City, that's 25 assuming an Executive Committee with four

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1 (4) members. 2 Enlarging the area of representation would 3 dilute the voice of those segments of 4 society, working classes and immigrant 5 groups, where voter turnout is low. 6 The cost to run for Council would increase, 7 with an increase in the size of the ward. 8 The cost to run for the Executive 9 Committee, assuming it was at large or a 10 quarter of the City, would limit serious 11 candidates to those who are rich, or who 12 have access to those who are rich. The 13 ballot would be long and confusing." 14 As someone actually who ran a number of 15 elections in a Board of Control system, when Scarborough had 16 a Board of Control, I can tell you the ballot is very 17 confusing with that system. 18 "Over forty (40) -- over forty (40) 19 candidates ran this year for Mayor, imagine 20 adding another forty (40), or forty (40) 21 times four (4), a hundred and sixty (160) 22 for Board of Control. 23 Finally, having a directly elected 24 Executive Committee increases friction in 25 Government unnecessarily. This was the

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1 case in Toronto when it had a Board of 2 Control." 3 There is a wonderful film actually, that the 4 National Film Board produced in 1967, called Flowers on a One 5 (1) Way Street, it was by -- it was call -- it was about 6 shutting off traffic on Yorkville, and half the film, which 7 is -- the film runs about an hour, half the film shows a 8 meeting of Toronto's last Board of Control. 9 The Board was so embarrassed by the film, that 10 it had the National Film Board remove the film from 11 circulation until actually I discovered it twenty (20) years 12 later in a Montreal warehouse. So, if anyone wants to see 13 it, it's wonderful, I can get a copy for you. 14 It -- what happens is each member of the 15 Executive, the Mayor and the four (4) controllers are elected 16 at large, so they all speak from the same -- for the same 17 constituency. So, what you end up having is a City with five 18 (5) Mayors, so you have a -- you have a -- a fractured, so to 19 speak, a fragmented Executive. 20 "Efficiency, as we all know, is itself not 21 a goal, rather it describes a preferred way 22 of getting to that goal. One (1) could 23 argue therefore, that a large and noisy 24 Council, that represents, recognizes and 25 respects the many and diverse interests in

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1 this community, may be the most efficient 2 way to provide for democratic Government in 3 Toronto. 4 Boundaries and politics are impossible to 5 find -- to define with any clarity. 6 Ron, this gets right into what -- your last 7 point you made. 8 "The history of the reform movement in the 9 United States is a history of failed 10 attempts to achieve a clear separation 11 between administration and politics. It is 12 better to recognize the inter-connectedness 13 of the two (2) and design guidelines to 14 reduce unprofessional and unethical 15 behaviour. 16 City politicians and officials, need some 17 flexibility to respond to unforeseen 18 events. They need to be able to speak 19 freely with each other. Continued dialogue 20 between politician, constituent and City 21 official, creates a deeper understanding of 22 the issues and produces policies that work. 23 We should not make changes that stifle this 24 dialogue. 25 I had wanted to call these notes, Lost in

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1 Transition, with apologies to Sofia Coppola 2 because it seemed, to me, to describe 3 clearly Toronto's present situation. 4 The City is coping with three (3) major 5 transitions, the change in demographics 6 already mentioned, the amalgamation and the 7 so called re-alignment of local services. 8 Those who initiated these transitions were 9 unaware of the dramatic effects they would 10 have on the City and its government. It 11 speaks volumes, therefore, of the 12 professionalism and skill of most of our 13 politicians and City officials, that the 14 City has managed so well. 15 Most people are unaware of the successes 16 they have achieved since amalgamation. 17 This is unfortunate." 18 19 (BRIEF PAUSE) 20 21 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you very much. 22 Professor Siemiatycki...? 23 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I'm very pleased to 24 have been invited and to have an opportunity to try to 25 contribute to the important work of this Inquiry.

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1 As I thought about the introductory comments 2 I'd like to make, I -- I found myself standing back from it 3 all and wondering, gee, what did get us into the sorry state 4 of affairs that has -- has lead to the creation of this 5 Inquiry? 6 And to -- to the best that I could construct a 7 typology, I thought that it might be helpful to think of 8 there having been circumstantial and systemic dynamics or -- 9 or factors that came together to create the difficulties that 10 you're trying now to explain, understand and prescribe 11 solutions for. 12 I think a fair number of the circumstantial 13 factors, may even within the relatively short lifespan of the 14 Mega City to date, be in the process of correcting 15 themselves. 16 I think the -- some of the systemic factors 17 are the most stubborn ones I suppose, in -- in areas where 18 your Council to the municipal Council, I think could be of 19 particular help. 20 So, I -- just -- just as an exercise for my 21 own benefit, I tried to figure out, well, what would I put in 22 each column, what would I put in the circumstantial and what 23 would I put in the systemic? 24 So, und -- under circumstantial factors and -- 25 and both my colleagues have referred to this, I think it --

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  1  it's hard to under estimate the chaos and confusion of the
  2  early amalgamation days.  The confusion of job descriptions,
  3  the lack of clarity of accountability and oversight, within
  4  -- on the staff side itself; who exactly was -- were various
  5  staff people responsible to and -- and answerable to.
  6                 We don't hear too much these days of the word
  7  harmonization, but, it certainly gobbled up a lot of
  8  attention in the early years.  We were bringing together in
  9  the amalgamation, seven (7) municipalities whose rules, whose
 10  practices should be followed?
 11                 There was a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty. 
 12  So, I think it -- it's difficult to underestimate just the
 13  learning curve and -- and coming to establish clarity of a --
 14  a new single municipality and System of Government.
 15                 Clearly, there was questionable judgment,
 16  perhaps behaviour on the part of various members of staff and
 17  Council that played a part in this.
 18                 I think in some ways also, there was -- we
 19  were close to the high point of the cult of private sector
 20  superiority, when these events unfolded.
 21                 There was -- you know -- this was sort of the
 22  culmination of -- of a -- a period through the 1990's where 
 23  -- whether you call it the new public management, new public
 24  administration, there was a whole ethos that government and
 25  public service had to copy and emulate private sector

126
  1  practices and norms.
  2                 And that almost a kind of knee jerk assumption
  3  that -- by definition anything that the private sector was
  4  superior -- the private sector was superior to the public
  5  sector.  I think in that kind of a mind set, I think a
  6  tilting towards accepting on face value what one was being
  7  told by private sector firms, potential contractors, I think
  8  -- and a generic impulse to contracting good -- the purchase
  9  of goods and services from the private sector, I think there
 10  was a definite giving of the benefit of the -- climate of
 11  giving the benefit of the doubt to -- to the private sector
 12  that may have circumstantially played -- played a part in
 13  this.
 14                 I think it's -- it's -- it would appear there
 15  was, internal to City Hall, a culture -- well, a culture,
 16  cronyism or a culture of pretty close contact between public
 17  officials and private sector officials that -- that, I think,
 18  circumstantially contributed to these -- to these events.
 19                 And -- and I think, in -- in many respects,
 20  some of these factors, I think have taken care of -- have
 21  taken care of themselves or have been -- been transcended by
 22  -- by time and by circumstances, but there -- there are, as I
 23  -- as I thought of them, at least four (4) systemic variables
 24  here. 
 25                 And of the four (4) it's the last two (2) that

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1 -- that I can claim any expertise on but I'll start with the 2 ones that I have -- have less depth in, in -- in some ways, 3 less depth in. 4 I mean, clearly there is unfinished business 5 in terms of the need for much clearer rules of the do's and 6 don'ts for staff and elected officials in local government. 7 This involves mechanisms, establishing and enforcing 8 mechanisms related to Codes of Conduct, Conflict of Interest, 9 integrity rules, Conflict of Interest rules, et cetera. 10 And I think it's evident that -- that Toronto 11 and other municipalities are expediting their move in this 12 direction, but there are -- there's a whole bundle of issues 13 wrapped up into -- into those concerns of the do's and 14 don'ts. 15 Secondly, I think, at the municipal level, 16 there need to be far tighter financial management protocols. 17 I believe the City of Toronto has only recently appointed an 18 Auditor General. 19 There's not a strong a tradition of an Auditor 20 General in Municipal governance as there is Provincially and 21 Federally, and maybe the terror that is unleashed in the 22 hearts of Federal and Provincial staff and politicians by the 23 prospect of the Auditor coming around to check into things, 24 maybe that would be a welcome emphasis at -- at the Municipal 25 level as well.

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1 Third thing I would say is, that I think we 2 need, municipally, much better defined ownership of political 3 responsibility over financial management. And -- and here I 4 draw the analogy to the parliamentary system where, I think 5 one of the virtues of our parliamentary system is we give to 6 -- to one political figure -- one elected political figure 7 the prime responsibility of oversight for financial manager 8 expenditures. 9 Whether that's the Minister of a -- a 10 management board or treasure -- treasury Federally or whether 11 we think of the role that's played by the Minister of Public 12 Works in a federal context and in that -- in that scenario 13 what you're doing is you're not only making it clear to all 14 of the elected political officials who has the primary 15 responsibility for keeping tabs on expenditures and on the 16 books. 17 Your ratcheting it up somewhat by making it 18 clear that that politician's political career depends on how 19 effectively and well they do that job because, you know, 20 things being bungled in that area ultimately devolve back to 21 that political figure who's on the line, whose response -- 22 whose responsibility it's clearly understood to be. We don't 23 have the same clarity of political responsibility at the 24 municipal level. 25 We have a Budget Chief, but reasonably that

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1 person's responsibilities are more on the how do we figure 2 out what we're spending and where we're getting the money 3 from to spend. 4 It's not a financial management -- expenditure 5 side exercise and I think we need to think of, just as 6 there's a Budget Chief, maybe we need to have a -- or 7 whatever you call that person, much greater clarity, because 8 the Committee system that Toronto now has pretty much spreads 9 responsibility over -- you can find elements of 10 responsibility for financial management or in three (3) or 11 four (4) of the permanent Committees of Toronto City Council. 12 It's too diffused, it's everyone's job and 13 it's nobody's job, or everybody in a sense, can get away with 14 doing the many other things that are on their plate. So, I 15 think it might help to have a clarity of responsibility. 16 The other thing that I think to close on, is 17 the issue of -- of lobbying, and -- and the relationship 18 between citizens, stakeholders and their governing 19 institutions and politicians, and in particular, there are a 20 number of -- of initiatives that the City is trying to 21 develop around a lobbyist registry. 22 I think it may be time to ask a more 23 fundamental question of who is a legitimate lobbyist, and -- 24 and I would -- I would submit for consideration that maybe we 25 need to think of lobbying not being a legitimate field of

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1 professional earned income, scope of activity. 2 I think some of the difficulties we get into 3 is when it's one (1) thing for any -- someone with a direct 4 interest and involvement in an issue, to become as actively 5 involved as they can, but when they start hiring, well, let's 6 say hired guns and -- and whose full time job and whose 7 livelihood depends on their being able to demonstrate that 8 they're worth their -- their per diem and their commission, 9 things suddenly get ratcheted I think out of -- potentially 10 out of control. 11 And I would suggest that we need to think 12 about having limitations on who can engage in -- in lobbying, 13 and removing it from legitimate for gain -- for gain 14 exclusive economic activity. 15 And I'll close, and the thought that came to 16 me was we have been here and done this before in another 17 context. For the last at least twenty (20) years, to move to 18 another area of Provincial responsibility, and this I'll 19 close on, the Ontario Labour Relations Act, and in 20 particular, ongoing concerns, less now, but they get stronger 21 in the past, about incidents of replacement workers, strike 22 breaking, culminating in some instances in violence on -- on 23 picket lines. 24 You may recall that the response of the day 25 that the Petersen Government to that problem was to say,

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  1  we're not going to outlaw the hiring of replacement workers,
  2  but we are going to outlaw the existence of professional for
  3  -- of being able to do that as a business, because one (1) of
  4  the problems that was -- was becoming evident was that you
  5  had all these companies popping up, who would make themselves
  6  available to an employer in a strike situation, to present a
  7  complete replaceable work crew.
  8                 And the position of the Government at that
  9  point was, there are perhaps -- the public interest is not
 10  served by -- by the existence of this kind of business
 11  activity; the business of being in the replacement worker
 12  supply business.
 13                 And you know, some people thought that was
 14  problematic, some people wanted the legislation to go
 15  further, some people wanted there to be -- that to be
 16  completely unregulated, but there is a precedent, in other
 17  words, of Government society, that in the public interest,
 18  some economic and business activities are inappropriate, and
 19  I would suggest it's time to start thinking about lobbying --
 20  bringing that principle to the activity of lobbying.
 21                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Thank you very much.
 22                 MADAM COMMISSIONER:  Well, it looks like the
 23  three (3) of you have written my report.  I might as well
 24  just go home.  Not that that's the conclusion I'm coming to,
 25  I want to -- I want to point out, but obviously all three (3)

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1 of you have thought very seriously about the issues facing 2 me. 3 Mr. Butt...? 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you very much, and -- 5 and just to develop perhaps a little further some themes in 6 -- in what we've heard. Professor Vogel, you've -- you've 7 made the point that there may be a need for more strength in 8 the -- in the Mayor's office, to assist the Mayor in 9 discharging the functions that he or she is expected to 10 discharge at least, by the -- by the electorate. 11 And -- and Professor Petersen, you've made the 12 comment that a couple of the proposals in the discussion 13 papers, and I emphasize they're just that -- 14 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Oh yes -- no, no. 15 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- discussion papers, it 16 would be inappropriate, and you go so far as to say, 17 dysfunctional. 18 And then Professor Siemiatycki, you've alluded 19 to the notion of greater control over finances by a proposal 20 of a municipal concept of Finance Minister, if I can use that 21 short form. 22 So, all of you have given thought to this 23 notion of enhancing the power somehow. Could I ask each of 24 you, then to just develop that vision a little bit further, 25 what you would see as problematic and then I'm sure you'll

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1 see the different perspectives come out. 2 Not only what is problematic, but, how you 3 would propose in the Toronto context a solution. Professor 4 Vogel, would you like to talk about what you would like to 5 see the Mayor -- the Mayor's office become, that it's not 6 now, that would assist? 7 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I guess I should preface 8 then my remark by saying, and I know this is not the typical 9 Canadian municipality view, but, on the US side, was take 10 very much for granted the notion of strong executive, strong 11 Mayor. 12 And we've very comfortable with the idea that 13 the Mayor separation of power system does this. Now, I 14 recognize that's sort of alien this context and I'm not one 15 (1) of these people who says, adopt my proposal because it 16 works better for us, and you would do better to follow 17 everything we do in the States. 18 Because we know that on the other side, 19 somehow you all don't always accept that. So -- but at the 20 same time, I think this is a different context for Toronto 21 than it's been in the past. 22 First of all, because of the amalgamation this 23 is a huge City. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: And I just want to perhaps 25 assist you a little bit, by saying that looking at American

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1 jurisdictions and the concept of a strong Mayor, has been 2 very much a part of this week's discussions. 3 So, you know, feel comforted in the sense, 4 that you know, we don't take that as sort of a thoughtless 5 transplantation, it's very much something that's been part of 6 this debate. 7 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Now, I'm not -- I do think 8 there's lots of ways to move in the direction of a stronger 9 Mayor, without actually having to adopt the formal strong 10 Mayor model that we use in a lot of American cities. 11 It could be that there would just simply be 12 some changes in the operating procedures of Council and the 13 Mayor. And I know there's a debate in the staff report, 14 about whether Toronto and cities have the ability to, sort 15 of, make all these changes internally under the new Municipal 16 Act, or whether they still need a further grant of support 17 from the Province. 18 But, either way you go with that, that there 19 are some, sort of, intermediate steps you could do to 20 accomplish that. It seems to me, that you want the Mayor and 21 the CAO -- 22 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just to help you out, one (1) 23 more time, dealing as we are with a Commission of Inquiry, 24 that can make recommendations, we don't need to be deterred 25 by, whether you can or you can't right now.

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1 MR. RONALD VOGEL: You can just say do it -- 2 MR. DAVID BUTT: If it's a good idea we can 3 recommend it. So, feel free in your comments -- 4 MR. RONALD VOGEL: To violate all the reality. 5 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: In other words, we get 6 paid whether it works or not, right? 7 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Well, you don't get paid 8 for being here. 9 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: No, I know. 10 MADAM COMMISSIONER: All right. 11 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I got a sandwich. 12 Thank you. 13 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I feel like -- and this 14 goes back to this complementarity issue of the staff and the 15 elected officials. I feel like the Mayor and the CAO really 16 need to work in tandem. 17 And I would like to think about a way that 18 Council would be comfortable with a CAO that had a more 19 direct relationship with the Mayor. Now, whether that meant 20 formally the Mayor appoints, whether the Mayor nominates and 21 Council adopts, whether the Mayor selects from a slate that 22 Council gives the Mayor. 23 Something that would move in the direction of 24 saying to the Mayor, you have the responsibility to shape the 25 priorities that our City has. You are the only one (1)

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1 elected City wide in the sense of, everybody saying we want 2 you as the Mayor, our vision, you know, you're presumably 3 winning because you have some agenda that people liked over 4 the other candidates. 5 And I'd like to see the Mayor then have some 6 capacity to do that. Now, it's true that a good Mayor who is 7 a good politician can build a coalition and get Council to do 8 those things anyways, but, it sure makes it a lot harder. 9 And the Mayor may not have as much staff help 10 as they may need to do that because you've got an 11 administrative side saying, we've got to be careful, it's not 12 appropriate for us to do it that way, we work -- we answer to 13 the full Council, not just to you. 14 So, in that sense, I would like to -- it 15 doesn't really matter to me, I don't want to say here is the 16 exact proposal, as much as to say, we could think of a way to 17 bolster that; to give the Mayor more in that area. 18 Maybe it's that you let the Mayor have more 19 control over shaping the committee that makes the decisions 20 so that it's his people working with him but the Council, as 21 a whole, still has to do it so it can't be out of synch, he's 22 got to bring the Council along. 23 But I think, in a City this size and with the 24 kinds of issues Toronto grapples with, you can't have forty- 25 four (44) people tell you, here's what to cut because they

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1 won't and you won't have any committee say, it's our job to 2 say what to cut or build or reallocate or -- or if you are 3 given the authority to raise taxes, who wants to step forward 4 and say, we should do that. 5 Somebody's got to be given a bolstered 6 position that they'd be willing to accept the mantle. So 7 that's the direction I'd like to go. Whatever the exact way 8 it is as much as to simply say, there's a lot of ways we 9 could get there but we need to figure one out and go with it. 10 MR. DAVID BUTT: One of the particular things 11 you mentioned was the strengthening of that relationship 12 between the Mayor and the CAO; do you see, again I appreciate 13 that you -- you don't want to prescribe a particular 14 approach, but do you see movement in that direction as 15 involving members of Council as well so that there would be 16 members of Council that would have a particular alignment 17 with the Mayor to -- to assist in a more streamlined 18 formulation and execution of policy? 19 Or would you see those kinds of changes to 20 strengthen the Mayor as coming more, in a more typically 21 American sense, through the -- through an executive -- 22 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I'd really like to see a 23 Mayor's proposal. I'd like to see a Mayor say, here's my 24 budget proposal for the City and then Council have at it. 25 The Appropriations Committee of full Council or your --

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1 whatever particular way you organize yourself. 2 You know, if you want to change it or if you 3 want to hold hearings, if you want to bring in the staff, if 4 you want to, you know, talk about what was the actual 5 original budget data that led to my proposals, I wouldn't 6 deny any of the to the Council, but I would let the Mayor go 7 out there and try to sell it. 8 And I -- I think a Mayor -- a smart Mayor 9 would certainly be trying to bring Council along, all along, 10 instead of waiting to the last minute and shocking them. So 11 I don't mean for a minute to try to take away Council's right 12 and duty to -- to be fully involved but I do think it would 13 work much better with a Mayor than a CAO or a Budget Director 14 saying, he's the City's budget because then a Mayor can't 15 hide, can't say, well, you know it'll be interesting to see 16 what the Budget Office does with this. Well, it's not up to 17 the Budget Office, it's up to you. 18 MR. DAVID BUTT: And so, in that sense, just 19 in terms of placement on a -- on a spectrum, you're proposing 20 thinking along -- more along the lines of an American 21 executive branch rather than a -- 22 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well -- 23 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- Westminster Cabinet model; 24 is that fair to say? 25 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well, except I think you

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1 could do it even under the current system. I don't think you 2 necessarily have to adopt a formal separation of powers to do 3 this. I think if Council had the authority or -- or -- what 4 -- however you got there if the recommendation was, Council 5 wants to simply make it a responsibility of the Mayor that 6 the Mayor present a Mayor's budget to the Council. 7 I don't see why they couldn't do that now. 8 MR. DAVID BUTT: Would you see areas beyond 9 the presentation of budget that -- that Mayor would take this 10 kind of enhanced leadership role? 11 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well, I think if the Mayor 12 takes it here it's going to go all along because the budget 13 becomes the written strategic plan for that year. And so if 14 the Mayor has that responsibility it means the Mayor's going 15 to have to take a position on should we privatize or do it 16 ourselves? Should we create a new service? Should we 17 decentralize it? Should we eliminate it? Should we allow 18 some discretion? Should we shift this to Community Council? 19 So, in the process of making the budget 20 they're really going to end up having to take over authority 21 for saying, I'm going to give direction to the City. Now, 22 again, the Council could reject that vision and then, you 23 know, then they'll be -- you know, it won't get adopted and 24 the people will say, well, why did the Mayor fail? But, at 25 least he had a shot or she had a shot at saying, I'm going to

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1 lead the City if you all will follow me, here's my idea, but 2 if it's a bad idea nobody will go there. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you. Now, Professor 4 Petersen, in your paper you make much of the value of the, 5 sort of, the messy alchemy, if I can put it that way, of 6 locally elected Councillors coming together as a -- as a 7 civic deliberative body; thoughts on -- on Professor Vogel's 8 approaches to streamlining municipal government? 9 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, I don't know 10 that I -- what he's suggesting is necessarily streamlining 11 local government as it's giving more focus and direction, I 12 guess, in that sense. So that, I mean, you could still have 13 a noisy Council where you have a Mayor come in and say, this 14 is my budget. 15 I mean, one thing is, the Mayor has to make 16 sure, if the Mayor wants to get re-elected even -- even in a 17 separate of power situation, if he wants to get re-elected he 18 has to make sure that the people of the City want to re-elect 19 him. 20 And the Councillors, usually on a local 21 Council are ward based, I think, in my own home town, New 22 York City, you want to make sure that you're doing also 23 things for the locality, but I think what -- what -- you do 24 need a focus, which we don't have in Toronto. I think that 25 is a major problem.

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1 I've even discussed with my friends of mine, 2 the possibility of introducing political parties, into the 3 local -- to Toronto, with a forty-four (44) member Council, I 4 would -- as I said, I don't like the idea of reducing Council 5 to make it more efficient, because I think what you're doing 6 then is you're shutting out the voices of -- of people within 7 the City that have to be heard and need to be heard. 8 And I know cities smaller than Toronto that 9 have Councils of a hundred (100), but they're -- then they're 10 party based, and so the parties pull -- pull together on 11 issues, and that also gives the voter a little more focus 12 when they're going out to vote. 13 Now, there are real problems with that if 14 you've got a Provincial Government that's a party in power 15 that's different than the -- the party in power at the 16 Council level, and the -- and the Provincial Government can 17 abolish you and that's a real problem, that was a problem in 18 the -- with the -- a lot of the American cities. I think one 19 (1) of the reasons for introducing home rule, was to prevent 20 that kind of thing. 21 But to -- so I -- I have -- and I have no 22 problem with the Mayor, supposedly, as the Executive Officer 23 or Chief Executive Officer of the Municipality, expanding his 24 -- the size of his office so that he is -- that the budget is 25 running through is office, and that he presents a budget

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1 report to Council. 2 The difficulty again on the Council, is that 3 every Councillor is -- sees himself as their -- his -- the 4 King or -- or Queen of their ward, and that -- they're very 5 reluctant to give up any kind of authority, and that's one 6 (1) of the difficulties I think with creating even an 7 executive. 8 That certainly was the difficulty with 9 creating an Executive Committee for the new City of Toronto, 10 and that was the reason why they eventually elected back -- 11 Toronto back in the 18 -- 1898, when they did have their 12 first Executive Committee, it eventually became directly 13 elected, because the Councillors could not appoint the 14 Executive Committee, because it meant that there was some 15 Councillors that had more power than others, or more 16 influence and that's -- it's difficult. 17 They certainly need an Executive Committee and 18 they certainly need focus within the Mayor's office, I don't 19 think that -- and the other thing I should point out 20 actually, that in a sense, the strong Mayor system isn't 21 really out of context for Canada, because the American local 22 Government, Canadian local Government were based on the 23 English Council Committee system back -- I think the English 24 Reform Act of 1834, or even prior, a lot of it -- but a lot 25 of it comes from the English model.

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1 So we're just -- we could say we're a hundred 2 (100) years -- a hundred (100) years behind. So, we probably 3 could adopt it without too much trouble. 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Now, we've heard from City 5 and -- and former Councillors, about this -- this very notion 6 that you referred to Professor Petersen, and I know Professor 7 Siemiatycki, nodding his head, this notion of resistance to 8 creating unequal Councillors. 9 Do you see then, the expansion of the Mayor's 10 office as a way of providing that increased focus as -- as 11 you've described it, without infringing on this sacred notion 12 of equality of Councillors? 13 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: The Mayor's definitely 14 not an equal of the other Councillors, because he's elected 15 from all of the -- from the entire City, so his -- he's got a 16 large constituency base, so they can justify it that way. 17 My Councillor, my City Councillor, Councillor 18 Ashton say and Councillor Pam McConnell, some of the other 19 Councillors, they're just elected from a ward, why should 20 they be on an Executive Committee that has authority, or -- 21 or authority to recommend on the financial recommendations of 22 the Standing Committee, so it's -- so that that's why it's un 23 -- that it's -- they're not happy with it, they're 24 uncomfortable with that. 25 But I don't -- they couldn't justify not

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1 giving more money or more -- trying to develop more focus 2 within the Mayor's office. It seems to me as Chief Executive 3 Officer of the City, that's where it should be. 4 And certainly his -- and I think as -- as Ron 5 pointed out, that that is something that can be done now, 6 that's something I think within the Council's rules of 7 procedure or job descriptions or whatever, that that's 8 possible. 9 And the Mayor would have -- still has to build 10 coalitions on Council, in order to get the budget through and 11 they know that and the Budget Chief, in a sense, has that, is 12 always seen as having that kind of authority, you know, at 13 least the earlier Budget Chiefs used to -- used to pretend 14 that they were as important as the Mayor or more important 15 than the Mayor, so. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: Last question before we move 17 on to Professor Siemiatycki, would you see the Mayor hiring 18 the CAO, as Professor Vogel has made as one (1) tentative 19 suggestion, as -- as appropriate, in terms of the expansion 20 of the Mayor's office? 21 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I'm not sure whether 22 that might not require a change in the Municipal Act, for him 23 to hire, because as I understand all decisions in other 24 words, because it's Council -- it's a Council system of 25 government actually. So, all decisions have to be by a vote

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1 of Council. 2 MR. DAVID BUTT: Setting aside the mechanics 3 of how that might -- 4 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Yeah. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- come to be, in policy terms 6 do you see that as a possible suggestion? 7 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: To be honest with you, 8 I don't see it as that problematic, the CAO. I would begin 9 to see it's problematic with the line departments probably 10 because of the CAO is the advisor to -- is a -- comes from 11 the central -- would control the central administration 12 departments and not, say the line departments. 13 See that's the other problem, I think, within 14 the administration. I know when we were in Scarborough, we 15 had difficulty trying to develop some coherence with -- 16 between the departments on policy. 17 But, you had the different departments were 18 like silos, and you had very difficult time coordinating 19 across the departments and you couldn't hire an 20 administrative officer to do that, because they were experts 21 in administration and not experts in engineering or experts 22 in planning, so, there was that kind of, again a conflict 23 there, within the administration. 24 Yeah, I just -- I -- to me it doesn't seem 25 very problematic to have the Mayor do that, but -- and I just

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1 not felt, talk to Councillors about that to see whether they 2 would be -- as long as they had control over the budget, 3 they'd be fine. 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Siemiatycki, you 5 spoke in your opening remarks about this need for greater 6 financial control. Do you see Professor's Vogel's sense of 7 this enhanced office of the Mayor, as an appropriate vehicle 8 to achieve that and should it move beyond financial 9 leadership to leadership in other areas of policy? 10 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I think in terms of 11 this interesting discussion about the role of the Mayor, I 12 don't think I would put many of my eggs, in terms of where's 13 the solution going to come from for this whole bundle of 14 issues that you're trying to define here, in the -- in the 15 role and powers of the Mayor. 16 It's an interesting issue, it ripples into 17 every conceivable area of local government, but, it's got a 18 lot of baggage attached to and maybe even a lot of unforeseen 19 implications or consequences. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: Could you spin some of that 21 out for us? 22 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: That, you know, careful 23 what we wish for. Do we really want to entrench and codify a 24 strong Mayor? Well, it depends on is it a wonderful, 25 virtuous, gifted brilliant Mayor, or an inept and not

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1 working, you know, problematic person. 2 So, you know, you run a risk in that 3 direction. Certainly, our experiences at other levels of 4 government, where there is very strong executive power, 5 Provincially and Federally, you know, we are more struck now, 6 by some of the down sides of the democratic deficit that can 7 play out, when you have such vastly unequal roles and powers 8 in -- among the group of elected politicians that then, you 9 know, set off all kinds of dynamics of their own that can you 10 know, lead to a sense of alienation and powerlessness on the 11 part of the largest -- you know -- the bulk of elected 12 politicians; can play into cynicism on the part of the 13 electorate. What's the point of electing a local MP, what 14 role do they -- all of that. 15 So, there can be some corrosive implications 16 to entrenching excessively strong executive powers. In a 17 funny way, one (1) of the wonders of our current system is 18 precisely its slipperiness, it's elastic. 19 That we can all think of instances where 20 there's a Mayor who is a figurehead and we can think of 21 instances where there's a Mayor who is a real powerhouse. 22 And you know, the last -- I guess the last 23 couple of months have been instructive, that when the public 24 deem -- when it's perceived that the public has given a 25 elected at large Mayor, a large mandate, low and behold, that

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  1  signal gets across to the Council and people start their
  2  votes on Council, start to take into account and reflect
  3  what's perceived to be this stronger -- this stronger
  4  mandate.  So, I don't -- I think we're well enough served by
  5  the current situation.  
  6                 In other words, the -- the undefined nature of
  7  the Mayor's office, maybe I'll put it this way, allows those
  8  who have the strengths you would want to be in the person to
  9  exercise strong codified powers, those kinds of political
 10  leaders and figures can emerge in our -- in a -- in our
 11  system.
 12                 I'd go back though and -- and echo one comment
 13  that Professor Vogel made in his early comments -- in this
 14  first comments, that, you know, the public at large has a
 15  stake here.  That if people -- you know, the only ways to --
 16  to on Council and the -- the practice of Council, the
 17  deliberative process of Council, the only way to entrench the
 18  power of the Mayor is either as -- as Professor Petersen had
 19  said, create a party system, or create, in one way or other,
 20  a weighted balance system where the Mayor's vote counts for
 21  more; however you do that.  
 22                 Whether you do that through a veto system,
 23  whether you do it through a requirement of, you know, two-
 24  thirds majority needed to defeat the Mayor's side of a -- in
 25  either one of those, I think the public is going to start to

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1 lose confidence in, they want their local Council -- 2 Councillor to reflect their neighbourhood and local needs and 3 there's going to be, I think, a real fear if their perception 4 is that their local Councillor can't get a fair hearing on an 5 issue of strong concern to their ward and their locality. 6 So I think there's going to be a lot of public 7 opposition to entrenching some kind of unduly weighted vote, 8 but I think, if you go back to Professor Vogel's suggestion 9 of decentralization of, you know, like, maybe the pendulum 10 has swung too far and what we need is some mechanism of 11 either a neighbourhood council, councils or -- which was 12 initially, of course, for a period one of the suggestions in 13 the Mega-City design that there would be even below community 14 councils be an even lower neighbourhood based set of 15 potential institutions which never got created. 16 But if you went that route, you might be able 17 to -- to -- you know, legitimately give to that body some 18 neighbourhood issues that might deflect some of the 19 otherwise, I think, legitimate concerns that local 20 neighbourhood issues are going to get run roughshod 21 potentially by the Mayor. 22 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you. And I want to 23 return to that -- that notion of neighbourhood councils and 24 -- and the role of Community Councils -- 25 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah.

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1 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- as -- that theme of 2 decentralization that -- that's come up. I'd just like to 3 ask Professor Vogel to come back on -- on this question. 4 You've heard Professor Siemiatycki say that 5 there's a risk involved in enhancing the role of the Mayor's 6 office in creating -- in -- in, to use a label that's very 7 hot these days in Canadian politics, democratic deficit, in 8 the sense that if you have a strong executive they'll do 9 everything and the elected representatives, kind of, fall by 10 the wayside. 11 From my very, sort of, amateur observer status 12 of what goes on in the United States, it seems that is not 13 the case. You do have an executive with more powers very 14 often and yet there's -- there's a vibrant role for the 15 legislative elected officials to play. 16 So do you have comments on this potential 17 democratic deficit at the municipal level? 18 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well, yeah. I do. I could 19 -- I could even concede some aspects of that if I had 20 actually said, let's set up a strong executive here with a 21 separation of powers and really let the Mayor appoint all the 22 department heads and run the whole system and, you know, 23 Council can respond to what the Mayor does or doesn't 24 propose. 25 But I was talking about modifying the existing

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1 system which is already a Council dominated model. So that, 2 at best, the Council's delegated some additional authority to 3 the Mayor which, in a worse case scenario, they could always 4 retract. 5 But I still think that the -- you know, in 6 this regard, I don't see a -- in fact, really one could 7 reverse it and say the deficit might be absence of somebody 8 who can make this system function where you have too many 9 kings and nobody will follow, then there's no capacity to 10 pursue a City's strategic interest. 11 I wouldn't want to go too far with that but I 12 think, if we were going to talk about good governance, one of 13 the things that I expect where I think the Mayor plays a 14 critical role in this is to adapt a community to social and 15 economic change. 16 The -- the -- somebody's got to be proactive 17 in saying, where's our City's interests, even though that's 18 hard to figure out what an interest is and we can debate what 19 it is but if we could somehow say here's what our interest 20 is; how do we pursue it, well somebody has to say and we can 21 say, staff can come up with a report that says, here's three 22 (3) things we think you need to do but somebody's got to say, 23 yeah, we better do that. 24 And I think if you don't have the Mayor having 25 that ability to say, yeah, and we're going to -- and I'm

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1 going to use that to shape the priorities of the budget for 2 the next five (5) years, and we'll start going down that 3 road. Or I'm going to work with higher level Governments or 4 private groups to do what we can't do, just with the City 5 system. 6 But I -- I think right now you don't really 7 have a Mayor who has sufficient resources, except their own 8 charisma to do that. 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: And -- and how about the 10 point that was made, and instead it was made in -- in earlier 11 Panels that we can all envision and we may envision different 12 individuals, but we can all envision looking back on the past 13 Mayors who -- who have been able to lead by virtue of their 14 moral authority, that they were able to cultivate absent this 15 kind of structural support. 16 And I suppose the flip side is that we could 17 all envision somebody who could do a lousy job with the 18 enhanced office, that -- that you propose. 19 Is then -- what -- what are your thoughts, is 20 it appropriate to leave the elasticity, as Professor 21 Siemiatycki said, and expect the electorate to choose someone 22 who has the -- human qualities, as opposed to the 23 institutional qualities. 24 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I -- my preference would be 25 to have the capacity to act if we decide to act, and I think

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1 that's what we would currently lack. 2 And I think the -- the remedy to that, you get 3 the wrong Mayor in there, they're incompetent, they're not 4 politically skilled, they don't have -- they don't hire good 5 staff, or -- or work well with staff, they're going to fail 6 miserably, Council's going to be screaming at them, the 7 electorate, their polls will be down, I'm sure the newspapers 8 are going to attack them, you've got, what, four (4) or more. 9 I mean most American cities now are down to one (1), you've 10 got somebody going to be ticked off here and following 11 closely. 12 So, I think there'll be enough scrutiny of 13 that Mayor, that they won't be quite as strong as -- they'll 14 tell you they probably will need more power than I've just 15 given them. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: We have four (4), but only 17 one's here. 18 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Yeah. Could I just -- 19 could I just intervene on that. The question is you talked 20 about the enhanced office, it just struck me that even if you 21 did elect a Mayor who was not -- did not see himself as the 22 Chief Executive Officer who saw him -- saw himself in a 23 different role, but if in that office and as considered as 24 part of that office, were these other functions, then it was 25 also a sign to that person, this is something you have to do.

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1 You may not want to do it, but you're going to have to make 2 sure you have people who are -- who are staffing that office, 3 who will then be reporting to you. 4 If for -- if for example every year the Mayor 5 makes a state of the City address, budget, et cetera, et 6 cetera, that's his responsibility, even a Mayor who would 7 just prefer to be out cutting ribbons all day long, is -- is 8 -- has to present that budget, has to present that speech, so 9 he has to have someone to have written that speech. 10 So, just having that as -- as a function of 11 the Mayor, which can be taken back by Council, if Council so 12 chooses, so it's not something, you know, it's something 13 Council has delegated that it -- it -- I think that it 14 wouldn't -- it wouldn't hurt in that sense, and -- and it 15 wouldn't be that much of a disadvantage if someone were in 16 the office who just didn't, you know, was not what we would 17 consider a great or a good Mayor, or even a capable Mayor. 18 MR. DAVID BUTT: I hear you saying that they 19 -- that that kind of reform might force somebody to rise to 20 the occasion? 21 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Exactly, yeah. And if 22 they couldn't rise, they'd have someone else rise for them; 23 right? 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: Well, what about the notion 25 of democratic deficit that -- that might follow on something

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1 like this, do you have concerns? 2 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, no, again, and I 3 -- and I think Ron's point is very good on that. If you have 4 def -- democratic deficit, where -- if, in fact, Council's 5 running off in all -- in forty-four (44) different 6 directions, because then the electorate doesn't know what's 7 going on, then the electorate tends to vote for the 8 Councillor, his or her Councillor, because they got street 9 parking on our street, or they got us permit parking, or they 10 got our streets cleaned before anyone else, or something like 11 that. So, it becomes a very selfish vote, because that's all 12 the voter has to go on. 13 So that at least if there's more focus, there 14 needs to be more focus, in -- in Municipal Government, and 15 then the Councillor -- you know, Mayor runs on a platform and 16 certain Councillors can attach themselves to the Mayor's 17 platform on certain issues. But -- but you begin, I think -- 18 and I think we had this in the last Mayoral campaign as well. 19 More focus -- a lot -- there was more focus on more -- on 20 broader, City wide issues. 21 The Island Bridge notwithstanding, but -- and 22 I think that's very important, I think the last campaign was 23 quite good actually, it was one (1) of the -- and I think 24 that's the larger City has to -- has a lot to play with -- 25 you know, it was important in that, so, I don't think it

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1 would create a democratic deficit. As a matter of fact, I 2 think it would improve it in that sense. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: Could -- could I talk about, 4 move from the Mayor now to -- to the size of -- of Council. 5 And I know Professor Petersen you expressed firm views. 6 We've heard from former Mayor, John Sewell, in 7 an earlier panel, who expressed the view, that it -- once we 8 start to look at the function of Council, if we move beyond 9 twenty five (25), and I if -- I hope I do justice to his 10 thesis, it -- it reduced the transparency of government 11 because a deliberative body of greater than twenty five (25) 12 is -- is inefficient and therefore there will inevitably be 13 back room deals made. 14 You support me, I'll support you, and the -- 15 the transparency that you hope for in -- in a municipal 16 deliberative body, effectively disappears. Thoughts on that, 17 with -- with Toronto in mind, at this point? 18 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I don't know -- what's 19 the size of Louisville, Council? 20 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: Twenty -- twenty-six (26). 21 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, you see it's not 22 transparent. 23 MR. RONALD VOGEL: But, we just did an 24 amalgamation ourselves, we used to be twelve (12) so. 25 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I yeah, I'm ner -- you

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1 see once you get a small Council to me it's a Council then 2 that can be captured easily, I mean, it's -- it's a -- even 3 if you're looking at lobbyist. 4 If -- if Council makes the decisions, then you 5 have to get the majority of say forty four (44) Councillors 6 and you have to get twenty three (23) or twenty four (24), to 7 agree with you, you have to lobby twenty four (24) people. 8 And if you've got a Council of twelve (12), 9 you only have to lobb -- you only have to lobby seven (7) 10 people, right? It's cheaper for a lobbyist and it -- it 11 makes me nervous you see, when it gets -- when it's smaller. 12 And I think that the transparency issue -- 13 government is never completely transparent. Even if you had 14 a committee of three (3), it's not transparent and who's 15 doing what? 16 Someone can meet you on the way to the subway 17 station and say, oh, by the way, I -- I hear this issue is 18 before Council and I -- I want you to vote this way for it. 19 If you vote this way, et cetera. And you could do that with 20 three (3) members, four (4) members. 21 We had a -- I guess it was eight (8) members 22 Planning Board and I think Scarborough had a twelve (12) or 23 thirteen (13) member Council. You know, but -- and -- and I 24 thought we were fair in our decisions. 25 But, 100 percent transparency, you can't

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1 achieve and I -- as I say, I'm really nervous with reducing 2 the size of Council because some of those Councillors, the 3 ones that really do their job well, really have a lot to do. 4 You know they're meeting people in the 5 community, they're talking -- I mean they are serving as 6 Ombudsmen. And that takes -- that's a lot of work, aside 7 from sitting as policy makers for the City. So, that makes 8 me nervous. 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Siemiatycki and 10 then Professor Vogel? 11 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah, I -- I share the 12 apprehension. I don't think it would be a good idea to 13 reduce the size of the Council. 14 And the argument about a correlation between 15 smaller the size of the Council, the more transparent or the 16 less horse-trading on Council, among councillors; I think -- 17 I don't think there's any empirical evidence to -- to suggest 18 that Councils have always -- Councillors have always been 19 involved in, you know, I -- I'll trade you support for 20 something in your Ward, if you -- if you back something in my 21 Ward. 22 That's just the reality of how a local 23 Councillor has to try to do business to defend the interest 24 of their -- because from the Councillor's standpoint, you've 25 got either -- either an individual citizen or a -- a

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1 ratepayer group, for whom something means a heck of a lot to 2 them and they see you as their advocate and -- and champion 3 on that Council, but, you're one (1) of whatever the magic 4 number is. 5 So, it's not a numbers issues, it's that you 6 and only you, have responsibility for that territorial space. 7 And so there will always be the -- the sort of, I'll -- 8 trading of votes, regard -- regardless of the size, but, in 9 terms of -- I take Pat's point about smaller the size, I 10 think if anything, the greater the likelihood for things to 11 happen behind the scenes, rather than out in the open. 12 I mean the other -- the other part of this is, 13 we -- you know, two (2) and a half million people in Toronto 14 already have forty-four (44) elected Councillors. The ratio 15 of citizens to elected politicians is already the highest in 16 any local government, anywhere in the country. 17 So, the implications for trying to be heard by 18 your -- by your elected politicians, the workload of elected 19 politicians, the cost of running for elected office; I -- I 20 think it's a non-starter unless your assumption and perhaps 21 this may have been, Mr. Sewell's assumption, we got to go 22 back to a City of six hundred thousand (600,000). 23 Well, if we go back to a City of six hundred 24 (600) -- if you undue a Mega City, then maybe you can have 25 these kinds of -- of numbers. But, in -- in an amalgamation

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1 City of 2.5 million, I think it would be a retrograde step to 2 reduce the size of the Council. 3 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: And I -- I think Mr. 4 Sewell's point, when I asked him the question, was, indeed, 5 that he felt that it was necessary to go to a two tier 6 system. 7 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah, Yeah. 8 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Then he should have 9 supported the two tier system when we had it. I noticed he 10 didn't. 11 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Let's not go there. 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Vogel, thoughts on, 13 again -- 14 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Yeah, I guess -- 15 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- the number of Councillors? 16 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I mean, as just -- there's 17 wide variation in size of Councils in American cities and 18 throughout the world and I think they can work, small or 19 large, depending on the -- the local circumstances. 20 I guess, my inclination would be, if you 21 really started working on building some decentralization into 22 this current structure then, maybe, it wouldn't be so 23 problematic to have fewer Councillors. 24 Certainly, I see there could be a lot of 25 advantages to having fewer Councillors. One of the issues

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1 that's needed on a Council is, if we're going -- forget the 2 minute -- for the moment that we do anything to strengthen 3 the Mayor, if we're not going to do anything to strengthen 4 the Mayor, we need to do something to strengthen the 5 Council's ability to cohere as a legislative body that sets 6 priorities itself. 7 And it is very hard with forty-four (44) 8 people for them to come up with legislative goals, for them 9 to come up with a common framework, for them to come up with 10 a strategic agenda. So that if we're not going to strengthen 11 the Mayor then maybe we do need to think about a smaller body 12 that can, somehow, more effectively set an agenda and move on 13 it. 14 They -- forty-four (44) people, it's hard for 15 them to get to know each other, especially with turnover. 16 It's hard for them to understand each other and where they 17 come at things from. And I -- I do think, you know, even in 18 -- in Council manager systems in the US which have only five 19 (5) or seven (7) Councillors with the Mayor serving on there, 20 we spend a lot of time on legislative training in these 21 reform models. 22 Councils will go out on retreats. They'll 23 work on, you know, goal setting skills. Now, some of that, 24 I'm not always a great fan of but -- but -- but the notion is 25 that we have to really think as a -- as a body about acting

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1 as a body and I think with forty-four (44) it really is very 2 difficult. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: I -- I sense a tension, 4 Professor Vogel I liked your comment and I do want to get to 5 you, Professor Petersen, there's a tension here in -- 6 underlying tension in the vision of the Councillor's role 7 and, Professor Vogel, as I hear you -- you quite clearly 8 articulating this notion that strategic planning is very 9 difficult. 10 Networking leads to strategic planning, very 11 difficult in a body of forty-four (44). On the other hand I 12 hear Professor Siemiatycki and perhaps Professor Petersen, to 13 some extent, the other and saying, well, no, wait a minute. 14 There's -- there's the Councillor as local 15 champion, you know, the speed bump here, the -- the park 16 there. And -- and so there's two (2) different visions, one 17 of which leads Professor Siemiatycki to say, you know, we -- 18 we can't enlarge a constituency, and yet it collides with 19 your vision; where -- where do you see that? 20 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well, this is -- this is 21 where sometimes the training idea comes into play. I -- I 22 don't, for a minute, want to tell Councillors not to do 23 representations or not to do constituency case work because 24 that is important. 25 But there's going to be a tendency that that's

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  1  all they do because it can so overwhelm their -- their time. 
  2  And they need to find a way to build into their schedules
  3  real time for the bigger, and when I say "bigger" I don't
  4  mean more important, they're equally important, but the City
  5  needs this function filled.
  6                 And Council needs to find a way, if they don't
  7  want to strengthen a Mayor and ask the Mayor to provide that
  8  vision more directly and help the Council accomplish its
  9  goals, then they need to find a way to do it themselves.
 10                 And then they need to really build into their
 11  schedules meetings where they just talk about these kinds of
 12  things and -- and develop consensus where they aren't
 13  necessarily trying to take votes on a hundred (100) bills
 14  sitting in the -- in the Clerk. 
 15                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Can you -- can I just -- one
 16  more brief point, you just said an empirical one for the most
 17  part, Professor Siemiatycki makes the point that -- that, you
 18  know, the ratio of constituents to Councillors is -- is one
 19  of the largest in Canada, if not the largest.  In -- in your
 20  experience, again, thinking primarily in terms of this
 21  Ombudsman or Ombudsperson role, where's an optimal place for
 22  that if -- if you can -- 
 23                 MR. RONALD VOGEL:  I won't touch that one. 
 24  No, there's -- there's -- let me -- I didn't mean it so
 25  flippantly, but it's -- there's really a great deal of

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1 variation even in -- like, American counties which really 2 operate much as cities do, you know, you could have a county 3 which has six (6) to twelve (12) Commissioners who, 4 essentially, govern a community of a couple of million 5 people. 6 So, it isn't necessarily that it's just the 7 ratio, it's the -- whether citizens also feel like they have 8 -- you know, in those situations they often also have small 9 cities, so they may feel like they get their representation 10 there, or in an American context, there's one (1) very 11 important difference about localism in the US versus Canada, 12 which is our whole system of representation, not just in the 13 City or County Government, but then in State Government, 14 State legislature and National Government, which Congress is 15 based around local representation. 16 So you not only can go to your local City 17 Councillor, or your local County Commissioner, you can go to 18 your State Legislator, who represents a local district, and 19 acts on your local interests in the State Capital, and you 20 can go to your Federal Congressperson, who acts on the local 21 interests in the National Legislature. 22 So you can come at this and get somebody to 23 intervene at multiple levels of Government, thinking about it 24 from your community's perspective. 25 MR. DAVID BUTT: And with the --

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1 MR. RONALD VOGEL: With the Canadian, after 2 you get outside of the local, everything's a National 3 election; right? 4 I mean you have a local constituency, but 5 you're running on a national platform, that's a national 6 party platform, or a Provincial one (1). 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: Hmm hmm. Professor 8 Petersen...? 9 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I'm -- I'm trying to 10 remember what I was going to comment, but you -- I think he 11 made a very good point about developing the Council as a 12 legislative body, and how do you develop it? 13 And I know one (1) of the things that we were 14 very concerned with, with the amalgamation, was that there 15 was no work done. This does come up in the -- one (1) of the 16 reports as well, that there was no work done with the 17 Council, that they were thrown together, as I think at that 18 point there were fifty-five (55), fifty-six (56) Members of 19 Council, they didn't know each other, they came from 20 different political cultures, different Municipalities that 21 developed different political cultures. They didn't -- 22 didn't know each other. 23 The women on Council started to meet I think 24 once a month, and that was looked on suspiciously by the male 25 Members of Council, what are these women doing, sharing

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1 recipes, but it was a way of them getting to know each other. 2 And until you really -- they weren't working together as in a 3 group, and they still don't do that. And of course, I think 4 one (1) of the main reasons for it when we talked to the 5 civil City officials about it, and the CAO's office, was that 6 it was going to cost, and we couldn't, you know everything 7 one (1) thought, oh, that's an airy fairy thing to do, we're 8 not going to send them on a retreat to get to know each other 9 and so that's a real problem. 10 Oh, I know what the other point was I was 11 going to make, is that one (1) of the difficulties is if you 12 don't have -- develop that within the Council, and you don't 13 have a strong -- a stronger Mayor's office where this -- 14 there's that kind of exec focus for -- for his executive 15 role, is that what tends to happen I think, is that the 16 governing then gets done by the City officials, because 17 they're the ones the Council then relies on these reports, 18 recommendations, and so the power tends to -- to go down into 19 the administration. 20 And that was the case with Metro Council for a 21 long time, when Metro Council was not directly elected and 22 they had a Chairman, the Chairman was very strong, but the 23 City staff, Metro staff was very strong. 24 We were fortunate in Toronto, that we have 25 some very good City officials. I think with the amalgamation

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1 with the chaos that ensued, and the jumbling up that 2 occurred, that that kind of just created a disjoint -- 3 disjointedness within the civil service, and so that we 4 didn't actually have a civil service that we could rely -- 5 that Council could rely on. 6 So, there was kind of a -- this chaos at the 7 political level, and then a chaos at the -- at the 8 administrative level. 9 Not -- I have to back off on that a bit, 10 because Metro Government actually, about 72 percent of 11 Government services was provided by Metro. So TTC was -- was 12 fine and the police was fine, but in the public eye it 13 appeared certainly in -- in City administration, and 14 certainly in the administrative functions and finance and the 15 CAO's office, those areas that Metro was very strong in. 16 So, I think that -- that -- I think that's the 17 -- another concern I would have, that you real -- that -- and 18 -- and share with Ron, is that you really need to develop 19 this Council as a decision making body, not just on these 20 local issues, but on the wider strategic issues. 21 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Can -- can I just interject 22 a quick point? In -- in the American context, one (1) way we 23 set these strategies is every community has to have its State 24 delegation decide what its community priorities are to go to 25 the State Capital with.

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  1                 So, this is not an official function assigned
  2  by the Constitution, it just happens in every community,
  3  where all the local delegate -- all the State House Members
  4  and State Senate Members from that community meet, after
  5  talking with City Government, County Government, any other
  6  local Governments, the -- the big school systems, any
  7  universities, any other independent public bodies, and they
  8  say, we can go after two (2) or three (3) things this year in
  9  the State Capital, what are they going to be?  If you don't
 10  all give us your priorities, we'll come up with our own.
 11                 And then each unit communicates and then that
 12  State delegation says, all right, here's the three (3) things
 13  we're going to go for this year, and we're going to really
 14  deliver them.
 15                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  And one (1) -- one (1) can
 16  see in the increase in recent conversation around urban
 17  agendas playing a role in the national stage, a need for that
 18  kind of strategic thinking Council wide.
 19                 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN:  It's probably a little
 20  easier, the American system, though where the parties you
 21  don't have the party whips, that we have.  And so the parties
 22  in power can say, we don't care about you, because we get our
 23  support from some place else and you know, you have to
 24  mobilize the parties.  They have to mobilize vote across
 25  parties don't they.

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1 MR. RONALD VOGEL: But, the legislatures give 2 -- but the legislators give great respect to your forgiven 3 for local votes and you're released. 4 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Oh, yes, but, I don't 5 think they do that here, not yet anyway. 6 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just mindful of the time and 7 thinking that this might, Madam Commissioner, be an 8 appropriate point for our mid-term break? 9 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Mid-term break, all 10 right. We'll break for fifteen (15) minutes. 11 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry will adjourn for 12 fifteen minute recess. 13 14 --- Upon recessing at 2:43 p.m. 15 --- Upon resuming at 3:01 p.m. 16 17 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry will now resume. 18 Please be seated. 19 MR. DAVID BUTT: Thank you. Our discussion 20 has roamed through potential changes to the Mayor's office 21 and moved towards notions of Council as a -- a decision 22 making body, and perhaps this is an appropriate time to ask 23 for comments, and I'll -- I'll ask for you to lead off, 24 Professor Siemiatycki, if you could, on the notion of an 25 Executive Committee, as -- as a way of enhancing Council's

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1 ability, given its size, to make decisions. Your thoughts? 2 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I think in a sense we 3 -- we in one (1) form or another already have an Executive 4 Committee, some of the responsibilities, policy coordination, 5 finances. If you think of the Executive as leading, in terms 6 of the -- the broad directions of policy, the allocation of 7 available funds to priority areas, in the old days the Policy 8 and Planning Committee under Metro or the City, the current 9 Policy and Finance Committee, I think in some ways is seen as 10 playing that -- that kind of leading and -- and overarching 11 role. 12 But you know, in some ways I think you know, 13 to bring this back to the -- troubles the City ran into, that 14 -- that led to -- to the creation of this Inquiry -- 15 MR. DAVID BUTT: We do want to be careful in 16 that area, because it's the Commissioner's job -- 17 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Okay. 18 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- to actually make those 19 findings, we don't presuppose anything here. 20 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Okay. 21 MR. DAVID BUTT: But if we can talk at a 22 general policy level. 23 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Okay, I think what I'd 24 say is, do you want to have one (1) Committee with designated 25 lead responsibility for everything in the mandate of a

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1 particular level of Government, or do you want to have very 2 clear sub-divided responsibilities? 3 And so I -- I -- what I'd say I'm getting at 4 here is if there are particular issues, where there needs to 5 be clearer political accountability and ownership and control 6 over and I'll say -- and this is to come back to a question 7 of yours earlier that I didn't specifically address, the -- 8 the issue of financial management expenditures. 9 Is that best given to -- is that best added to 10 an Executive Committee and one (1) more task for an all 11 powerful central agency, or -- or arm of -- of the 12 Municipality, or is it better assigned and allocated to a -- 13 specific designated -- unless you can reduce it to 14 individual. 15 If we've got a Budget Chief, why don't we have 16 an Expenditure Chief of the City? Why don't we have the head 17 of, for instance, the Administrative Committee, you know, the 18 -- the head of one (1) of the other Committees is referred to 19 as the Budget Chief. Why don't we have the head of the 20 Administrative Committee referred to as -- and acknowledged 21 to be primarily responsible for oversight of -- on the 22 political side of -- of financial management. 23 So, I guess in generalities, I would say your 24 choices are loaded all into one (1) small group of -- of 25 people, in which case I think you run the risk of overloading

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1 them and of grumbling among those who aren't in the inner 2 circle, or -- parse it out in very clearly identified and 3 understood responsibility to different individuals, and I 4 think I'd go the second route than the first route. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Vogel, again, 6 assuming that we -- we look at -- at Council adjustments, as 7 opposed to the earlier discussion -- 8 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Of the Mayor. 9 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- about the Mayor? 10 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I -- if we weren't going to 11 do something with the Mayor's office, then I think Council 12 does need something, whether you wanted to call it the 13 Executive Committee, something more like a Steering 14 Committee, some -- some group that could at least shepherd 15 the Council and keep it moving in a particular direction, but 16 I certainly recognize it's going to run up against the 17 problems you've all raised about, Councillors are going to 18 say somebody's more equal than others. I guess in American 19 Councils we always know somebody's more equal than others, 20 and so -- it doesn't -- 21 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Just like the 22 Constitution, yeah. 23 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- and -- and it isn't as 24 problematic. 25 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Petersen, I know

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1 you've taken a stand on Executive -- on Committees in -- in 2 your paper? 3 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, the stand is on 4 an elected Executive Committee, which is different than a 5 regular Executive Committee. 6 MR. DAVID BUTT: Hmm hmm. 7 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: It -- it -- I have -- 8 I guess I'll raise some problems with -- or I'll mention some 9 problems maybe with what Myer has suggested having some do 10 administration, having some do finance. I think actually the 11 City of Toronto, just before amalgamation, had something like 12 that. I think they had an Administrative Committee and they 13 had a Budget Review Committee and they had a -- they -- they 14 parcelled this all out. 15 I think one (1) of the advantages of having 16 that done by one (1) committee is that it can be coordinated. 17 If the committees make -- the committee actually makes 18 recommendations to Council. 19 I know the way the Budget Review Committee 20 worked in the City of Toronto prior to amalgamation, seemed 21 to work very well, actually, where they had a Budget Chief 22 and I think there are two (2) other Councillors on the Budget 23 Review Committee. And they came from the different wings of 24 Council. 25 So, there was the -- representative of the

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1 left wing and representative of the right wing. And they 2 seemed to have worked with the various wings and Councillors 3 to come forward with the budget that then Council approved. 4 So, you didn't have massive debate at Council 5 on the budget. So there was an accommodation of the various 6 interests -- within that process. To have a -- because -- 7 you really need some kind of committee that's going to 8 synthesize and coordinate and make recommendations on those 9 -- on all of those issues. 10 And I think that's the function of the 11 Executive Committee. If you have a Mayor who also has some 12 responsibilities to prepare a budget, then now you've gotten 13 an executive that's not concentrated in one (1) person or one 14 (1) small committee. 15 And it is making recommendations and Council 16 in the end, has to make the final decision. So there's 17 nothing that prevents a Councillor, who understands all of 18 the issues, reads the agendas, from exerting influence over 19 the members of the Executive Committee, if that person isn't 20 on the Executive Committee, or -- or over the Mayor or 21 whatever. 22 So the -- it -- it seems to me that in the 23 interest of the City functioning better, that you're going to 24 have to lose, maybe something on the other side, so that 25 you're going to have to say to the Councillors, well, as Ron

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1 said, you know, we're not all equal. And -- and the City has 2 to function. 3 And some day, you may be a member of the 4 Executive Committee. So -- and the Council, the Striking 5 Committee of Council, is the one (1) who selects the members 6 of the committee. 7 One (1) of the recommendations I think was the 8 Chairman of the Standing Committee being on the Executive 9 Committee and I remember that was suggested in Scarborough, 10 and that added to their power. 11 And so there was real resistance to that. It 12 may also add to their workload, which is another problem. 13 But, it would seem to me, the City certainly needs some kind 14 of a committee that -- and that's certainly within the 15 Council Committee system, that they have an Executive 16 Committee. 17 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just to flesh out a little 18 bit more that -- that workload scheme in the previous panels 19 that we've held and some of the questions that we've -- we've 20 generated and indeed some of the evidence that we've heard, 21 it's quite well accepted that the number of reports, in terms 22 of pages, for any Council meeting, can often be in the 23 hundreds of pages, and often exceed a thousand. 24 An the volume is -- is often perceived as -- 25 as being just completely unmanageable. And I'd -- I'd just

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1 like to explore a -- a couple of issues around that. The 2 first one (1) is that we've -- we've heard about the notion 3 of Community Councils or even heard here the -- the question 4 of Neighbourhood Councils. 5 And an earlier panellist came to share 6 insights with us a couple of days ago, spoke about how many 7 of the reports before Council are reports that have come up 8 from Community Councils for final decision. 9 Do you see Community Councils, as an 10 opportunity, an appropriate opportunity, to decentralize, to 11 relieve the Council of some of the decision making load that 12 they -- they currently carry? 13 Professor Siemiatycki? 14 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: For me, short -- short 15 answer, yeah. Notwithstanding the irony, that the further we 16 go in that direction, of course, de facto, of course, the 17 closer we get to recreating a two tier system of some sort. 18 But, you know, I think Ron's -- in one (1) 19 respect, got it really right. That you're trying to balance, 20 for a huge City of 2.5 million people, you know, the local 21 park, the local pothole, is -- is extraordinarily important 22 to residents and needs to politically be -- be addressed. 23 But, the big issues can be -- can certainly be 24 lost -- be lost in the shuffle. So I think there's a very 25 important role that -- that decentralization can play. You

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1 know, maybe -- I don't know if this is -- time will tell if 2 this is flavour of the month or -- or -- or authentic but, 3 you know, the -- the -- let's consult the people and hear 4 budgeting, problems on its budgeting. 5 But in an international scale, you know, this 6 has taken real resonance in the, you know, world social 7 forum. One thinks of Brazilian cities that really have 8 institutionalized a participatory process of -- of making 9 large scale urban decisions. 10 You know, I think the short answer is, as much 11 as we focus on the large and the coordinating and the 12 citywide strategic, we have to think of, you know, the 13 subsidiarity. The pushing down to -- to as low a level as 14 possible issues that are contained at that level and can be 15 politically, in some institution or other, whether it's the 16 Community Council or a new Neighbourhood Council, address 17 that at -- at that level also. 18 That -- that, to flip it around, and this is 19 the last thing I'll say, you know, do -- it's one (1) thing 20 for a small number of geographically located Councillors to 21 address local issues, specifically local neighbourhood street 22 issues. 23 Do all forty-five (45) really need to be 24 engaged in that whole discussion? So I think, yeah, there 25 are rationalities that -- that, in terms of workload, that

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1 can be achieved there through decentralization, as Ron said 2 from the outset. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Petersen, you've 4 championed again, in your paper, the importance -- 5 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I'm making notes. 6 Pardon? 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: You've championed in your 8 paper again the importance of the -- the Councillor acting as 9 local Ombudsperson; do you see Community Councils as being 10 able -- as a forum for that kind of work to continue? 11 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, in -- the 12 community, actually, I think in the report and I think that 13 one of the reports, it was something like, only 10 percent of 14 the issues that were -- the recommendations coming from the 15 Community Councils were debated at the full Council. 16 So, in a sense, we have a de facto delegation 17 of power down to the -- to the Community Councils. It seems 18 to be that's the way it's functioning. One (1) of the 19 difficulties, and it gets into this question of being able to 20 -- to draw boundaries in politics, and I know from my 21 research in the City State of Hamburg which has a Council or 22 a legislative body of over a hundred (100) and has 23 decentralized some of its functions to district offices, that 24 the -- trying to decide what's local and what's of citywide 25 interest sometimes is very difficult.

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1 And also the large legislative body tends to 2 discuss local issues ad nauseam and they complain about it 3 all the time and they have a party system, they have 4 proportional representation, they have everything that could 5 be recommended to make the legislative Council or the 6 legislature discuss citywide issues, and they still discuss 7 local issues. 8 People can understand trees, they can 9 understand curb cuts, they can understand garbage. These are 10 politicians and we're all like that, we're human. It's 11 harder to get into those wider strategic issues. 12 So I think that's a -- a difficulty. But I 13 think de facto we have that at -- at the Community Council 14 level; that -- and, again, I think there are some local 15 issues that you -- again, as I say, it would be difficult, in 16 some instances, but some of those local issues you might even 17 be able to delegate to municipal officials. 18 I'm not sure -- I mean, curb cuts, I notice 19 they appear on Council agendas periodically. Maybe front 20 yard parking, something like that, that -- where there are 21 specific formulae that if you meet those formulae -- I think 22 actually permit parking in the City of Toronto was not -- the 23 old City of Toronto was -- was decided by formula. 24 So there may be some of those issues, and I'm 25 not sure which ones they are, where you don't even need the

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1 Community Council to deal with because I think even at the 2 Community Council level, there are some local issues such as 3 speed humps on roads that affect -- will -- putting speed 4 humps on one (1) road affect the traffic pattern on another 5 road. 6 Putting a drive through on -- in one area may 7 affect something else, somewhere else. So it becomes really 8 difficult to distinguish. And I think that's one (1) of the 9 difficulties in -- in saying we're going to delegate some 10 specific authority down to the Community Councils. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: Are there strategies that 12 have worked in -- in Hamburg, in your view, in terms of 13 trying to clarify that -- that difficult distinction? 14 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: No. My favourite 15 example actually is the district office where I was working 16 and that they declared it a nuclear free zone. And the 17 Hamburg legislature said you can't do that because that's not 18 a local issue. 19 And they said it's very much a local issue if 20 an atomic bomb fell on our locality. So you see -- I mean, 21 and so there were three (3) or four (4) districts in Hamburg 22 that were declared nuclear free zones and the other five (5) 23 districts weren't. So, you know. So it -- it's -- no, it's 24 difficult. 25 But, see that's -- that's -- that's the thing

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1 with the art of politics, and I think that, I think is what's 2 really important that you don't -- you don't want to bring in 3 rules that clarify and put us into boxes that we do this and 4 we do this and we do this and we do this. I think what we 5 were all trying to get at is -- is a system that's -- that 6 does not discourage good government from occurring. It does 7 not discourage good politicians from running for office. 8 That wouldn't discourage someone good for running for Mayor, 9 running for Council. 10 So, getting rid of those kinds of -- of 11 hindrances within the system. But we want to create a system 12 that's flexible enough, and that allows us to debate and 13 discuss and argue and -- and fight as it were and lobby and 14 whatever, because it's only through that kind of dialogue 15 that you develop the kind of policies for our community, 16 because there's no one (1) rational approach to doing this, 17 otherwise we wouldn't need politics, we could have computers; 18 right. 19 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Vogel...? 20 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Yeah, I -- I think though 21 that we would actually in this instance have to really be 22 specific. 23 From the standpoint of some lower unit, like a 24 Community Council or something even below that, City 25 Government's going to be the equivalent to the Province,

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1 which is always saying, no, that's our responsibility, no you 2 can't do that, no, we didn't anticipate that, no, we didn't 3 really mean it. 4 And so, if you don't really say, you have 5 these minimal powers and authority, and I would go a step 6 further, and this is where you have to really -- if 7 somebody's thinking it will save workload for the Council, I 8 think it probably would. If somebody's thinking this is 9 going to be more efficient in a monetary sense, I would say, 10 you better not make this decision for that. 11 You -- you can't have phony decentralization. 12 If you're going to devolve you need to devolve, just like the 13 City says the Province isn't serious, these lower units will 14 say the City isn't serious. Why should we waste our time on 15 petty issues, where we don't really have anything to say and 16 we have no independent resources and no capacity ourselves to 17 act, you're going to keep second guessing us, and you're not 18 going to give us what we asked for. You can't do it on the 19 cheek. 20 So, if you're going to do it, you have to be 21 serious about it. And you have to -- and in that sense 22 there'll be an ongoing negotiation, what goes up, what goes 23 down. But you have to have a very thought out idea of what's 24 the right geographical area, does it have to be uniform, you 25 know, city wide, or can some areas have it that want it, and

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  1  other areas don't, you know by local initiative or local
  2  petition.
  3                 If they get it, what do they get, are we
  4  really going to give them some dollar amount that they can
  5  decide how to spend themselves.  Is it supplemental or is it
  6  basic public services, or is it -- added public services,
  7  we'll have to really think, I mean, this will require several
  8  reports about, and here's some things to think about in the
  9  issues that will be raised.
 10                 But conceptually, I think that the City has to
 11  go in this direction, I think it will be just completely
 12  overwhelmed if it doesn't find a way to get some stuff off
 13  its plate.
 14                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Just -- just to continue to
 15  address this notion of a -- a better functioning Municipal
 16  Council.  We've heard, I think with Professor Siemiatycki,
 17  who made the point that often one will defer to a Colleague
 18  on Council, because it's a local issue about which he or she
 19  has passionate constituents, or is passionate him or herself.
 20                 The -- the flip side, and this was Professor
 21  Sancton yesterday, introduced us to this -- this notion in --
 22  in a sense that he was -- he was criticizing what he called
 23  the phenomenon he called log rolling, whereby there are just
 24  so many decisions to be made at any Council, that it's
 25  impossible for any one (1) Councillor to be on top of all of

184
  1  them, and because some of them are so locally driven, there
  2  may not be any interest in being on top of them by -- by many
  3  other Councillors, so that a practice could emerge whereby a
  4  Councillor says, look, I will support you on X if you support
  5  me on -- on Y.
  6                 And this is the phenomenon that Professor
  7  Sancton labelled log rolling, and was critical of it, because
  8  it essentially divorced the merits, the inherent merits of
  9  the issue, from the decision making process.  I'm not
 10  supporting this because I've thought it through and think
 11  it's a good idea, I'm supporting it, because I owe my pal a
 12  favour.
 13                 First of all, do you -- and I'll address all
 14  of you, see that as -- as problematic, and -- and are there
 15  ways to -- to address that in terms of Council's decision
 16  making?
 17                 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN:  Well, let me just --
 18  I'll jump in just real quick and then I'll let Myer talk
 19  some, I don't want to hog the microphone.
 20                 I know in my experience that what has
 21  certainly tended to happen in -- in a lot of the Councils
 22  I've been involved with, is that certain Councillors would
 23  develop and expertise in a certain area.
 24                 So, they were known as the transportation
 25  experts, or they were known as the planning experts, or they

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1 were known as et cetera, et cetera. 2 And what usually happened on those wider 3 issues, that other Councillors would come and talk to them 4 and say, how are you voting on this issue? How do you feel 5 about it? Why? I mean those are the Councillors that -- 6 that care about how they vote. 7 There's -- there are always going to be some 8 people on Council that are not there, they're not with it, 9 they're not for whatever reason, they're on Council, but, 10 they're not what I would consider seriously doing the job, 11 either representing their constituents or -- or looking at 12 the wider issues. 13 No structure is going to get rid of those 14 Councillors. The only thing that is going to get rid of 15 those Councillors are the voters, at some point. If they get 16 dissatisfied, if they pay attention, the voters. 17 So, that as H.L. Menkin said, in a democracy 18 the people get the government they deserve. And in the end, 19 it's our responsibility, right, the government. So that -- 20 that the log may -- rolling is going to take -- you know -- 21 certain Councillors are always going to do that -- and now I 22 forgot -- I'm going to shut up, because I can't remember what 23 this was related to, I'm going to turn it over to Myer. 24 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Maybe I'll jump in at 25 this point. In the worst case scenario, the choice comes

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1 down to, pick your poison, I think. 2 In terms of the -- the sort of decision making 3 dynamics that -- that we're familiar with, you -- it would 4 appear that you could either have party discipline, rigid 5 voting, colour by number on the basis of what political party 6 you belong to. 7 Or, in the worst case -- worst case depiction 8 of Municipal Government, you can have -- individual 9 politicians making these kinds of deals and owing each other 10 -- owing each other votes. 11 I think I'd say, I think I'd cut into this by 12 saying, you know, we -- we have such a choreographed 13 disciplined approach to politics in the parliamentary system. 14 Maybe it's healthy that at one (1) level and especially the 15 level that -- most speaks to kind of idiosyncratic 16 neighbourhood street by street issues. 17 Maybe that -- it's legitimate that that's 18 where we base our decision making, not on pre-set team 19 formations and everyone is going to jump on the bandwagon and 20 -- and stay loyal or else they'll being thrown, you know, 21 thrown off the bandwagon and run over the next time it turns 22 the circle. 23 It's a very unforgiving system. You've got to 24 be loyal to the party; that, you know, maybe in principle, 25 it's good to have another dynamic playing out in another

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1 arena, and especially appropriate that that area be the 2 municipal arena. 3 Now, I would concede that on some issues, you 4 know, ever politician has engaged -- local politician has 5 engaged in this -- in this log rolling, simply because 6 there's no way that any member of Council can either be 7 expert, knowledgeable or let's be candid, care particularly 8 about the outcome one (1) way or another, in an issue that is 9 very remote to their, either policy issues of concern, or 10 their geographic ward, where it has virtually zero impact on 11 them. 12 So, I would concede that -- that every 13 municipal politician has engaged in log rolling at some point 14 in her or his career, but, I don't believe they engage in log 15 rolling on anywhere near a 100 percent of all of the -- the 16 votes they cast. 17 Whereas in the contrary system, it is 18 virtually 99.9 percent of the votes, federally and 19 provincially, that are in the partisan. So, if I had to pick 20 the poisons, I think it's a lesser -- it's by -- it's a much 21 lesser of two (2) evils to go for -- so, it doesn't exercise 22 me, as much. 23 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Vogel? 24 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Yeah, I -- I would just 25 make a distinction, local deference or log rolling, if it's

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  1  for spending something specific to a particular community or
  2  section of a City on some project, then I would say it makes
  3  sense to defer to the Councillor from that area.
  4                 If it's -- and that the other defers to the
  5  other.  They know their district better than I.  They know if
  6  they need this service or extra spending for whatever it is. 
  7  I would be more worried about log rolling on policy or
  8  ideological kind of issues; where you back my views on what
  9  to do with the subways and transit and I'll back your views
 10  on what to do with, you know, pick whatever other function
 11  you want.
 12                 Where it isn't a rationale one (1), it's just
 13  I don't care about that, but, I care about my particular goal
 14  and that's the only public interest that I'm pursuing, not
 15  some larger community's public interest.
 16                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  On that notion of drawing a
 17  distinction between deference and -- and log rolling, could
 18  you even see it -- that distinction embracing as a positive
 19  the -- the, sort of, deference to expertise that Professor
 20  Petersen has -- has identified? 
 21                 MR. RONALD VOGEL:  Yeah, I think that makes
 22  sense.  In fact, I -- I was thinking about two (2) different
 23  directions.  Let me make two (2) quick points and you can
 24  pursue none of them or both directions.
 25                 One (1) issue, I'm thinking about this

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1 development of expertise in Council and I read very quickly 2 the other day the report that the Toronto staff had done 3 about -- whatever you call that big report on governance and 4 changes, the one (1) that talks about what different 5 committees do and how they're structured and so forth. 6 And it struck me, if I remember correctly, 7 that it said that the chair of these committees is rotating 8 every six (6) months; did I read that correctly? And I don't 9 know how often the committee itself is rotating -- 10 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 11 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- but certainly if you're 12 worried about equality and nobody knows more than I and we 13 all study everything and equally know everything that is 14 good. If you believe in effective legislative governing, 15 that's horrible. 16 There's no substantive expertise by anybody. 17 There's no continuity. How in the world could the staff at 18 the City know who they're working with, know whether they're 19 understanding correctly concerns, because every six (6) 20 months they'll start a project with one chair and six (6) 21 months later there's a different chair and a different 22 committee make up and -- and so at that level I don't know 23 how Council could do anything but, sort of, figure out who to 24 take cues from. 25 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Petersen...?

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1 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Just a follow up on 2 that comment and I think I'll -- it just occurred to me that 3 I think that also reflects this lack of trust that the 4 Councillors have for each other because they really haven't 5 -- they really didn't, after amalgamation there wasn't any 6 attempt to bring them together. 7 They came from the various municipalities. 8 They came with the animosity still attached to the 9 amalgamation from the various municipalities and they didn't 10 get to know each other or work together as people. 11 Again, I -- you know, we'll refer back to my 12 experience with City of Toronto Council prior to amalgamation 13 or Scarborough Council prior to amalgamation. Scarborough, 14 in particular, I mean, there was a lot more trust, I think, 15 developed between the Councillors in Scarborough where 16 someone could leave a committee and say, oh, I can't make 17 that committee this morning, Maureen, can you make sure that 18 the items that I want discussed are discussed and let me know 19 how people vote on them, and you would have that kind of 20 trust. 21 So that I think this rotating of committee 22 chairs and this -- they didn't do that in the original in 23 Toronto Council -- the former Toronto Council prior to 24 amalgamation or in Scarborough. They were there for usually 25 the full term as I understood it.

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1 And I think that, maybe is a -- is a symptom 2 of this lack of trust between the Councillors, or this 3 mistrust rather. 4 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: Just on the point of the 5 rotation, I think it's that it's every eighteen (18) months 6 the Members of the Committee rotate. 7 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Oh, so it is more than -- 8 okay, that's better. 9 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: Which is half -- which is 10 half of the Council term. 11 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Okay. So it's not -- I 12 stand corrected. 13 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: But a fair point on the six 14 (6) months. 15 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: And I think they can 16 be reappointed actually, can't they? They don't have to -- 17 I'm pretty sure that they -- but still it's -- 18 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well, except, actually, I 19 think it did say they had to be replaced. And even that, I 20 -- I guess we'd need to look back in the report, but if it 21 did need to be replaced, even there I would say, if a 22 person's a good Chair and other members have confidence in 23 them, it might be beneficial to have continuity in the 24 Chairs. And then you would be developing the Council's 25 skills and strengths in setting agendas and acting because

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1 you'd have people there who could bring the new ones along. 2 You'd have the history of what happened the 3 last time we tried this. Then they'd know all the staff 4 people. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: I take it that from a 6 structural reform perspective, you'd want the option of -- 7 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Certainly. 8 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- continuity or replacement? 9 10 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Can I -- one (1) -- 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: Absolutely. 12 MR. RONALD VOGEL: It's a little different 13 than that point, but I think it relates back to this idea of 14 whether you do Community Councils or something even below 15 them. One (1) possible direction to go which maybe it ties - 16 - I'm thinking of it because we were talking about money 17 being spent in particular districts and is that pork barrel 18 or log rolling whatever; one way that you can satisfy some of 19 these issues about representing these local constituencies 20 who may not feel they're getting their hearing at the larger 21 unit. 22 And again it comes to a money issue and I know 23 money's tight, but you could say each Councillor or 24 Councillors from a particular -- you know, a set of 25 Councillors in the districts, get a pot of money to spend in

193

1 their district and they can make a determination that, you 2 know, my district has different needs than that district. 3 Maybe I've got a poorer population here and 4 they need, you know, a recreation leader in the park in the 5 afternoon for the kids, whereas this one's worried about an 6 extra cop and that one's worried about, you know, garbage on 7 the street or -- or how often there's snow pick up or 8 something. 9 If the Councillor had discretion over a pot of 10 money that wasn't so large, you'd be worrying about financial 11 management issues, but was large enough to satisfy some of 12 these community -- local community needs, it might address 13 some of these issues. 14 Newspapers hate it, people who are worried 15 about scandals hate it, because there's occasionally going to 16 be something spent that doesn't make sense, or people scratch 17 their heads, but neighbourhood groups love it, neighbourhoods 18 love it, because they feel like they can, you know, it build 19 -- it's a way of building social capital, you get something 20 for your group, and your community needs are a little 21 different than that community's needs. 22 MR. DAVID BUTT: I think maybe newspapers like 23 it, nothing sells papers better. 24 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Just -- just one (1) 25 little added comment to that is that what you want to make

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1 sure of though is that in terms of decentralization you don't 2 do it to such an extent that you're not able then to ensure a 3 net equitable redistribution of -- or a distribution of 4 resources across the City. 5 I think the kind of thing that you're talking 6 about, actually they do have in Hamburg, they get something 7 like two hundred thousand (200,000) Euro a year, the 8 different district offices for things like playgrounds, or 9 small -- small neighbourhood things, that aren't really going 10 to affect -- that -- that don't affect major -- the major 11 distributive issues. 12 And I think that's the important of -- 13 importance of having a larger Council for the City, and also 14 ensuring that the decentralization that occurs, doesn't lead 15 to, then, demands for having these Community Councils 16 directly elected separate from the larger Council, because 17 then you get back into the problems we had prior to 18 amalgamation, and -- and there were communities that just 19 weren't represented on those local Councils, and that was a 20 real problem. 21 MR. DAVID BUTT: I'd like to -- again sticking 22 with Council for a little bit, change directions and -- and 23 move from -- perhaps from structural reforms to more cultural 24 notions, and we've heard Professor Petersen, for example, has 25 -- has commented on you know, different cultures coming

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1 together for amalgamation, or all three (3) of you did, but 2 this notion of trusts being developed. 3 First of all, just to tie up the structural 4 end, has the dust settled from amalgamation. I mean, are we 5 at a stage where we should be contemplating structural 6 reforms in a post amalgamation era, or are we still in the 7 realm of working out the -- working out the culture? 8 Professor Vogel, having -- have you looked at 9 amalgamation in another context, what do you think is a -- 10 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I -- I think -- 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- an appropriate time to 12 wait? 13 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I think it's going to take 14 at least ten (10) years before you can say your post 15 amalgamation. That doesn't mean you can't talk about 16 modifications and incremental reforms, but I wouldn't try to 17 do a system overload again until you at least were what -- 18 was it '98, so you know -- 19 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: '98, yeah. 20 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- so I'd at least wait 21 until 2008 before I talked about major, major reform. 22 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: My -- my favourite 23 example comes from Tupper Lake, New York, which is a small 24 town in upstate in the Adirondack Park, it's got one thousand 25 (1,000) people, and it was amalgamating with the town of

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1 Altamont it sits -- the village of Tupper Lake sits in the -- 2 in the Town of Altamont. Altamont had another four hundred 3 (400) people, so they were amalgamating a township of four 4 hundred (400) with a village of a thousand (1,000), and it is 5 taking them five (5) years to do it. 6 So, if it takes them five (5) years to do 7 that, I think we're going to have to wait at least ten (10) 8 years or maybe fifteen (15) before we can see -- before the 9 -- as Ron said, before the dust is settled on that. 10 MR. RONALD VOGEL: But -- but everything I've 11 talked about I think are incremental modifications. 12 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Yes, yes. 13 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I don't know how this 14 -- this -- I don't know whether this -- this fits in, but you 15 know we've of course just come through an election that has 16 returned the largest proportion of new faces onto Council 17 that we've seen in a very, very long time. So, it's about a 18 third -- a third new faces. 19 So, in a -- in an interesting way for a third 20 of the Council, the history of the last six (6) years doesn't 21 exist. You know, the -- the -- the transition, and as I say 22 that, I'm not sure quite what -- to be honest, where to -- 23 where to go with that thought, but we are in an interesting 24 moment, where -- where it's very new and novel with -- with 25 no, you know, sense of the -- the confusion and the

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1 turbulence of the initial transition, that in a funny way 2 maybe there is a window now for people to look at it anew, 3 and -- and to think about how -- how differently could it be. 4 You know, at least a third aren't as locked into what they 5 may have said over the last six (6) years, you know, and are 6 maybe more open -- open to different views and 7 interpretations. 8 MADAM COMMISSIONER: A number -- sorry, a 9 number of those worked for Councillors. 10 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Some -- yes -- that's 11 right. 12 MADAM COMMISSIONER: And they would still have 13 the history, although not a voting record. 14 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: That's right, yes, 15 exactly. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: Do you have thoughts on 17 Professor Vogel's comment that perhaps minor modifications 18 here and there, but, not wholesale reform? 19 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yes, I think I would -- 20 my sense is that it's been a bruising adjustment over the 21 last -- the creation of the Mega-City. I think the last 22 thing those people need is turning their world upside down 23 one (1) more time. 24 MR. DAVID BUTT: Now, just to come back and 25 tie up a small thought that was mentioned earlier. This

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1 notion of informational retreats as part of working with 2 Council or helping Council to think more strategically. 3 Concerns have been expressed, we've discussed 4 this issue in other panels, about -- about openness in 5 government, all municipal meetings are to be in public. 6 Now, if this is a major retreat at which 7 everybody quote unquote, "gets to know each other", but, at 8 the same time, recognizing that their thinking marches in 9 this direction as opposed to that direction. 10 Are there openness concerns with those kinds 11 of events that might otherwise have a very important 12 developmental purpose? 13 Professor Vogel, do you have any thoughts on 14 that? 15 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I wasn't really thinking 16 about open records kinds of rulings and sunshine rules, when 17 I was thinking about that. But, I mean I'm sure there would 18 be ways, and when I say, retreat, I don't mean they all have 19 to go to Hawaii or something. I mean they -- 20 But, it may be that, you know, it's simply 21 that you -- you know that you set up for a two week period, 22 Council will meet ever afternoon for two (2) hours and on 23 this day they're going to get a presentation and discussion 24 about these issues and some thoughts about how this relates 25 to their -- and in that sense that could be open.

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1 Other things might be beneficial if they could 2 be done closed, but, you know if it simply violates the 3 ethics of the system, then I wouldn't say to close it. And 4 I'm not trying to challenge the local culture about what's an 5 acceptable. I just think you have to be cautious -- 6 sunshine rules, and I'm from the State of Florida, where we 7 believe strongly in sunshine, and it's never stopped anybody 8 from you know, pulling the shade. 9 One (1) of the problems with sunshine is that 10 it, in some ways, enhances the role of lobbyists, because if 11 the Councillors can't talk to each other, the lobbyists can 12 and they're the ones that go room to room and cut the deal, 13 because the Councillors can't cut it directly themselves. 14 So, I think we have to sort of -- I don't mean 15 throw your system in a major way, change it in a different 16 direction, but, we have to be aware that the more we do to 17 try to, you know, put more and more in the sunshine, the more 18 we have other unanticipated consequences that may lead to 19 other undesirable affects. 20 And we again, want to try to balance these. 21 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just, I'll ask for your 22 comments on this, again from the senior staff member 23 perspective; we had a number present. 24 We've often heard the view that these kinds of 25 engagements between senior staff and elected Councillors for

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1 strategic thinking purposes, whether it be City wide or in a 2 particular department, can be very helpful. 3 But, being non-public, their perspective is, 4 can also be very helpful, because one (1) can be much more 5 frank about where the warts are and what needs to be fixed, 6 without having to worry about putting the best face on it and 7 so on. 8 Now, again, we've had a very distinguished 9 media panel, very strongly expressed the view that, well, no, 10 government democracy is messy, and it should be sometimes 11 messy and it's just not the clean and well functioning stuff 12 that everybody should know about, and in fact, it is the 13 warts that we should know about most. 14 Where do we -- 15 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Of course, they won't let 16 you do that in their editorial board meetings or when their 17 editor is working on their articles. 18 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Are the editorial 19 board meetings, open to public? 20 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Now, I would still say it's 21 probably a higher standard for City governments, so again I 22 wouldn't just say, throw this stuff out. But, I'm saying, I 23 think you need, in your efforts to pursue good, you know, 24 strong ethical system and eliminate and root out corruption 25 and enhance citizen's ability to, you know, interact and

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1 influence and government and receive democracy or really 2 provide democracy, you have to recognize that politicians are 3 what democracy is. 4 And so we can't, sort of -- the more we try to 5 pretend that politics is not part of democracy the easier it 6 is for citizens -- that's when I think you get the democracy 7 deficit because you create all these hurdles that people have 8 to figure out how to get around in order to do what they 9 think is in the City's interest. 10 Now, putting aside outright corruption, most 11 of what we're talking about is grey area. And then you 12 create all these situations where somebody's perhaps violated 13 a law, you know, a technical law which, you know, is process 14 driven which may be a very big problem in terms of the 15 substantive problem you're trying to deal with. 16 So I think they're balancing acts and there's 17 always going to be some boundaries around which we're all 18 comfortable that they do it and others where we say, that's 19 just unacceptable. 20 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: On -- on boundaries -- 21 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Siemiatycki having 22 worn both hats -- 23 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Well, yeah. On 24 balancing acts, you know, maybe it is possible to balance, in 25 this attempt to have retreats and such, the competing

202
  1  necessities of candour and transparency.  You know, I -- I
  2  think the -- from the -- the public perception on the one
  3  hand, I think, is wary of things occurring behind closed
  4  doors.
  5                 On the other hand, I think there's a fairly
  6  sophisticated recognition that some things do need frank and
  7  -- and candid conversation and discussion.  I -- this may be
  8  Polly Anna-ish by I think it should be able -- it should be
  9  possible to both have retreat type meetings to, sort of,
 10  which have something of a getting to know each other and
 11  figuring out where people are coming from, but then, more
 12  importantly where do we want to go together and how are we
 13  getting there together.
 14                 To have that discussion infrequently, very
 15  infrequently in private but, at the end of which, you know,
 16  just like, you know, we have communiques that come out of,
 17  you know, closed meetings of Premiers and Prime Ministers and
 18  no one seems to think that that should prevent them from
 19  meeting in private, as long as there's some report back,
 20  accountability of -- of what issues were addressed and
 21  discussed.
 22                 It may be possible to balance both of those
 23  apparently conflicting imperatives. 
 24                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Professor Petersen, thoughts
 25  on that and, in particular the analogy drawn to the Premiers

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  1  -- or even the G8 meeting being behind closed doors and
  2  issuing communiques.  
  3                 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN:  Well, I was just -- I
  4  mean, I was saying, all Cabinet meetings are secret meetings. 
  5                 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI:  Yeah. 
  6                 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN:  And we have a
  7  Provincial and a Federal that are -- that function like that. 
  8  We always had Scarborough Planning Board prior to the
  9  planning board public meeting the planning board always in
 10  camera with the staff and they would explain the issues and
 11  go over it with us.
 12                 It would seem to me that the voter when they
 13  come -- well, of course, we weren't voted on but in a Council
 14  for example, the voter is aware of his Councillor and what
 15  his Councillor does, he's not voting the Councillor in office
 16  because the Councillor has said, because of the process by
 17  which or what he's said in these private meetings.  
 18                 I mean, it's what the decision that the
 19  Councillor makes I think that was -- is important.  If the
 20  voter feels that that decision is a wrong decision or it's a
 21  decision that he doesn't like then he deals with the
 22  Councillor on that.  
 23                 But you see there are -- you have to have
 24  these closed meetings.  You have to have meetings where the
 25  public isn't involved.  First of all, you're talking about --

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1 sometimes it's staff you're talking about. It's -- you have 2 to explain well this report isn't really very carefully 3 written because this particular person we have in the 4 department doesn't really know how to write very well and we 5 have to keep him on because he's unionized or et cetera, et 6 cetera. Some of these things, you see, and so please don't 7 embarrass him in public when you're answering questions. 8 These kinds of things come up or if you don't 9 quite understand, this is the way it's written in the report 10 and then they explain it to us and the reports sometimes were 11 written very awkwardly because they were -- they had to -- 12 they were often used in courts of law or the OMB, so they had 13 to reflect certain terminology that we weren't familiar with 14 or there are financial issues that have to be discussed -- 15 discussed in-camera. 16 I -- was a -- President of the Scarborough 17 Branch of the Association of Women Electors for a while which 18 was a good government organization. None -- none of our 19 members, in the AWE of Metro Toronto as well as the ones in 20 -- in the other municipalities ever felt uncomfortable with 21 those kinds of in-camera meetings. 22 We had newsletters, we did policy reports. We 23 were trying to -- we had all candidates meetings. I mean, we 24 were trying to encourage local democracy in Toronto. But 25 those kinds of in-camera meetings we felt were -- were

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1 necessary. 2 Where we had difficulty with in-camera 3 meetings and fortunately we didn't have here in the City -- 4 in Metropolitan Toronto were the standing committee meetings 5 where the entire standing committee meetings were held in- 6 camera. 7 And I know a friend of mine was elected Mayor 8 of Barrie, probably about -- it was about twenty-five (25) 9 years ago, and even as Mayor she was not allowed into some of 10 the Standing Committee meetings, they were closed to her; 11 that is -- that's a problem. 12 But these other kinds of meetings with staff 13 to discuss issues with Council -- Council, I can't see that 14 that's a problem for democracy. 15 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Vogel...? 16 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Even if -- I know you said 17 don't worry about can you actually do it, but even if that -- 18 you couldn't do it, because of the local culture, or the 19 Provincial or -- or City regulations are lost, I -- I don't 20 -- I wouldn't say that that should stop you from doing this. 21 You can find a formula where you can have a 22 beneficial meeting with a full Council, even in view of 23 everybody, as long as you've got, you know, thoughtful -- 24 thoughtfulness has gone into how to set it up and what you're 25 trying to accomplish, even if it's to simply get Council to

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1 say, here's our six (6) priorities for this year. 2 If that needs to be done in the open, because 3 that's what local culture requires, it can be done. You 4 know, these -- these elected officials got there knowing how 5 this system works, somehow they won, they know how to say 6 things and say what they want and still cover themselves if 7 there's media coverage, or they want to say something a 8 little carefully. 9 So, I think you can still accomplish good even 10 if you can't do it entirely -- even if it still has to be a 11 100 percent in the sun. 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: Could I just ask about -- 13 move from there to ask about openness more -- more generally, 14 and again, we've heard from a number of people on this, and 15 the -- the governing notions are that Committee meetings, of 16 course Council open staff reports of public, and that one may 17 go in-camera for a limited set of things that include 18 financial matters, as you've mentioned, or real estate 19 acquisition, not -- not financial in the broad budgeting 20 sense, but real estate, personnel, litigation issues. 21 Generally speaking, and I'll ask you to lead 22 off, Professor Vogel, does -- does that balance between open 23 and being in-camera, strike you as an appropriate one (1) 24 functionally, are there concerns around that, or -- 25 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I wouldn't have concerns

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  1  about Council going in private for -- for those kinds of
  2  issues, as -- as long as they're issues about negotiation or
  3  law or personnel issues that you really can't speak about in
  4  public.  
  5                 Other things I'd be more uncomfortable about,
  6  if it really were you know, decisions being made in private
  7  to hide them, because they don't want to -- and then normally
  8  somebody will leak and you'll find that out, and so they
  9  won't get away with it for very long.
 10                 But that would be more of a concern to me, but
 11  -- but that kind -- the kind of things you've mentioned would
 12  not worry me.
 13                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Professor Siemiatycki...?
 14                 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI:  Agreed.
 15                 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN:  Necess --I mean, would
 16  that include, for example, a local politician where there's a
 17  major redevelopment in her ward, and so she calls -- she has
 18  a meeting with the City Planner who was responsible for that
 19  area to discuss it, because community have called and said,
 20  we're really concerned about this, and so she goes and talks
 21  to the planner.  
 22                 I mean, that's a meeting in private between a
 23  politician and staff.  Those kinds of things have to occur. 
 24  There can't be any kind of -- there shouldn't be anything in
 25  place, or should -- and nothing should be put in place that

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1 would prevent that kind of thing from happening, because they 2 have -- they need that kind of information. 3 Or have a couple of planners come in and talk, 4 meetings in the office, and stuff like that. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: And this leads us to another 6 area that I -- that I did want to explore, perhaps it's a 7 convenient time to -- to go there, and it really stems in 8 this discussion this afternoon, from, Professor Vogel, your 9 wonderful quote on the -- on the notion of you know, not 10 thinking in terms of politic -- politicians and staff as -- 11 as being a dichotomy, but there's an interdependency and the 12 overlap is inevitable. 13 I'd like to explore that if I could, a little 14 bit, getting other people's -- other panellists views on 15 that, but wanting to also get your sense on -- of what kind 16 of -- of interaction is inappropriate? Recognizing we have 17 one (1) example as Professor Petersen has said, the kind of 18 interaction that -- that's productive. 19 Where do you see the -- the line having to be 20 drawn in terms of the appropriateness of Council and staff 21 interaction, and again, just to -- to help you for your 22 thinking, one (1) example that we had earlier that was 23 debated, one (1) City Manager expressed the view that during 24 the course of developing a report that's ultimately to go to 25 a committee to be debated, and then to full Council.

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1 It would be inappropriate for a Councillor, 2 and this was his view that I'm conveying on -- for a 3 Councillor to say, look my political career hinges upon X 4 being in that report, put it in that report, recommend that 5 way. 6 Perhaps an easy example, but, it helps us in 7 trying to understand the boundaries, in terms of that private 8 interaction between staff and politicians. 9 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I'm a -- I come at this as 10 a realist. So, again, you know I mean if I were the 11 bureaucrat I would be incredibly offended, I would say it was 12 inappropriate. 13 I certainly thing the politician has exercised 14 rather poor judgment in kind of conveying that or saying 15 that, but, it may be true. And maybe they want to sort of 16 communicate to that staff person, just how critical this is 17 and maybe they're not taking it seriously enough and they 18 should really understand, I'm going to oppose this with 19 everything I've got, or you know, I've been helpful to all 20 the other things you've worked on in this area. 21 And if you do this, I'll be gone and then 22 you'll have the forces of evil to deal with and they won't do 23 any of this good stuff you talk about. I mean so -- I think 24 you can't -- I would hesitate to have really any rules on 25 this; I put this in the grey area.

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1 There are lots of things that I would -- I 2 have a four (4) year old son, you know, there are lots of 3 things that he shouldn't do and I would tell him are wrong, I 4 wouldn't necessarily put him in jail for them. 5 You know, you want -- you want some of saying 6 things are right or wrong morally or ethically, but, they're 7 not necessarily criminal. Or they're not necessarily so far 8 over the top that you're going to kick somebody out of 9 office, or you know, that kind of thing. 10 So, I would just put this in the category of 11 bad judgment on the politician, good administrator should 12 probably, if they're secure in their job, just let it roll. 13 If they're more junior and a little nervous and feeling 14 there's some illegitimate pressure being put on them, then 15 they should go and talk to their superior about it, and you 16 know, have it dealt with, whatever the mechanism for 17 administration to go and say, we've got some concerns. 18 MR. DAVID BUTT: Okay, the level then of 19 process and response, I see you drawing a distinction between 20 clear cut rules for which a violation carries penalties and a 21 fuzzier notion of appropriate conduct within the culture. 22 And I guess, accepting that distinction, can 23 you help us at all, with how you might, even if you're in 24 that realm of appropriate conduct for the culture, try to 25 define limits to those relationships between Council and

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1 staff? 2 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I get very nervous about 3 doing that. I mean if you say to me, should Council form 4 partnerships with staff for profit investments, of course 5 not. 6 MR. DAVID BUTT: Right. 7 MR. RONALD VOGEL: But, that's the stuff 8 that's always easy. You know, it's always easy to see the 9 things that are absolutely wrong. Or it's always easy to 10 say, well, there's no problem, at all with that. It's always 11 the grey. 12 And that's where it just -- I get nervous 13 about a lot of hard and fast rules and I say that because, 14 typically what happens, is most of the rules come into place, 15 because there was an abuse and something has come to the 16 attention of everybody. 17 And so now, the issue is, how do we shut down 18 that abuse? How do we make sure it never happens again? So, 19 now everybody pays the price for the one (1) abuse. Now, 20 there might be other abuse, in which case, then it's a more 21 serious systematic problem. 22 But, if it's a single case or if it's a rather 23 unusual case, not likely, it used to happen in exactly the 24 same way, the concern I have there, is the over reach, the 25 inclusion of things you didn't mean to include, and sort of,

212

1 the collective punishment for this one (1) act that everybody 2 else, you create all sorts of inflexibility later. 3 You know, for example, you have the hard and 4 fast rule, nobody can have more than twenty five dollars 5 ($25) a day per diem for food, or whatever your number is, 6 you put on it. 7 Well, now for whatever reason the City sends 8 you on business to some place and you can't get dinner for 9 less than fifty (50) bucks. Should you, as an employee, have 10 to suffer? Or there's two (2) sets of rules, you can't get 11 the -- you know, as a low level employee, usually you can't 12 get the above twenty five dollars ($25), but, if you had been 13 the senior staff person, there is no real cap. 14 You get legitimate expenses, turn in your 15 receipt. You get lots of different rules, or in the case I 16 gave about shutting down what was wrong, I find in -- this is 17 less empirically based and more sort of in my own experience, 18 I believe there are either ethical people or unethical 19 people. 20 And so ethical people strive to do the right 21 thing and they like guidelines. You know guidelines help. 22 You know, so it helps them to know that there is an 23 expectation that you attempt to behave in a certain way. And 24 that's fine. 25 They worry about things that get into the grey

213

1 areas but they'll try as best they can do to follow the rules 2 you give them. Even if they say, I think that's an 3 irrational rule, they'll say, well, I'm an honourable ethical 4 person and I think it's a dumb rule but I've got to follow 5 it. 6 The problem is that there are unethical 7 people. And unethical people don't care what the rules are 8 and they will violate the rules anyway or they'll lie or 9 they'll fill out forms wrong or they'll make false claims. 10 And so what ends up happening is you make 11 everybody else's life miserable who was going to follow the 12 rule and then for that 1 or 2 percent that's a problem, 13 they're not following it anyway. 14 And -- and usually they're violating some law 15 that you could nail them on anyway. I mean, bribery is 16 illegal. You don't need it in the code of ethics to arrest 17 somebody and charge them with a crime or taking payoffs or 18 giving away City property or -- you know, whatever kind of -- 19 you know these are all criminal things or, at least, at a 20 minimum things you could dismiss an employee for even if it 21 took you ten (10) years of hearings. 22 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I think my inclination 23 would be to tilt towards a more prescriptive approach to this 24 than -- than Ron is suggesting and I guess for a variety of 25 reasons.

214
  1                 I think it puts staff in a really untenable
  2  position in the -- in a vacuum of guidelines to have forty-
  3  five (45) people who think they're the boss of -- of ten
  4  thousand (10,000) people who work at City Hall and they're
  5  going to use their own discretion to decide what's
  6  appropriate or inappropriate.
  7                 I think, subjects staff to, you know, a
  8  bewildering open season of -- so I -- so I -- I think that --
  9  I think that becomes problematic.  And I think, inevitably,
 10  it will lead to political overreach and intrusion into what
 11  the appropriate role of staff is which is, at least, to -- in
 12  their -- drawing on their -- their expert, objective opinion
 13  and advice to make -- to marshal information and present
 14  recommendations to Council.
 15                 I mean that, fundamentally, is the input
 16  responsibility into policy development of staff.  And for --
 17  for Council to -- or members of Council to, in one (1) way or
 18  another, use threat, real or implied, to -- to write -- you
 19  know, to get -- to get the -- the recommendations, to get the
 20  report written in the way that they -- that they individually
 21  would prefer is -- is -- it's a perversion of what the
 22  function of a -- a professional civil service staff is.
 23                 And I think would really erode -- its ability
 24  to contribute to public administration and governance in the
 25  way -- in the distinct and unique way that I think they can,

215
  1  so --  
  2                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Do I hear you right then that
  3  perhaps a core organizing principle, as -- as I've heard you
  4  express it, would be just this notion of abuse of power? 
  5                 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI:  Yeah.  But -- but I
  6  think to be fair to politicians, like a lot of them -- you
  7  know, a lot of them come out of a -- a business background,
  8  typically a small business background.  It's rule number one
  9  (1), these people are my employees, of course I tell them
 10  what to do.  Many people come into local -- local government
 11  without any sense of the distinctiveness of the public realm
 12  and of public service and of public administration.
 13                 They legitimate -- in a sense, legitimately
 14  and understandably bring a very different, you know, more
 15  hierarchical, managerial, control, you know, vast field of
 16  control so you -- you hypothetically end up in -- in a
 17  position where politicians are getting elected out of a
 18  certain mind set and background.
 19                 Nobody has told them that there are limits or
 20  protocols or a different culture here.  I I -- think it's
 21  really problematic.  But all of which is -- the devil becomes
 22  in the detail.  Ron's right.  It then becomes messy to try
 23  to, how do you codify dos -- but I'd rather struggle and do
 24  that and have that as a work in progress that you're fine
 25  tuning when obvious short -- shortcomings arise than -- than

216

1 to have a laissez faire approach to it. 2 MR. DAVID BUTT: And in terms of being more 3 prescriptive, as -- as you've described, would you tend to 4 think in terms of specific rules or -- or general guidelines? 5 6 (BRIEF PAUSE) 7 8 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I'm -- I'm prepared to 9 go to rules, yeah. 10 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Can we take a vote on 11 this? We're a committee of three (3), we're okay. Yeah, I 12 probably don't have too much to add. But I'm thinking of 13 different instances, case -- sort of quick case studies. 14 One (1) of the problems too, I don't think 15 it's just a business attitude, I mean I'm sure that that is 16 one (1) of the things that makes politicians, some of the way 17 politicians, or creates politicians that -- that deal with 18 staff this way. I think there is some -- a personality trait 19 sometimes in people that run for office, and especially at 20 the Municipal level, because they aren't bound to parties, so 21 they're running as individuals, and I said individual princes 22 or individual princesses. 23 There are some politicians that are prone to 24 bullying and bullying staff, they bully other politicians, 25 they bully anyone they can bully, so I think -- and -- and

217

1 that's a personality trait. 2 The other thing of course is the structure 3 encourages this, because your fortunes depend on an election 4 every three (3) years, and that the -- the people who vote 5 for you, are for the most part, people who don't know you, 6 and if the turnouts are 25 percent/30 percent, it's this -- 7 this great unknown, you have a very amorphous boss sitting 8 there judging you and so there is paranoia, I think, is a 9 very common characteristic of politicians. And if you're not 10 paranoid going into it, you become paranoid very soon after. 11 So, I think that's another problem. 12 The -- so that kind of bullying, I don't know 13 how you would deal with that with rules or even guidelines, 14 and it's almost as if this is where a stronger -- sort of a 15 stronger focus on the Mayor's office, you know, almost like 16 the Mayor as Sunday School Teacher as well, come in, I 17 understand you're bullying staff, and this will not go over 18 very well with me, if you want to go to any conferences, or 19 something like that. I don't know how you'd get rid of that, 20 because the voter certainly doesn't understand this, because 21 this is part of the process and procedure and relationships, 22 and it doesn't get discussed at election, it's difficult, 23 they don't see this. 24 The other thing though is a -- and again, I 25 think going back into planning, which is one (1) of the land

218

1 use planning, which is probably the major function of 2 Municipalities, that -- that a planner can come up with a 3 report as an expert planner, a good politician is an expert 4 in understanding the community. Planning very much affects 5 the community, so that in a sense when a planner and 6 politician could sit down and talk about a planning report, 7 in some instances you could see it as the expert in the 8 community, and how the community is structured, and how the 9 community feels it's adding that social element into a 10 planning report, so that you could have dialogue between the 11 two (2), which wouldn't necessarily be seen -- I wouldn't see 12 as bad, necessarily. 13 So the planner wouldn't say, oh, you don't 14 know anything about planning, and I'm just a civil servant, I 15 mean I'm a civil servant, I'm an expert planner, and 16 therefore I prepare this planning report. The planner has to 17 understand something of the community they're planning for. 18 And I think that's where a good Councillor -- 19 there's no reason why a good Councillor couldn't have that 20 kind of input into it, and then as Ron says, it's a very grey 21 area, because it's a very -- when does input and dialogue 22 become bullying, when does it become -- and what the staff 23 tend to do with some politicians they don't like, is they 24 ignore them, because they have forty-four (44) members of 25 Council, a Council member calls, staff never responds to the

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1 phone call. 2 So, there's that -- you know, the staff have 3 learned how to deal with this in some instances. 4 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Well, and I was going to 5 say, I mean, I can't even imagine in the scenario you 6 presented, what the sanction would be to the Councillor in 7 the guidelines. First of all the guide -- the Councillor is 8 going to deny, and it was misinterpretation and -- and I was 9 simply trying to communicate how important this was to me, 10 and the staff person's now saying you're a liar, and who's 11 going to hear this, are you going to bring this before a 12 Council Committee to hear whether it's an ethical violation. 13 And the Council Committee's not going to want 14 to deal with it, because it's too problematic for them, and 15 they'll probably side with the Councillor if he really forced 16 them to, because they're nervous. And -- and even if they 17 found against the Councillor, what would the sanction be in 18 this instance? You're not going to probably kick them off 19 the Council for it. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: I guess we've heard from 21 others and had this discussion, one (1) -- one (1) suggestion 22 that's come forward is -- is that something like that, an 23 event like that would be less an opportunity for 24 investigation, a hearing and a -- and a punishment, but 25 rather something to be addressed as internal to the culture

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1 of an organization, in terms of educating people about limits 2 of behaviour -- 3 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Hmm hmm. 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- and empowering them by 5 virtue of -- of support up the line, to say that was 6 inappropriate, I'm not going to accede to that request. 7 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: If this got coupled 8 with -- and Toronto has been looking at, you know, and I'm 9 sure you've had discussions of you know, having an Integrity 10 Commissioner, or some kind of office in a municipality that 11 would be responsible for trying to assure appropriate conduct 12 on the part of all parties, there might be some mechanisms 13 whereby these kinds of complaints could go to such an office, 14 or go to such a person. 15 And obviously, it -- it holds a complainant up 16 to serious difficulty, as a staff member, if it becomes clear 17 to the politician, who it was who has ratted on them. 18 But, you know, there -- there might be other 19 ways of either generic, you know, workshop -- directives -- 20 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Those people never see 21 themselves. 22 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Corruption, corruption 23 counselling. 24 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Or impropriety updates 25 with no names and things generically mentioned, things --

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1 things to think about. One (1) way or another an Integrity 2 Commission office is going to have to think delicately how do 3 you intervene? How do you treat complaints that might arise. 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professors Vogel and 5 Siemiatycki, thoughts on Professor Petersen's notion that it 6 may fall to the Mayor to exercise ethical leadership within 7 the -- the organization? 8 Professor Vogel? 9 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Yes, I certainly would 10 think the -- the Mayor would certainly potentially have a 11 role here, but not necessarily. I mean this -- in a City the 12 size of Toronto, I think a Mayor is going to think it's 13 rather trivial if his or her senior staff comes to them and 14 says, oh, by the way, last Thursday this incident happened. 15 And they're dealing with the budget we just 16 gave them and they're dealing with a crisis in the -- you 17 know -- and they're saying, what am I supposed to do with 18 this? Do you want me to go have an argument with this 19 committee member, while I'm going to them tonight to ask them 20 for a proposal -- I mean they're going to see it as 21 important, but, not necessarily as high as some other 22 priorities they have. 23 I would like to think, this is where the 24 complementarity of roles come in. That if you've got a CAO 25 that -- that the CAO wouldn't necessarily have to trouble a

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1 Mayor with this, this may be minor enough, that the CAO has a 2 sufficient relationship with the Councillor themselves, that 3 they could have a private conversation, or with some other 4 members. 5 But, even I think this stuff is best handled 6 informally, rather than formally. An Integrity Commissioner 7 to me, makes it, there's a record, there's a -- now that 8 somebody has to deny it, they're going to want a hearing on 9 it, they're not going to just go along with the idea, an -- 10 an informal complaint. 11 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I was actually going 12 to withdraw my remark about the Mayor's offie, because I was 13 wondering what happens if the pressure actually is coming 14 from the Mayor's office on the staff. It probably needs to 15 be handled within the -- higher up on the staff, so that the 16 Commissioner or the Head of the department or the Manager, 17 and it can go up that way. 18 But, it probably actually is something they're 19 going to have to live with. I mean I think that is -- it 20 doesn't have -- it's not that every Councillor is -- is a 21 bully. And again it's -- or that this kind of thing occurs a 22 lot. 23 But, there is a lot of meddling in the 24 department by the Councillors. It's not bullying or anything 25 like that, but, they're kind of poking around. We always had

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1 that problem in Scarborough. 2 We said, you know, you shouldn't -- and again, 3 I don't know how you get -- get around that, unless you have 4 the regular, maybe in meetings to explain what's going on in 5 the department, so they don't have to ask those kinds of 6 questions and bother staff. 7 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: And just for the 8 Commissioner's benefit, in the code of conduct for Members of 9 Council, which is found at Tab 1.1 of Ms. Hoy's the CAO's 10 Book that she presented, is the code of conduct. 11 And there is at page 5, a five (5) paragraph 12 blurb setting out conduct in respect of staff by Councillors 13 and -- and what is expected. And it's very much -- it does 14 deal with intimidating and behaviour and stuff. 15 But, then of course, goes on and -- and 16 indicates that it's not -- this is something that Councillors 17 have entered into voluntarily and that there is not an 18 enforcement mechanism for it, within the code itself. 19 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you. 20 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just one (1) other aspect 21 about the relationship between staff and -- and Councillors 22 and then I'd like to move -- to deal quickly before we wrap 23 up with some lobbying issues -- 24 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: I'm sorry -- I should add 25 one (1) more thing. I apologize to jump in. At the -- at

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1 the end of the code of conduct, under compliance on page 8, 2 it does say, 3 "As the Head of Council the Mayor has as 4 one (1) of his or her duties to be vigilant 5 and active in causing the laws for the 6 Government of the Municipality to be duly 7 executed and obeyed. Complaints or 8 concerns from any person regarding alleged 9 non-compliance with this code, by a Member, 10 may be made to the Mayor in writing." 11 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you, Mr. Lewis. 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just again another aspect of 13 the staff/Councillor relationship, this notion of -- of the 14 locusts of power in -- in decision making. Staff reports 15 very often involving technical matters about which staff have 16 expertise. 17 Do we have, by virtue of that ability to 18 control the content of the report and the complexity and -- 19 and volume of the reports, sort of, de facto government by -- 20 by staff under steps that -- or -- or is there an appropriate 21 balance or other steps that -- that could better be taken; 22 Professor Vogel? 23 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Yeah. I mean, I think 24 that's the -- the politicians have the legitimacy. They're 25 there by the voters and the staff have the knowledge. And

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1 that's one of the reasons that you have to have a 2 complementary -- complementary relationship. The staff has 3 to internalize the notion that they're there to provide 4 expertise to the politician or the Council or the Mayor. 5 But that that requires them to really bring 6 forth the areas where they've exercised discretion or where 7 science doesn't give them the answer; that is they have to 8 say, look, here's what we're recommending. And here are the 9 assumptions that went into the recommendation and here are 10 the values that are being maximized or minimized by that set 11 of choices we're recommending. 12 But you should recognize that if you have a 13 different value system, you may have chosen alternative B to 14 alternative A. That as we -- we're focussing on equity and 15 you're focussing on efficiency, if your primary goal was 16 efficiency, option B is better than A. 17 So that, I really think staff has to surface 18 those values and assumptions. They're not illegitimate. 19 They just need to be acknowledged so that the elected 20 officials can recognize where they have discretion, versus 21 where there is some strong weight of evidence that this is 22 really the better choice. 23 Otherwise, you have, you know, a staff guided 24 democracy. It's not much of a democracy. 25 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Petersen...?

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1 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, I was going to 2 say that I think -- I think the staff, at least most of the 3 staff reports that I've been reading recently actually do do 4 that. 5 I remember one (1) politician complained to me 6 that, in fact, she couldn't get the staff to make a 7 recommendation. They presented all the options and they said 8 it's up to the politician to make the recommendation. 9 I think one (1) of the problems, and I can't 10 speak for all reports from all of the departments, actually 11 there was an excellent report presented by the CAO -- written 12 by the CAO's Department on the water -- creating a Water 13 Board, very clearly written. Very well done. 14 So I think -- the problem, I think, is -- is 15 the -- some of them are -- it's just the way in which they're 16 written. They -- they, kind of, do a -- go in reverse and 17 the -- some information is placed -- it's awkward -- they're 18 awkward to read and sometimes I think too in the writing, 19 partly because the staff are rushed. 20 They have to write these reports quickly and 21 they're not writers, et cetera, et cetera and Council has 22 this huge set of documents. Some of the terms are -- are the 23 terms that are used by particular line departments that 24 Councillors aren't familiar with. 25 We used to complain the planners wrote in

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1 Latin and not English. But it -- it -- so there's a number 2 of things there that I don't think it's the staff isn't 3 presenting enough information. It's, kind of, the way in 4 which the information is presented. And -- and there is a 5 lot of material. A lot of it's repetitious. 6 A lot of the items on the agenda have been 7 there over and over and over again and they -- and they keep 8 adding on to the old reports. So -- and the language is -- 9 is -- it's bureaucratic English. It's not -- you're not -- 10 it's not a murder mystery right? It's not suspenseful so 11 it's -- it's difficult for anyone to read. 12 So I think there's -- there are a lot of -- I 13 mean, I'll hire myself out actually to tell them how to write 14 their Council agendas to they're readable for the 15 Councillors. 16 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Well, as I think both 17 Pat and Ron know, or they may be intentionally non-readable 18 or -- or confusing, it's an interesting interplay in the 19 relationship between staff and -- and the political side. 20 And, you know, both sides may well, for either legitimate or 21 illegitimate reasons have their own interest in -- in the 22 issue that is the subject of a report or when it gets to 23 Council the subject of a vote. 24 So, you know, either on -- on the high road, 25 you know, values, beliefs, commitments that either staff or -

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1 - or politicians have, or maybe the lower road, resources, 2 empire building on the staff side, re-election or -- or -- 3 or, you know, stakeholders one wants to be attentive to on -- 4 on the political side. 5 Each side comes into this not totally, you 6 know, staff playing to an objective expertise necessarily, 7 mind set, or politicians, what's in the best -- what's -- 8 where does the public interest lead me here, so, both sides 9 may well have their own dynamics playing out. Both sides 10 also have in that -- in that process, some leverage over the 11 other. 12 I mean, the number of PhDs you would have to 13 have to be an elected Councillor and to not need expert 14 advice, if you think of the array of responsibilities 15 Municipalities have on their plate, you know, everything from 16 engineering to social work to policing, you know, you're 17 really need a lifetime of advanced study to be able to hold 18 your own and have the -- so, it's understandable that staff 19 have something over the -- over the elected politicians. 20 By the same token, you know, staff at some 21 point get the message of what will fly or not fly. So staff 22 at certain points may well be in a position where they know 23 the audience they're writing for, and they know what's going 24 to either get through or not get through, and you can waste X 25 number of weeks writing whatever you want to write, but you

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1 just know the signals that -- so, there's sort of that inter 2 -- that -- that dynamic interplay there. 3 And I think -- I think I would come down, and 4 I like very much the way -- the way Ron put it, you know, 5 there's knowledge, expertise on one (1) side, there's 6 legitimacy on the other side. We are a democracy and the tie 7 goes to legitimacy. 8 And -- and it is the politic -- the elected 9 politician's function and role to ultimately make a decision, 10 hopefully on the most objective and clearly written basis 11 that they can get, and I think this comes down to the import 12 -- if you're going to have a Committee system it brings us 13 back to the importance of all of those Committees of some 14 degree of stability on the Committees, and of the Chairs. A 15 six (6) month rotat -- rotation on Chairs I think is really 16 problematic. 17 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Eighteen (18) -- 18 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Well, the Chairs may 19 actually be -- are the Chairs six (6) or eighteen (18)? 20 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, he said eighteen 21 (18). 22 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: It's eighteen (18), it is 23 eighteen (18). 24 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Eighteen (18), eighteen 25 (18) for the Chairs as well, and -- and for the composition.

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1 You know, it put s a real onus on the Committees to do their 2 -- to do their homework and know their stuff. 3 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just one (1) practical 4 comment on -- on the points that have been made. A 5 Councillor earlier expressed the view that you know, gosh, we 6 get these reports that canvass, you know, eight (8) different 7 options. 8 Whereas in my entire history, this is again 9 this Councillor speaking, as a Councillor we never got past 10 option one (1), perhaps rarely to option two (2). 11 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 12 MR. DAVID BUTT: Just give me the one (1) or 13 two (2) -- 14 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 15 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Yeah. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- is that a good idea? 17 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Can -- can I make a 18 comment, I think this goes back to the issue I raised at the 19 beginning about whether you're going to embrace the Mayor a 20 little more and give the Mayor a little more rule. 21 Staff does find it hard to write a report for 22 forty-four (44) people, and they're going to say, well, I 23 better cover the full gamut. There's twelve (12) different 24 positions, and we're going to have twelve (12) alternatives, 25 and we're going to leave it up to them.

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1 If you've got the Mayor who's got the 2 responsibility to really say this is what I think we ought to 3 do, and I'm not saying staff should play to the Mayor in the 4 sense of not challenging the Mayor or at least confronting 5 the Mayor with some other options to think about it, but the 6 -- you know, if the Mayor's the one (1) that's got to lead 7 the agenda, you know, lead the City and say, you know, we're 8 -- we're going to have a $300 million capital project, and we 9 have to decide to go this way, that way or the other way, you 10 know, the Mayor can say, I think the choice is going to 11 revolve around cost and citizen satisfaction and 12 accountability or something. 13 And so then the staff says, okay, now I know 14 what values you want me to focus on, now I can write a report 15 to you that addresses that, and says, thinking about it from 16 this perspective, these are the two (2) things that we would 17 recommend, option one (1) or option two (2), and this is the 18 trade off between the two (2). And then the Mayor can -- can 19 carry it or not, and -- and the Council can be persuaded or 20 question it, and say, no, no, you missed these other things 21 we want to do. 22 But some of this I think will resolve itself, 23 nobody wants to carry forward a proposal when there's nobody 24 to give it to. 25 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Petersen...?

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1 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: No, fine. 2 MR. DAVID BUTT: If I could just to ask a 3 couple of questions in closing, the -- the whole role of -- 4 of lobbying, and if I could just preface the question by the 5 notion that -- that obviously there's a -- there's a 6 tremendous opportunity for -- particularly at the Municipal 7 level for outside players to influence Municipal decision 8 making process, ratepayers associations representing -- 9 making representations at Committee hearings and -- and so 10 on. 11 Are there types of third party participation 12 in the decision making process, that are -- that are 13 inappropriate? 14 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Weekend golf trips for 15 lobbying would be inappropriate. 16 MR. DAVID BUTT: And so, just to unpack that a 17 little bit, there's an issue around benefits. 18 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Benefits and also unfair 19 access. Access that's -- that the occasion seems to be out 20 of proportion with what the possible direct immediate issue 21 is. 22 Or maybe there's too direct a relationship 23 between them either way. But, I could see a problem either 24 side. In other words, the fact that I don't want a Code of 25 Ethics, that says you can't do X, Y or Z, doesn't mean that

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1 this is back in the things I think are pretty easy. 2 You know, none of us think that a Councillor 3 should be taken on a five thousand dollar ($5,000) holiday, 4 by somebody with business before the Council. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: So, if I can just -- by way 6 of example use that five thousand dollar ($5,000) holiday and 7 the notion of the level of benefit that could appropriately 8 be conveyed has come up in other discussions. 9 Do you as panellists have thoughts on that? 10 And again, just to help you, our federal lobbyist registry, 11 is a two hundred dollar ($200) limit. 12 Some panellists have spoken rather than in 13 numbers, nominal or infrequent meals. Again, any thoughts on 14 just where that level ought to be pegged to preserve the -- 15 either the actual or the perceived integrity of the decision 16 making process? 17 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: We had -- my father 18 was Vice President of a consulting engineering company in New 19 York City. And every Christmas, the -- we used to have all 20 these presents in front of the door because the -- all of the 21 contractors wanted to make sure that my father's company 22 would recommend them for providing the supplies for the job. 23 And it was ridiculous and finally they just 24 said, listen, nothing, absolutely nothing, we refuse to 25 accept anything from these companies. If you want to give us

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1 some information about your company, you can make an 2 appointment, come to the office, and we'll discuss in a 3 business like manner. 4 I know when I was on Scarborough Planning 5 Board, I think the rule was, you could accept anything that 6 was under twenty five dollars ($25) or less and was edible. 7 You had to eat within two (2) days. And I think I used to 8 get a plate of fruit with two (2) chickens on it, every 9 Christmas for a developer. 10 And it was sent to the wrong address, so it 11 wouldn't seen as lobbying. It was not really lobbying 12 because the -- but I -- it's I would say any kind of -- I 13 mean even taking someone out to lunch, is tricky. 14 Because you go out to lunch, it's a long 15 lunch, what kind of restaurant do you go to? You start 16 drinking, you're not working. Certainly companies, I think, 17 and especially companies it would seem to me, in those kinds 18 of industries that where Councillors are not familiar with 19 the product or the service, and I think the computer industry 20 is one of the major ones. 21 Is the Councillor and the staff need to -- and 22 staff particularly need to be educated on that kind of 23 technology. My son is in the software business. He's had a 24 lot of, you know, really good people in the software business 25 don't work for Cities, municipalities, because they can't

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1 afford to pay those kinds of people. 2 People in software business in the private 3 sector make a lot of money. So the City needs to be 4 educated, politicians need to be educated on those -- on 5 those kinds of services these companies provide, so you have 6 to be able to talk to them. 7 But, how you -- but, you don't talk to them 8 flying on a private plan to Hawaii. You don't talk to them 9 on the golf course, even, because what kind of a conversation 10 -- intelligent conversation can you have, you know, as you're 11 worrying about hitting a hole in one (1), or something like 12 that, right. 13 So, there needs to be some kinds of -- of 14 standards or -- I like the idea of having guidelines you can 15 say, listen and even guidelines in terms of case studies. 16 You know in this particular instance of cases, 17 in this particular instance, this is not right, because at 18 some point, you're building a relationship between that 19 politician or that civil servant and that person who is 20 coming in all the time, with the information, even if the 21 relationship is just on a very -- it can still even be on a 22 business like level. 23 There are -- oh well, he's a nice person, and 24 I trust him, and this kind of thing, is occurring, so you're 25 more likely, let's give them the contract because I know him

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1 and he's a good guy and, you know, even in our conversation I 2 discover our kids play hockey together or soccer together or 3 hockey together or something like that. 4 So there's -- there's -- it becomes -- it's a 5 very tricky kind of area, but I think that there are certain 6 -- it's very important that it's very clear in guidelines 7 that there are certain behaviours we won't tolerate and I 8 think it again, it becomes even trickier when you've got 9 staff that don't have the kind of expertise that these 10 companies do have and they -- and so they -- they don't know. 11 So they're basing their judgment on these 12 companies not based on, oh well, we know this person's going 13 to give us a better product. You know, he's going to sell us 14 a better snowplow than this person. It's, oh well, I trust 15 Joe, I like him. 16 I think a lot of business decisions are made 17 that way and I guess we make our personal decisions that way 18 in hiring contractors, but, you know, a city spending my 19 taxpayers' money I want a little bit more sensitivity to 20 this. 21 So, I don't know, that probably doesn't answer 22 your question. But anyway. 23 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Siemiatycki...? 24 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: I agree with the 25 minimalist approach to this that -- that Pat has taken. It

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1 brought to mind in the last Toronto election Barbara -- the 2 image of Barbara Hall with coffee and a muffin as her 3 suggested limit of what the threshold should be and I'd say, 4 that's not far off. 5 I mean, I think for a whole bunch of reasons 6 of the perceived integrity credibility of the system, I -- I 7 think sometimes we may -- we may, those of us with relatively 8 well paid positions and salaries may -- may not appreciate 9 what a twenty-five dollar ($25) lunch that someone is taking 10 you out to, most of the world does not get taken to a twenty- 11 five dollar ($25) lunch. 12 And I think there's a kind of, you know, it -- 13 it adds up to, I think, an unnecessarily diminishing of the 14 estimation of -- of the -- of government and public life, you 15 know, for a lot of that stuff to either be allowed or have -- 16 have a, sort of, blind eye turned to. 17 So I -- this, again, is one of those areas 18 where I'd be more -- 19 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I would -- I would be a 20 little worried though. I mean, I can envision all sorts of 21 scenarios, whether it's an elected Councillor or a staff 22 person who's invited to give a talk to some group in the 23 community that gives them lunch at the banquet and they're 24 now in violation of the ethics code. 25 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah.

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1 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I know people think, well, 2 that's absurd, we wouldn't do that, but that's what they do. 3 That's what happens when you get these -- 4 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 5 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- because you get these 6 rules and, believe it or not, they never adjust them for 7 inflation. So they were set up for what made sense ten (10) 8 or fifteen (15) or twenty (20) years ago and they're never 9 updated. So, you -- 10 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 11 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- need some way of saying, 12 maybe it's a disclosure strategy that you're allowed to 13 accept something up to twenty-five (25) or fifty dollars 14 ($50) or even if it's an honorarium perhaps a hundred dollars 15 ($100). I think of that example because I sometimes give a 16 -- have my students go on a tour in the City and there's a 17 person who works at the University who's also on the City 18 Council and he's the archivist and he's also a guy who does a 19 lot of local history tours. 20 And I want to give him an honorarium. I feel 21 like it's abusing him to not pay him to do that. And yet, 22 you know, it's tricky. Can I give him an honorarium? Is he 23 going to be in some hot water, you know? In my city, we're 24 not a very reformed state so it's not an issue, there isn't 25 this -- at least yet. Now that we've had merger I think

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1 we'll have it. 2 But I think you have to figure out whatever 3 that sensible dollar amount is for what's a legitimate, you 4 know, you can accept something up to something but, you know 5 if you get in a situation beyond that or a grey area, the 6 solution is simply disclosure and then it's an issue of 7 management or counselling. 8 You know, that you can monitor that somebody's 9 gotten too much in Council than if it's a staff person. If 10 it's the elected officials, then I don't know whether the 11 current ethic code already has limits on what they can accept 12 or not. 13 MR. DAVID BUTT: So what I hear you're 14 advocating is a more prophylactic approach, a, sort of, 15 supportive culture of, you know, let's -- let's help you 16 to -- 17 MR. RONALD VOGEL: And also some recognition 18 that sometimes you're in a very awkward situation where it's 19 more problematic to turn it down than to accept it. You 20 know, when you've got a real pushy person saying, I'm going 21 to buy it, or they already sent the glass of wine over to you 22 and they're gone or, you know, now the employee's panicked 23 that they've committed a violation that's sanctionable. 24 And, again, I think you need some way of 25 having some, you know, way of -- of, you know, no, you're all

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1 right. We're not going to fire you because you accepted a 2 glass of wine even if it's against our policy. 3 That there needs to be some understanding that 4 you can't always control the circumstance you're in. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: Any other thoughts on -- on 6 that issue? 7 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Well, I would -- in 8 one (1) -- I mean, I think I -- I agree, Ron and I agree on 9 one (1) thing, is I -- I don't see these going into hard and 10 fast rules, where you apply sanctions. I think this is more 11 -- goes into some general guidelines, so people know. 12 What I was getting out of some of the Inquiry 13 hearing, some of the things that I was listening to is, well, 14 we didn't have any kind of clear understanding of what we 15 could and could not do. So, in terms of general guidelines, 16 yeah, I think I share Ron's concern about putting very strict 17 rules down, and that you end up getting these people -- the 18 honest people in awkward situations, and of course the 19 unethical people -- 20 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Don't report it. 21 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: -- they don't report 22 it -- they don't -- they don't do it. I mean, this is -- 23 this is the difficulty is, you know, bad people are going to 24 be bad and no amount of rules are going to -- 25 MR. DAVID BUTT: Members of the Panel, thank

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1 you very much, we've -- 2 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Can I -- if you're 3 bringing this to a -- 4 MR. DAVID BUTT: Absolutely. 5 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: -- to a close, the -- 6 on the issue of lobbying, I guess I want to come back and -- 7 and again toss out, you know, the -- you had started by 8 asking, you know, what -- what sort of limitations would you 9 put on lobbying, there are issues of disclosure and 10 transparency and lobbyist registry and -- and that's 11 important. 12 But I'll again come back to in some ways what 13 I -- what I think is, you know, my most extreme suggestion, 14 this bus -- this business about lobbying business. 15 You know, I think at a number of levels, to -- 16 to -- you were right when you started this off by saying, we 17 want the Municipal arena to be one (1) in which citizens 18 affected by issues that are going to be deliberated at City 19 Council, should have opportunities, and it's one (1) of the 20 wonders of local Government, that, yes, they do provide 21 various and many avenues for that -- for that input. 22 But it becomes a very uneven playing field, 23 and potentially a -- you know, a problematic and worst case 24 scenario, corruption potential playing field, if you -- I 25 think if you allow people to make their livelihood on the

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  1  basis of representing others in that lobbying relationship.
  2                 So, you know, I think the ability for -- for
  3  some stakeholders to hire and -- and to have -- who have the
  4  resources to hire and pay for specialized expertise, I think
  5  creates an uneven playing field against others who have
  6  stakes and issues, but don't have those financial resources.
  7                 And again, I'll come back and say, I can't
  8  imagine that -- that lobbyists would get too many clients, if
  9  they didn't have a track record of issues they had
 10  influenced, that they had successfully impacted the influence
 11  on.
 12                 So, that starts to ratchet up the
 13  assertiveness, the -- the -- the forcefulness within which
 14  lobbying will be played out, and may get you to the boundary
 15  of -- of inappropriate behaviour, on the lobbyist's part, to
 16  influence public -- public officials.
 17                 So, you know, I think -- I've got no problem
 18  with any one in -- as an individual or in an organization who
 19  has an interest in an issue that -- that affects them
 20  lobbying, but to make money on lobbying services, I think is
 21  problematic.
 22                 MR. DAVID BUTT:  Any thoughts from the other
 23  panellists on making money as a lobbyist?
 24                 MR. RONALD VOGEL:  I never thought I would
 25  speak out on behalf of lobbyists, but I -- I guess as a

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1 realist, I'm having trouble understanding how it would work 2 in practice if you were to do that. I mean, the lawyer would 3 be hired to be the lobbyist, or this one (1), or that -- in 4 other words, you would just be making it almost less 5 transparent, who was doing what and why. 6 MR. DAVID BUTT: And I guess another 7 distinction that's come up in -- in the discussion of 8 lobbying in other panels, is the notion that very often large 9 companies will have in-house lobbyists. 10 So they are a -- a person at a large company 11 who -- 12 MR. RONALD VOGEL: And -- and I guess -- I 13 mean again, in defence of lobbyists, they -- they serve a 14 function, one (1) of which you mentioned earlier. I mean, 15 they have information that Governments often find incredibly 16 useful to have. 17 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Hmm hmm. 18 MR. RONALD VOGEL: Homebuilders can tell you 19 something about housing and development, which your planning 20 office may not know about if the developer doesn't -- 21 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Ron, just to jump in, I 22 would have no difficulty with the developer, therefore 23 expressing their -- their financial interests, their 24 expertise to a Councillor, the difficulty is when they then 25 go out and -- and hire a voice to do that for them, and that

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1 voice has to then spend a lot -- to legitimize themselves, 2 lots of time schmoozing, getting into the ins with 3 Councillors, building almost a clientele base, comparably on 4 the Council, because that's what you're selling -- 5 MR. RONALD VOGEL: But -- 6 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: -- just to finish the 7 point, the lobbyist is selling to the client, both 8 articulateness and communication skills, but also connections 9 and contacts. 10 So therefore you've got to work at cultivating 11 those contacts in whatever way -- and that's where I think 12 you get into a fundamental difference, I have no problem with 13 -- with a developer on her own, you know, speaking as loud 14 and long as they can get the ear of a Councillor, it's when 15 they hire someone else to do that. 16 MR. RONALD VOGEL: I guess what I'm thinking 17 though is the individual developer often doesn't have the 18 time or the knowledge necessarily either, that it's probably 19 the -- the association -- 20 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 21 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- and the lobbyist for the 22 association who has the staff research report that they're 23 the ones that then communicate. Granted it may come with a 24 strategy or a request, but you know, what happens -- you 25 know, then it may -- if you were to say, lobbyists can't be

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1 hired, but what about all these groups, like business 2 Chambers of Commerce. 3 Are they allowed to send their official 4 representative to lobby, I mean, I see all sorts of 5 practical, and also in some ways elevating in equity, because 6 we probably wouldn't say a Chamber couldn't send its 7 representative, but then what about the groups that have to 8 hire someone because they don't have permanent staff or -- 9 MR. MYER SIEMIATYCKI: Yeah. 10 MR. RONALD VOGEL: -- formal organization. 11 MR. DAVID BUTT: Professor Petersen, any 12 comment on this area? 13 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: No, I don't -- I mean, 14 I don't have any problems with having lobbyists that are 15 lobbyists, I mean, I guess you could call -- they call them 16 communications consultants now, don't they. 17 But I was just thinking in an instance where I 18 actually did a small job for Imperial Oil, and it was the 19 rebuilding of a service station addition of -- removal of two 20 (2) gas -- two (2) service bays in the annexed neighbourhood 21 in the City of Toronto, and the problem was that Imperial Oil 22 thought like an oil company and didn't think like -- didn't 23 think community, and they didn't understand how they should 24 be going out to the community and talk to the community. 25 So, I acted on behalf of Imperial Oil, I was

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1 paid by Imperial Oil to do this so called lobbying, but 2 basically what I was doing -- 3 MR. RONALD VOGEL: A gas lobbyist? 4 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: -- a gas lobbyist. 5 Yes. Anything for money. No, and I -- but I was -- no, I 6 was -- I was helping the company understand the community's 7 needs, but we handled a number of -- we had community 8 meetings with the Councillor, I spoke to the Councillor, the 9 company wanted to do this, and the company was also part of 10 the community, but how -- it was a way of kind of developing 11 relationships between the various interests within the 12 community, is the way I worked as a lobbyist. 13 I mean, I wasn't going out and buying off all 14 the members of the community, or buying off the -- the 15 Councillor, I couldn't have done that anyway, and besides, 16 and I knew her and that's why they came and -- and -- I knew 17 someone in Imperial Oil, just personally, and that's why they 18 asked me if I would do it. 19 So, it's -- I don't see that as a -- that as 20 -- as -- I'm not unduly influencing, I'm giving them 21 information and I'm trying to bring the community together 22 and say, listen, let's see if we can find a solution because 23 Imperial wants to do this and you want to do this and you 24 want to do this, and let's see if we can find a solution to 25 that particular problem.

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1 Where I have the difficulty of course in the 2 kind of lobbying, I wouldn't even call lobbying, I mean it's 3 -- basically it's bribery, where you're -- you're trying to 4 get officials to do something just because you can afford to 5 pay them more money than someone else can, and I think that's 6 -- that's a problem -- problematic; right. 7 And but that -- for that then too, you need 8 Councillors who are willing to accept bribes, and I remember 9 a number of the developers when I was Chairman of the 10 Scarborough Planning Board, they said to me, you know, we've 11 never taken you out for lunch, we've never done anything for 12 you, because we knew that you weren't the type of person we 13 could bribe. 14 And we didn't -- that was fine, because you 15 were fair enough in the meetings, and direct, and we could 16 talk to you about the planning issues, and I talked to the 17 planners all the time, but they -- the -- you know the word 18 went out and -- to -- among the developers, there were 19 certain politicians on Council that liked to be bribed. 20 And so I, you know, there's that kind of thing 21 and that, and they know that, the -- 22 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Are you talking about 23 bribed in the criminal sense, or are we talking -- 24 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: Bribed, no, bribed in 25 the criminal sense, yes. A couple of them were actually

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1 charged and they didn't have enough -- they didn't have 2 enough evidence to prove it actually. This is about twenty- 3 five (25) years ago, but in -- in actually giving them money 4 to vote in a certain way, so. 5 MR. DAVID BUTT: Madam Commissioner, those are 6 the areas that -- 7 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: I think I have -- 8 MR. DAVID BUTT: -- in terms of questioning. 9 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: I actually -- it's not a 10 question. I think it's the first time in these three (3) 11 weeks that I've led you astray on one of my interjections so 12 I should rectify that. 13 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Say, it ain't so, Mr. 14 Lewis. 15 MR. ANDREW LEWIS: I believe it's the first 16 time. When I was talking about the -- the Code of Conduct 17 and how complaints are to be made, in fact, it's at Tab 1.1.3 18 of the same book is the more recent approved complaints 19 procedure for violations of the Code of Conduct adopted in 20 November of 2002. 21 And it provides for an informal complaints 22 resolution process which strongly encourages dealing with the 23 member of Council, whoever it is making the complaint to deal 24 with them first. But, in addition, it provides for a formal 25 complaint process for breaches of the Code of Conduct which

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1 would then be referred to an external investigator and, 2 finally, depending, there can be a recommendation made as to 3 some sort of sanction to Council which is the final arbiter 4 of it. 5 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you very much. 6 Thank you. All right. Done, Mr. Butt? 7 MR. DAVID BUTT: Yes. Thank you, Madam 8 Commissioner. 9 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Well, this has been very 10 exciting for me to have such an experienced panel of highly 11 respected academics in the municipal area. You guys are hard 12 to find. I want to thank you very much for coming. 13 Professor Vogel, for coming all this way and 14 for all the work also that you've done before getting here, 15 because I could tell just from talking to you that obviously 16 you have either been paying attention to the issues facing 17 this Inquiry or that you've read some of the materials that 18 our experts have been able to provide or you've read the 19 transcripts or all of the above. 20 And I'm grateful to you for doing that much 21 work in order to come here and assist me with the 22 recommendations that I am eventually going to have to make to 23 the Mayor and City Council. 24 Before you leave, this is, sort of, the last 25 opportunity if you -- if you wish, is there anything that we

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1 haven't asked you about that you'd like to address with me 2 before you leave for the day. You don't have to. It's just 3 one last -- shaking of heads. 4 MR. RONALD VOGEL: No. 5 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I would -- I would 6 actually just like to commend you for doing this. I -- 7 because I did sit in on a couple of the hearings and to -- to 8 listen day after day and just -- you're listening very 9 carefully to the questioning and writing notes down and it's 10 just quite amazing the -- the work that you people have done 11 on this. 12 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Thank you. 13 MS. PATRICIA PETERSEN: I'm really looking 14 forward to your report. 15 MADAM COMMISSIONER: Me too. Well, tomorrow 16 we -- is our last day of this three (3) week session on good 17 governance. We'll start at ten o'clock with Errol Mendes, 18 Professor of Law from the University of Ottawa and Ms. Meg 19 Angevine, the Director at Ethics Centre. 20 So we'll have a panel on ethics and in the 21 afternoon, starting at two o'clock, we have Mr. Neil 22 Sentance, the Director of Procurement Policy and IT at 23 Management Board Secretariat for the Provincial Government 24 and Mr. Howard Grant, the President of Partnering and 25 Procurement Inc and that will be it after tomorrow.

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1 We've had three (3) weeks of very intense 2 presentations and I'm so grateful to everyone who has been 3 participating. Thank you. See you tomorrow morning at ten 4 o'clock. 5 THE REGISTRAR: The Inquiry is adjourned until 6 10:00 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, February 5th, 2004. 7 8 Please note Exhibit 80 provided by Mr. Hutcheon on February 9 the 5th, 2004 will be inserted in the February 4th transcript 10 as noted below. 11 12 --- EXHIBIT NO. 80: Bound document titled A Grand 13 Experiment in Municipal Governance, 14 Toronto's Board of Management 1996-97. 15 MPA Research Report dated August 2003. 16 17 --- Upon adjourning at 4:45 p.m. 18 19 Certified Correct 20 21 22 _____________________ 23 Carol Geehan 24 Court Reporter 25