How This Dysfunctional Council Was Created

For several years now, I have witnessed the on-going and unprofessional ill-treatment of Councillors Randy Greenlaw and Ian Veitch by fellow Council members Tammy DeSousa, Cathy Keane, Shawn Scott and Mayor Harry Hughes during Council meetings. The conduct of these four has been nothing less than ‘school-yard bullying’.

Mayor Hughes actually encourages and emboldens the disrespectful attacks by DeSousa, Keane and Scott by not admonishing their behaviour as is his responsibility, and as a result we have had a dysfunctional Oro-Medonte Council for nearly four years.

‘To cause a group of people to disagree and fight with one another so that they will not join together as one’, is to Divide and Conquer. That strategy is how Mayor Hughes has managed to control the majority vote with several of the first term council members who were initially naive to his political and autocratic ways. The dysfunctional Council that we have today, is another “dictatorial success” for Mayor Hughes in controlling Council’s vote on important issues.

The incidents of disrespect towards Councillors Greenlaw and Veitch by DeSousa, Keane, and Scott are too numerous to list and have gone beyond council meetings to social media platforms, and even extended to Integrity Commissioner Abrams when he was disclosing his findings regarding the investigation of Councillor Keane at the May 26th 2021 council meeting. Councillor Scott arrogantly suggested that he had more practical and real-world experience regarding the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as it relates to the right to counsel, than the lawyers involved in the Code of Conduct complaint filed against Keane. Scott, Keane and DeSousa went further in criticizing the Integrity Commissioner’s Report, claiming his findings to be biased and unfounded. The Commissioner stated in his Report that Councillor Keane was the only person that he had ever needed to put under oath during her interview to extract the still questionable truth from her in the case, and he recommended that some form of disciplinary action should be imposed on Keane at the discretion of Council.

Integrity Commissioner Abrams was summarily thanked for his Report and undeservedly fired at that meeting by a majority vote that included the mayor. No disciplinary action was taken against Keane and in fact, Scott made a motion that her legal fees for retaining a lawyer on her behalf be paid by Council. That motion also carried with the support of the mayor.

In my view, those council members discredited themselves with their comments and desperate defence of Councillor Keane, and they undoubtedly knew or should have known, that their assertions regarding IC Abrams’s findings and conclusion were contrived and false. As an investigator myself for 35 years, of criminal and administrative cases, and having read IC Abram’s Report, it is clear that it was Scott, DeSousa and Keane who were, in fact, biased and self-serving in their analysis of the Integrity Commissioner’s Report.

In my opinion all three councillors have sacrificed their personal dignity and integrity to appease and gain political favour with Mayor Hughes resulting in a majority vote which often doesn’t reflect the best interests of residents on issues. Any independent thought or disagreement on the part of these councillors and senior administrative staff appears to be heavily influenced by the mayor with his unchecked intimidation tactics. That is how this dysfunctional council was created and has operated for the last four years.

It is time to vote in members of this community who can work in a unified way with other members of council, are respectful to each other and who will represent the best interests of their ward constituents and those of the larger community of Oro-Medonte.

Robert J. Young

Candidate for Ward 6, Oro-Medonte