The Absence of Transparency
What Happened to Public Input?
A municipal government is accountable to the people it serves. Residents should be able to attend Council meetings, ask questions, challenge decisions and express their concerns without being made to feel that their participation is unwelcome.Unfortunately, over the past several years, Owen Sound Council has taken a series of steps that have reduced opportunities for meaningful public participation.
Individually, some of these changes might appear minor. Taken together, however, they paint a troubling picture: **public input has become more restricted, less convenient and, in some circumstances, more difficult to exercise.
The gradual erosion of public participation
Among the changes residents should be asking Council and candidates about are:* Council meetings have increasingly been scheduled during normal working hours, and regular evening Council meetings were moved from 7:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Was this change made primarily for the convenience of staff and Council, or was consideration given to the working residents who want to attend?
* The time available to residents during Public Question Period was reduced from five minutes to three minutes. Why was this change made? Which members of Council supported it? Residents should ask candidates seeking re-election how they voted and why.
* Questions were restricted to matters appearing on the current Council agenda. This significantly limits residents' ability to raise issues that may be important to the community but are not conveniently placed on that evening's agenda.
* Staff were given authority to deny a requested public delegation. This raises an important question: should municipal staff have the power to determine which residents are permitted to address their elected representatives?
* A proposed Town Hall meeting, where residents could ask questions of Council, was transformed into an open house for City departments. These are not the same thing. Residents seeking answers from their elected representatives should not have that opportunity replaced by a departmental information session.
* An increasingly adversarial atmosphere has developed in the Council chamber. Residents who attempt to question or criticize Council can find themselves interrupted or cut off. Whether intentional or not, the result is the same: residents may become reluctant to participate.
These changes deserve public scrutiny because transparency is not simply about making information available. It is also about making government accessible and giving citizens a genuine opportunity to question those who govern them.
A Council Chamber That Has Become Increasingly Unwelcoming
Perhaps the most troubling development is the atmosphere that residents encounter when they attempt to question Council. A resident should not have to wonder whether asking a difficult or politically uncomfortable question will result in being interrupted, challenged or cut off. The events surrounding a Public Question Period on December 18, 2023, provide a particularly concerning example.What happened to Ken Jones?
On December 18, 2023, Owen Sound resident Ken Jones participated in Public Question Period at a City Council meeting. He intended to ask Council about Owen Sound's municipal tax burden. At the time, the City's Procedural Bylaw provided residents with up to five minutes, including a brief introductory statement, to present their question. Mr. Jones began his remarks and was interrupted by the Mayor approximately two minutes into his presentation and directed to get to his question. At approximately 2 minutes and 58 seconds, Mr. Jones began framing his question. He was interrupted again at approximately 3 minutes and 40 seconds. He ultimately completed his question at approximately 4 minutes and 10 seconds—still within the five-minute limit provided by the Procedural Bylaw at the time.His question was straightforward: How can the Mayor explain why Owen Sound has the highest taxes and the lowest average incomes relative to comparable municipalities? Instead of addressing the substance of the question, the Mayor responded that "Owen Sound does not have the highest taxes” and suggested that Mr. Jones was relying on outdated information. The Mayor referred to municipalities with higher taxes per capita. But all of those municipalities are single-tier municipalities with substantially broader responsibilities and therefore are not necessarily appropriate comparators for the question Mr. Jones was asking. T
The important issue was not whether some municipality somewhere in Ontario had a higher tax burden per capita. The question concerned comparable municipalities. According to the most recent available information cited by Mr. Jones, including the 2023 BMA Municipal Study and 2022 audited financial statements, Owen Sound's tax burden was indeed among the highest when compared with municipalities of similar size and characteristics. Owen Sound also has relatively low household incomes compared with many of those municipalities.
The assertion that the information was simply “outdated” therefore deserved a more substantive response than a dismissal.
| Mayor's Behaviour at Question Period December 18, 2023 |
Was the five-minute rule actually being followed?
The Mayor stated that he was enforcing the Procedural Bylaw. If that was the reason for the interruptions, the obvious question is: Why was Mr. Jones repeatedly interrupted when he had not yet reached the five-minute limit? At the time, the bylaw permitted five minutes. Mr. Jones completed his question at approximately 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Whatever one's opinion of the question, the resident was apparently still within the time allowed by Council's own rules.That raises a fundamental question about how Public Question Period was being administered.
The role of the City Clerk
There is another issue that deserves examination. The City Clerk was responsible for administering the meeting and would have known the applicable provisions of the Procedural Bylaw. If a resident was entitled to five minutes, why was the Mayor not advised that Mr. Jones was still within the permitted time? We cannot know why that intervention did not occur. But it raises an important question: Was the City's administrative culture becoming so deferential to the Mayor and Council that even the rules governing public participation were not being actively enforced when the resident was speaking? If municipal staff are reluctant to correct Council when a resident's procedural rights are at issue, that is a serious concern. A healthy democratic institution should not depend upon residents having the courage to challenge the Mayor from the public gallery. The rules should protect the resident automatically.From Public Criticism to Less Public Input
There is a particularly troubling irony in what happened next. The incident occurred in the context of a resident publicly challenging Council over taxation and government performance. Rather than creating a more welcoming environment for public questions and debate, Council subsequently changed its Procedural Bylaw to reduce the amount of time available for public input from five minutes to three minutes.That sequence deserves public examination. Residents should be asking:
* Why was the time reduced?These are reasonable questions in any municipality that claims to value openness and transparency.
* What problem was Council attempting to solve?
* How many residents had actually abused the five-minute provision?
* Which members of Council supported the change?
* Did Council consider the effect on residents who need more than a few minutes to explain a complex issue?
* Why should the solution to difficult public questions be to give residents less time to ask them?
Some residents might be thinking that that Mayor is not running in
this election so we don't need to worry. That would be a mistake. There
are four members of that Council that are running and, like the Clerk, could
have spoken up on behalf of Mr. Jones, but chose not to. Given this past
behaviour it is highly unlikely that things will change if they are
re-elected.
Transparency Is More Than Posting Information
Council may argue that it is transparent because agendas, minutes, financial statements and reports are available to the public. But transparency means more than putting documents on a website. True transparency requires access, participation and accountability.Residents must be able to:
1. Know what their government is doing;When meetings are scheduled at times that make attendance difficult, when residents have less time to speak, when questions are restricted, when delegations can be denied and when residents feel unwelcome when they do participate, government may remain technically open while becoming functionally less accessible.
2. Understand why decisions are being made;
3. Question those decisions;
4. Challenge information presented to them; and
5. Receive meaningful answers from their elected representatives.
That is not the standard Owen Sound taxpayers should accept. This is not about whether a particular resident's question was politically convenient. It is not about whether Council agrees with the criticism. And it is not about whether residents should be allowed to speak indefinitely. There must be reasonable rules governing Council meetings. But those rules should serve one fundamental purpose: To facilitate responsible public participation—not to make it more difficult.
A Council that is confident in its decisions should welcome informed questions, even uncomfortable ones.
A Council that believes its tax policies are justified should be prepared to explain them.
A Council that believes its decisions are in the public interest should not be afraid of public scrutiny.
And a government that truly believes in openness and transparency should be looking for more ways to hear from its citizens—not fewer. The issue facing Owen Sound is therefore bigger than the number of minutes allocated to Public Question Period. It is about the culture of municipal government. Are we building a City Hall that welcomes its taxpayers—or one that manages them? That is a question every candidate seeking election should be prepared to answer.