Nenshi asked to apologize to city staff in integrity commissioner's report into Uber comments

Mayor Naheed Nenshi was asked to apologize to city staff and Calgarians on Monday, as the city's integrity commissioner delivered his report examining comments Nenshi made regarding Uber. 

• Nenshi calls Uber 'dicks,' and says sex offenders can pass screening process

Allen Sulatycky slammed the mayor's "hyperbole" when he was caught on camera in Boston saying the ride-hailing service were "dicks" and that the city had used sex offenders and other criminals to test the rigour of the company's background checks.

"The Mayor has said that his Boston statements resulted from a conflating of facts and a poor choice of words. I find that to be a barely plausible explanation given the simplicity of the words used and their stark dissonance with what was said afterwards to be true," reads the report. 

Ethics of comments

Sulatycky said there was no evidence of the city using criminals to test the rigour of Uber's screening process.

He added that Nenshi admitted he was not aware of anyone convicted of a sexual offence being greenlighted by the company, and that the city was only anecdotally aware of "one driver with an assault conviction who cleared the Uber background check."

While Nenshi did not violate any explicit ethical rules laid out by the city, "ethical conduct cannot be exhaustively or exclusively defined by the specific categories found in the City policy for members of council," according to the report.

"That policy is introduced with the assertion that it 'supports and is aligned with The City of Calgary's corporate values' the first of which is 'honesty.'"

'The purity of his own temple'

Sulatycky also highlighted the damaging effects the mayor's comments had for city staff and public perception. 

"The Mayor had placed into question, in a phrase borrowed from American jurisprudence, 'the purity of his own temple'," he said in the report. 

"Many Calgarians became uneasy about the conduct of City employees. Many city employees felt that they were unfairly put under suspicion."

Nenshi apologized in council chambers after an in-camera discussion. 

"I have thought a lot about this incident since it happened, and here's the bottom line: I made a mistake and I'm sorry," he said.

'You should take your lumps'

Speaking later to the media, the mayor said he learned a lesson from the incident. 

"I think that it's very clear, I screwed up and when you screw up you should take your lumps," he said, adding he thought it was good news the report highlighted "that there was no real, lasting harm here."

Despite that, Nenshi said he will strive to do better.

"Even if you don't know you're being recorded, one should strive to be the same person in private as in public and I think that is a good lesson for me."

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