Sudbury city council votes to reprimand one of its own councillors

Sudbury city council has voted to reprimand one of its own city councillors for code of conduct violations.

It was a heated and lengthy debate at Tuesday's city council meeting.

Ward Five councillor Robert Kirwan defended himself, as councillors debated whether to reprimand him for his behaviour.

Earlier this month, Sudbury's integrity commissioner, Robert Swayze, issued a report to council outlining several complaints he had received about the councillor. In the report, Swayze stated Kirwan was aggressive and abusive toward people who didn't agree with him.

Many of the complaints were in reference to comments Kirwan made on his Valley East Facebook page.

During his presentation Tuesday evening, Swayze began by reading one comment he had pulled from Kirwan's Facebook page while writing his report:

• "What an utter waste of time to have to respond to this drivel. Surely to God this man doesn't have the audacity to think that I am going to allow a washed out dinosaur from an entitled professor like Dr. (name removed) attack my credibility from his ivory tower at Laurentian University. He clearly demonstrates all of the entitlement characteristics of a university professor who has never had to work a day in his life." 

Code of conduct didn't exist yet

Kirwan argued that he shouldn't be reprimanded for any of the Facebook comments because they all happened before council's current code of conduct was in place — council approved the code in Feb. 2019.

"These are code complaints that we're dealing with. This is the new code of conduct. We had a code of ethics that was part of our procedural bylaw," Kirwan said.

"When you add the phrase, as well as the prior code of ethics, you're putting an unlimited time frame on this. And so if you approve this you're basically changing our code of conduct because it says the alleged violation shall have taken place within 60 days of filing the complaint with the integrity commissioner."

However, councillor Mike Jakubo argued that regardless of when the comments might have been made, they were still public on Facebook at the time of the report, which means the complaints should still fall under the current code of conduct.

Kirwan also added that all comments were made in defence of himself.

"I've got images that will show how all of these examples started and they started with basically a comment against me," he said, adding that he hasn't made any comments like that since the code of conduct was passed.

Many councillors said they understood what it's like to hear and see negative comments from the public, however, didn't agree with how Kirwan responded.

"There is an expectation that we will deport ourselves to a higher standard because we're elected to a higher level, so while I can appreciate the human instinct to fight back as it were, that's not the expectation," said counciillor Fern Cormier. "We take the oath of office. It comes with a great responsibility and part of that is how we carry ourselves and deport ourselves and communicate in public."

Councillor Mark Signoretti agreed with Cormier's comments.

"Are we going to agree with everything that comes forward? No. Are people going to attack us? Yes," he said.

Signoretti says he's seen many comments about himself on social media that he doesn't agree with.

"I could have attacked that person or came back in with vengeance, but I chose to take the high road in that situation, and in other situations. So if we're going to put ourselves out here to be around this table and to be in politics and in the public eye, then we got to be open to scrutiny," Signoretti said.

"It's how we handle those situations is what defines us."