Sudbury city councillor accused of conflict of interest in arena vote

A Sudbury city councillor has been accused of having a conflict of interest when she voted on the location of the city's new arena in June.

Documents filed at the Sudbury courthouse this week allege that Ward 12 councillor Landry-Altmann was in conflict because she was a director on the board of the Sudbury District Motorsports Association.

That group had recently reached an agreement with developer Dario Zulich to build a car race track as part of the entertainment district to be built around a new $100 million city-owned event centre.

The documents say that means she had "direct or indirect pecuniary interest" in the location of the event centre and contravened the Municipal Act by casting a vote.

The application, filed by Sudbury businessman Andre Dumais, calls for Landry-Altmann to be removed from council, barred from running for municipal office for seven years and "make restitution for any financial gain that she may receive or has received as a result of this conflict."

"That was an unfair vote," Dumais told CBC in an interview.

"When you start putting two and two together, you say 'Alright, there are other motives at play here.'"

Dumais, who recently quit the board of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce so he can lobby against the new arena being built on the Kingsway, says he is calling on the city to revisit the decision from June.

He says that wouldn't automatically happen if the court rules in his favour.

"In a case like this my understanding is that a decision is not necessarily voided. Past decisions aren't influenced by any final decision by a judge. However, from what I've been told... typically those decisions are revisted," says Dumais.

City council voted 6-6 in June on building the event centre downtown, meaning that motion was lost. Moments later council voted in favour of the Kingsway location it is now planning to buy from Zulich.

Landry-Altmann was one of the votes against the downtown location.

Ward 3 city councillor Gerry Montpellier declared a conflict of interest that night because he owns car-related businesses, but says he thought he was in conflict when it came to either arena location, because of his involvement with downtown Sudbury events.

'Lots of gray areas'

The CBC has reached out to Landry-Altmann, but has yet to receive any comment. 

The City of Greater Sudbury said in a statement that "as the matter is before the court, we're not in a position to speak to legal matters."

The allegations will be heard inside a Sudbury courtroom in January. 

The Municipal Act specifically forbids councillors from having a "pecuniary interest" but Andrew Sancton, a professor emeritus of political science at University of Western Ontario, says there is a lot of confusion about what that means.

"There are lots of gray areas. And I think no matter how many cases there are there are still going to be gray areas because there are going to be different circumstances each time," he says.