City needs to avoid conflicts of interest

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This article was published 30/09/2023 (915 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When it comes to election campaigns, there is always a need for both candidates and public servants to make concerted efforts to avoid contravening the ethical rules of conduct as laid out by provincial election laws.

The point of such guidelines is to avoid the use of public property and those in the public service from being used in any political campaign activities by any political party. For this reason, public servants are expected to do all they can to avoid the perception of taking partisan sides.

These election laws are meant to prevent incumbent governments from unfairly monopolizing publicly owned property for their own advantage. It’s why you will most often see campaign announcements made outdoors on sidewalks, outside public facilities rather than inside them. It’s also why government employees are expected to avoid getting involved in election-related activities once the writ has been dropped.

But the divide seems to fall along government boundaries, with laws for municipalities that differ from those of provincial governments. And local candidates and city staff have, from time to time, ignored such ethical considerations by nudging a partisan foot over the line.

During the 1986 Manitoba election, a Brandon employee named Reg Forbes came under fire from city officials and opposition candidates after he appeared in a photograph that was part of a campaign advertisement for then NDP candidate Arnold Grambo. At the time, officials were concerned “about the broader implications of the ad,” which they believed had dragged the city into tacit endorsement of the NDP.

“I think he (Mr. Forbes) was ill advised to do it,” said then-mayor Ken Burgess. “I think as an employee it indicates wrongly that there is a political position taken by the employee or the city.”

Mr. Forbes held the title of Brandon Industrial Commissioner, what we would now call the director of economic development.

For his part, Mr. Grambo was puzzled by the reaction of the city and the public, stating that the advertisement was not an endorsement for the NDP.

“We’re selling Arnold Grambo,” Grambo said at the time. “What this picture is doing is saying he (Mr. Forbes) supports some of the unique work we’ve done together on the commission.”

Then Brandon West Liberal candidate Kerry Auriat called the ad “a major conflict of interest.”

It must be noted that, at the time, the City of Brandon had no written guidelines on political endorsements, and instead relied on members’ judgment to determine possible conflicts of interest. Unfortunately, that fact has not changed, as there is no law forbidding municipal employees from endorsing — explicitly or tacitly — a provincial election candidate. At least, I can find none.

But there are still other examples. In 2011, Brandon once again found itself in the middle of a conflict of interest during a provincial election when the governing New Democrats used Brandon Firehall No. 1 for a campaign announcement.

The Sun reported at the time that opposition parties cried foul over then-NDP Leader Greg Selinger’s campaign announcement, which featured two diagonally parked ambulances in front of the fire hall, an NDP message banner located behind a podium that blocked some of the garage doors and a number of on- and off-duty firefighters/paramedics standing behind the premier.

“Tying up a fire station that is used for public safety is really not the way to go,” then-PC leader Hugh McFadyen said. “We had a justice announcement (Saturday in Brandon) at a public park with an off-duty police officer there because we didn’t want to tie up people involved in public safety with a political announcement.”

The Liberal leader of the day, Jon Gerrard, called for rules under the elections act to be tightened in advance of the next provincial election … which they never were.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the optics of such public endorsements are questionable, particularly when city employees use their role within the municipality to appear with a member of a political party on the campaign trail.

And last week, it happened again, when Progressive Conservative Leader Heather Stefanson stood on Rosser Avenue near the Brandon Chamber of Commerce for a campaign stop. She promised that a PC government would expand the Downtown Community Safety Partnership in Winnipeg to Brandon with $2 million in funding to get it up and running.

She was flanked by two local candidates — Brandon West PC candidate Wayne Balcaen, and Brandon East PC candidate Len Isleifson — as well as acting Brandon Police Service Chief Randy Lewis.

A photo from the event that appeared in Tuesday’s Brandon Sun is evidence of acting Chief Lewis’ involvement in the campaign announcement. He even offered the Sun a quote, stating that his colleagues at the Winnipeg Police Service had assured BPS that the program had been successful.

“We’re going to see benefits that are going to range far and wide across our downtown area,” Lewis said. “We’re going to have teams responding to non-emergency non-violent community safety concerns.”

Now, we don’t have a complaint about the program, nor do we disagree with acting Chief Lewis that the program could benefit our downtown.

But by participating in a provincial election campaign announcement, he has unknowingly dragged the City of Brandon — and himself — into a political conflict of interest. And that’s not a good position for this city to find itself in, no matter what party wins come election day.

To quote former Mayor Ken Burgess, that decision was “ill-advised.” We suggest councillors need to have a discussion regarding the ethics of political endorsements by city staff. And the sooner, the better.

» Matt Goerzen, editor