Hamilton City Council received, without debate or comment, a report from Hamilton Integrity Commissioner David Boghosian finding a political staff member working for Ward 12 Councillor Craig Cassar leaked secret budget amendment motions on February 6, 2025.
The leak to Environment Hamilton and the Hamilton Naturalist’s Club resulted in them mobilizing again a vote the next day that, if passed, would have removed $560,000 from the 2025 budget to fund implementation of the City’s Biodiversity Plan.
A second motion to further decrease funding for the plan by an additional $128,860 was also leaked.
The result was an uproar during the Council meeting the following day
An investigation was launched immediately to determine how Council-only secret information was leaked.
IC Finds Councillor Cassar Did Not Know About Leak
City Council was scheduled to meet on February 7 to vote on final amendments to the 2025 City budget. Before the meeting, councillors were required to submit amendment motions to the City Clerk.
The motions were strictly confidential until after the close of business on February 6, when they would be posted to the City website. Confidentiality was essential to prevent the public from learning about the motions and being able to comment in advance of the final vote.
On the morning of February 6, City Council members engaged in a flurry of emails, including sharing motions they would vote on the next day.
Ward 10 Clr Jeff Beattie informed the others of his planned motions regarding the biodiversity plan.
At 12:20 p.m., an officially unidentified staff member in Cassar’s office forwarded the motions to her personal email address.
“He did not leak the motions to the public and he did not direct [REDACTION] to do so,” Boghosian concluded regarding Cassar’s involvement.
IC Says Political Staff Not Within Jurisdiction
Boghosian states that his finding that Cassar had no involvement in the leak ends his role in the matter.
However, Boghosian states he forwarded his investigative findings to the City Manager’s Office to review a “possible breach of the City’s Employee Code of Conduct” in releasing the information.
A part of the report improperly redacted the staffer’s name, revealing their surname ends in ‘T’, revealing the person involved is Nancy Hurst.
Strong Mayor Budget Designed to Minimize Public Information and Input
The City’s 2025 budget process was designed to minimize public input. The public budget book only gave residents a top-level view of the budget.
Councillors were confidentially provided a more detailed budget book, with further details on spending plans – but still significantly less information than previous councils would’ve received.
Neither the public nor the Council were provided with detailed staffing charts or budget line-by-line information.
The public version of the budget was released on January 13, giving residents less than a week to review before the January 20 public delegation input day.
Strong Mayor Budget and Council Amendment Secrecy
Under the Municipal Act’s new “Strong Mayor” budget process, ‘Strong Mayors’ must give their councils a minimum of 30 days to review the budget. Any council-initiated changes must either be endorsed by the ‘Strong Mayor’ or carried by a two-thirds supermajority vote of the Council.
February 7 was set as the final date for council-initiated amendments. Some councillors submitted their motions weeks in advance. However, motions submitted after January 30 were deemed secret until after the close of business on February 6.
Everyone Looks Bad
City Council’s terrible governance practices keep landing them in embarrassing situations.
The constant use of “walk-on” no-notice motions must end. It results in poorly thought-out actions passing at Council without any public input.
It violates public confidence – the public should be able to comment on public business.
Craig Cassar and his staff member are tarred in this incident because they failed to properly separate out-of-office environmental engagement from their obligations to proper governance as a municipal office.
There will be no fallout for Cassar or Hurst because there was no bad faith.
[It speaks to how well-regarded Hurst is that nobody spoke her name following the report. I’ve reported her identity because the City accidentally released it – in line with standard journalistic professionalism of not treating anyone with undue fear or favour.]
However, they must clearly delineate between their office responsibilities and outside engagement.
Cassar has already done so at the Ontario Land Tribunal, where he removed himself from participant status in various Ancaster hearings that he was engaged in before being elected in 2022.
Hurst’s differing roles were briefly an issue during the March 19 OLT case management conference involving an industrial subdivision at 370 Garner in Ancaster.
The developer’s lawyer challenged Hurst’s request for participant status because he was unsure if she was engaging in a personal or professional capacity, citing her employment by the ward councillor. The Tribunal dismissed all but three requests on technical grounds; Hurst was among the dismissed requests.
The City Clerk’s Office has once again failed to redact information properly.
The breach might be dismissed as “technical” in nature. However, at least four people, including two top managers, are involved in proofing agendas and verifying that redactions are correctly applied.
Poor information practices strike again.
The report redactions are simple to reverse. Take the report, remove the redactions, and write the names of Cassar’s two staff members. Which of the two matches the character spacing of the person involved?
The report should have been reformatted to adopt gender-neutral pronouns and to use [REDACTED] instead of the confidential information. This would eliminate the complexity of redacting [no need to hide “them/they/their” in place of “her/she”] and prevent character spacing comparison.
Every bit of this mess was preventable.
Join me again for the next embarrassing incident of poor governance and/or privacy breach in a few weeks.
Production Details
v. 1.0.0
Published: March 31, 2025
Last updated: March 31, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
Update Record
v. 1.0.0 original version