Good morning,
There is one meeting at City Hall today – City Council will decide on a development charges appeal. In contravention of both the Municipal Act and the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, the City is not providing the appeal documents to the public. The meeting is at 9:00 a.m.
I’m working today on final preparation for interviewing candidates in Ward 8 for a special edition of The 155 Podcast.
Notes
Mayor Horwath on CHCH
Mayor Andrea Horwath did her regular visit to CHCH’s Morning Live this morning.
Topics of discussion were Jamesville, development charges, Shai Day, and the CANUSA games.
It was a feel-good update. There was no new information.
Divisional Court decision Sloat v. Grand Erie District School Board
I usually discuss court rulings regarding municipal integrity commissioners; in this case, I’m noting a Divisional Court ruling regarding a school board integrity commissioner ruling.
Not because the ruling is informative for how Integrity Commissioners should conduct investigations and report findings (which, if it were not already obvious, Sloat #1 already explained that providing partial findings in a PowerPoint presentation does not even come close to meeting due process requirements), but because of how the Divisional Court expresses its frustration at the complete waste of time and resources that has been the ongoing drama among the Grand Erie District School Board trustees.
Here are some excerpts from the latest decision, Sloat v. Grand Erie District School Board, 2025 ONSC 4460 (emphasis added):
[4] It should be noted at the outset that this application is, in effect, a sequel to a previous judicial review application concerning a series of four decisions of the Board, where it similarly concluded that the applicant had violated the Code, and imposed sanctions against her. In the unanimous decision of this court, reported as Sloat v. Grand Erie District School Board, 2024 ONSC 6209 (Div. Ct.), leave to appeal refused, OM-0384 (April 3, 2025), Backhouse J., speaking for the court, quashed all four decisions, on the basis that there was a lack of procedural fairness and the decisions were unreasonable. At para. 68, Backhouse J. commented that “the applicant was being unfairly dealt with and unfairly targeted”. In my view, that accurately describes the actions of the Board in the matters now before this court.
…
[40] The Board argues that the present case is distinguishable from Sloat #1 because there it was clear that potentially exculpatory information had been left out of the PowerPoint presentation, which is not the case here. I disagree. There is no way that the applicant can confirm that all potentially exculpatory information was included in the presentation without seeing a copy of the report itself. This court has already ruled that the applicant has a legitimate expectation that the report would be available to her. In spite of that ruling, the Board has continued to stonewall, and refuses to release a copy to her. I find that conduct to be unreasonable, and draw an adverse inference against the Board. Thus, I am not prepared to take the Board at its word that the PowerPoint presentation contains all relevant and potentially exculpatory information contained in the report.
…
[43] Furthermore, there is no doubt that, had the issue been raised, the applicant’s concern about the failure to provide her and the trustees with a copy of the investigator’s report would have been summarily dismissed, without any reasons, just as the internal appeal of the Board’s decision itself was. This conclusion is supported by the Board’s continued refusal to produce a copy of the report even to this day. The failure to indulge in such a perfunctory exercise should not bar the applicant from raising, before this court, a legitimate concern as to the fairness of the proceedings.
…
[47] Given my conclusions, above, it is not necessary to deal with the reasonableness of the decision, nor with the other issues raised by the applicant in her factum, including the Charter issue. However, there is one aspect of the decision that is so blatantly unreasonable that it cries out for some comment.
…
[56] Given the time and expense that have been consumed by the acrimonious litigation between these parties to date, it is long past time that they came to a resolution and got back to doing what they should be doing, which is working for the betterment of our school system and the students and families who are served by it. We do, therefore, expect that an agreement on costs will be arrived at.
Hamilton Police Suspend Member for “troubling social media posts containing prejudicial content.”
Hamilton Police issued a statement this morning that they’ve suspended “a 23-year member following the discovery of troubling social media posts containing prejudicial content. The posts were first brought to the Service’s attention by a media outlet.”
I expect the pending media story’s release of details will be particularly damaging to HPS’ reputation.
An officer with 23 years of service will be someone with a lengthy history of interactions, all of which will now be viewed through a different lenses of scrutiny.
I await further details.
CBC Has the Story: Hamilton Police Constable Renato Greco is the Accused
After CBC’s national visual investigations team reported on white supremeist “active clubs,” a person provided CBC with a tip regarding a social media account with the same name as the constable.
The posts by the account alleged to be Greco’s are extremely concerned. If confirmed, he’ll face dismissal from the police service. Being a 23-year veteran, it is more likely he’ll drag out the process and retire with his pension shortly before a final hearing to dismiss him from the service.
Production Details
v. 1.0.3
Published: August 11, 2025
Last updated: August 11, 2025
Author: Joey Coleman
Update Record
v. 1.0.0 original version
v. 1.0.1 add excerpts from the Divisional Court decision
v. 1.0.2 HPS suspension note
v. 1.0.3 added link to the CBC story.