Richard White part 4 …of 3?

Part 2 of 4…. (Yes, I added a fourth part)

Councilor Whites claim of “doctored” documents is only part of this discussion, but you will see it is an important part. Let’s look a little deeper at the Integrity Commisioner Complaint filed against him. To be clear, as I stated in discussion 356, I was prepared to let this die. Not now, not with him claiming there is “doctored” evidence.

So, let’s roll this story back quite a bit.

Because Sylvia represented the people of Wasaga Beach for eight years, many residents of Wasaga Beach continue to reach out to her for advice or to report things they see as being wrong.

One day months ago, she started getting calls from not just one, but a few people expressing concern that members of our Council and Staff were part of a group that attended a fund raiser for the Conservative Party with Minister of Education Lecce as the guest speaker. Apparently it was arranged that they could lobby the Minister at this event. Why were people concerned? The Town of Wasaga Beach, at the time, had an application in to the Ministry of Education to fund a K-12 High School in Wasaga Beach. The decision would be announced within weeks of this $1000.00 per person fund raiser. So… people were concerned about how this looked.

I only learned the entire truth behind how the invites originated AFTER the investigation was complete and I saw an email string that discussed the invitation. According to documents in the IC report and file, it was apparently the Developer who was selling the land for the new K-12 Catholic School, that was hosting the fund raiser. It appears that he invited the Town Staff and Council to attend.

One resident that wanted to share this situation with Sylvia, wanted her to know that a photo existed and had been forwarded to MPP Saunderson’s office. It apparently showed three members of our Council and two members of Staff (specifically, they said CAO’s) with the Minister.

Other facts were surfacing from a variety of sources that backed up the understanding of events that night. Some misinformation was even corrected. Originally it was referred to as a “dinner”, then the event description was changed to “a $1000.00 per person fundraiser” instead.

As the word continued spreading on Social Media, one person decided to write to Councilor White personally for clarification. She did so and she got a response directly from Councilor Richard White. This lady then reached out to Sylvia and shared a copy of the response she had received. Although she was upset about how our Council attending this whole event looked, she didn’t want to have her name used in a complaint and wanted to remain anonymous. Why? At the time, this lady sat on a local committee and did not want to be removed by anyone vindictive because of her complaint. Since then, she has resigned from that position and she has no objection to her name being shared publicly.

With all of the people reporting this as being in appropriate, Sylvia also had concerns that the three members of Council had also not “reported” their attendance to this event or the possible “gifting” of tickets.

So, that is the background that led up to the complaint. Sylvia Bray has NEVER stepped away from responsibility and nobody else wanted to risk lodging a complaint. But plenty of people felt this whole situation was WRONG! So, Sylvia decided to lodge a complaint with the Town of Wasaga Beach’s Integrity Commissioner.

Before we start to look at the actual investigation, I think it is important to understand that an Integrity Commisioner can ONLY investigate Elected Members of Council, not staff or outside parties. Further, the IC investigation should be restricted to breaches of the “Code of Conduct” or breaches of the Municipal Conflict of Interest regulations.

I personally complained to this Integrity Commisioner long ago, after the first Budget our Council passed. Back then, our Council (collectively… not just one member) were rude to residents who spoke against them. They certainly did not treat the public with “respect”. The IC, basically responded saying that he would not get involved with political opinions so refused to investigate. That was the end of that complaint. Council was allowed to treat members of the public, with what MANY considered disrespect, (contrary to the code of conduct) but the IC wouldn’t investigate. So, my wife and I knew any complaint moving forward would have to be serious and have evidence in order to be considered. She did not take this lightly.

My understanding of the role of an Integrity Commisioner was that they would “investigate” breaches of a Councils Code of Conduct, then recomend any sanctions to the sitting Council.

However, in this case, the “investigation” appears to be more restricted to reviewing documents submitted and NOT actually looking into the various aspects raised during the process. In my humble opinion, the “investigation” appears to have been minimal and information that would have been easy to look at was not even considered.

Let’s look at some of the facts together.

Councilor White is constantly referring to the email that Sylvia Bray submitted into evidence, as being “doctored”. The only modification to the document was to redact the authors name. Yes, that is a standard practice in protecting someone’s identity, but it is not “doctoring”.

When Councilor White responded to the IC originally, Sylvia was copied on the response. I have since reviewed this email and there are several paragraphs that I (as a tax payer and a reasonable person) have serious concerns about. Sylvia couldn’t believe his response appeared to actually question the validity of her submissions. Have a good look and you decide….

In a response to the IC, Councilor White wrote the following 7 quotes.

*DISCLAIMER- I am typing these on an iPhone while looking at paper copies, so a few words may have typographical discrepancies, but all comments are accurate.

My personal commentary about the quotes follows each of the quotes in brackets.

1. “I am unable to find a photo from MPP Brian Saunderson’s office that supports the claim. I would require the photo, date it was taken, location it was taken, and who the photo was sent to in order to validate this part of the claim.”

2. “Attendance of the two CAO’s. Please provide the evidence that supports this claim.”

(Eventually, the groups attendance at this event was admitted to. Why would Councilor White ask for “evidence that supports this claim”. It has come out who was there. He was certainly aware of who was there. So, as an elected official, being investigated, why not simply confirm who he was with as part of the group?)

3. “The claim mentions a developer with active development in Wasaga Beach. Please name who the developer in which active developments that support this claim.”

(Again, this asking “Sylvia” to name the developer in his response to the IC is totally inappropriate. The participation of all parties was eventually confirmed. In fact, it seems the developer was actually who organized the event and invited the Municipal attendees. WHY would Councilor White not come right out and tell the IC who was there?)

4. “The claim mentions of purchase of tickets, please provide these tickets or receipt thereof.”

(Councilor White knew what was later learned by the IC, that there was no ticket required by them as they were invited by the developer. It is important to recognize however that OTHERS who attended to have access to the Minister were expected to pay $1000 per person. Why not share that with the IC at the time? So WHY did Councilor White not initially respond to the IC, sharing his knowledge that they didn’t pay, instead of insisting to see proof of tickets he knew did not exist?)

5. “The claim quotes me saying “it didn’t cost the taxpayers anything” please provide proof of this quote as it is not contained in the package.”

(His actual quote was slightly different and he said “there was no cost for anyone”. Did Councilor White feel that if exact wording was not captured in the complaint that “evidence” would be disregarded?)

6. “As per the letter attached as evidence, I would need to have an original unreacted copy complete with metadata to validate this evidence.”

(This statement from Councilor White questions the validity of the actual email. Please note in this original statement, he uses the description “redacted” but he now claimed it was “doctored”.)

7. “The claim mentions a failure to follow council policies. Please provide the policies that Mrs. Bray wishes me to address.”

(At this point, it should be the IC asking him to address the issues, not Mrs. Bray. The IC was aware of which sections of the code of conduct were being challenged.)

Councilor White and Mayor Smith wanted to make the “report” public. I think however, the emails that shaped the final report are even more important for true informed public opinion to be valid.

When the Integrity Commisioner shared a copy of his report to Sylvia, it had a quote in the report that I think is also important. He quotes Councilor White regarding the email with the redacted name. He wrote, “ The evidence submitted is a crude screenshot of a partial email with an attempt to redact some of the information. The evidence is intentionally bereft of the salutation and meta data required to validate its accuracy.”

So during the investigation, Councilor White attempts to paint a picture of a modified document, when all that was changed was the blacking out of a name (later revealed). He knew the email was 100% accurate as he wrote it.

To clarify my point, further in the report, the integrity Commisioner quotes Councilor White from another communication. He wrote, “although Miss Bray claims that the email in question was signed Councilor White, it very clearly says counselor-elect. Ms. Bray knows that the term counselor elect is not an email signature for a sitting elected official and therefore not on the Town servers yet she suggests an FOI to waste more taxpayer money and distract Town staff for matters of actual importance.”

So if there is any doubt that Councillor White is trying to cast doubt on the validity of the email, Councilor Richard White continued by writing this…

I will write more tomorrow, but I would like to close by focusing on that last quote from Councilor White. Instead of admitting a photo was taken, or the email was authored by him, he actually says they could be fictitious.

I have never seen the photo, but I have spoken to someone who has. The email? Well, I will include both the redacted version originally submitted to protect the persons identity who shared it, and the un-redacted version submitted to the IC in response to the claims of the email being fictitious.

It’s late… tomorrow’s post will have photos of emails that contain today’s quotes.

#358 tomorrow…….