Saunderson’s Vindictive Judicial Inquiry – Page 4

Enough B.S. (Brian Saunderson)

Yet another week has gone by and our mayor, Brian Saunderson, stubbornly refuses to do the right thing for the people of the town of Collingwood, and resign. He continues to pursue his personal political ambitions at the expense of both our taxpayers and the credibility of the office. Not to mention tarnishing the reputation of those on council and staff who refuse to stand up to him or call on him to resign. Resigning would be the honourable and ethical thing to do, but I do not believe residents can expect that from Saunderson. You might want to take ……… click below for more ↓

My Report About the Report About the Report

2021-02-04 2021-02-04 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration / Taxes3 Comments

As I predicted (correctly) late last year, Collingwood Council was given a dumbed-down, $700,000-as-important-as-clean-drinking-water-report-about-the-judicial-inquiry-report. More than 900 pages of the original report reduced to a mere 15 to report on the report. And as I also predicted, it would include pie charts. You can read it here: “STAFF REPORT #CAO2021-02 Phase One – Collingwood Judicial Inquiry Next Steps. You can also look at the PowerPoint presentation made to council — which, as I also correctly predicted, would have the report “reduced to a dozen bullets on PowerPoint slides, written in a large font and read aloud, slowly, at a council ……… click below for more ↓

A Municipal Challenge to Democracy?

2021-02-02 2021-02-02 Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Planning & Policies / Publicity & Communications / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration / User fees and costsLeave a comment

Collingwood has joined other local municipalities asking the province to revamp its Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA; a guide from the Information and Privacy Commissioner to the Act is also available here) to make the process more restrictive and less open. While some of those changes might seem appropriate to outsiders, I see buried in the wording of the request some dark challenges to our democracy. The story in Collingwood Today is titled, “Freedom of information rules ‘archaic’ and in need of modernization, says Collingwood clerk.” Democracies depend on some core attributes: openness, accountability, transparency, ……… click below for more ↓

Saunderson’s Still Here

2021-01-31 2021-01-31 Collingwood / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

A week has gone by and our mayor, Brian Saunderson, has still not done the right thing by the town of Collingwood and resigned from his office. He continues to pursue his personal ambition at the expense of both the local taxpayer and any credibility he might have had. As my readers know, Saunderson announced he didn’t want the job of mayor and is campaigning to be our local MPP (Member of Provincial Parliament). However, he announced he is staying on as mayor until he gets elected, which won’t be (if it happens at all) until June, 2021. Until then, ……… click below for more ↓

An Honourable Mayor?

2021-01-21 2021-01-21 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration8 Comments

Mayor Brian Saunderson has announced he is running for nomination to the provincial Progressive Conservative party in our riding to be able to stand as the candidate for MPP. According to a story in Collingwood Today, he is not stepping down from his role as mayor, and will not do so even if he wins the nomination: Should Saunderson receive the nomination, he said he would not be stepping back from his duties as mayor of Collingwood unless he were to be successful and elected in 2022. I believe that this poses a threat of both real and perceived conflicts ……… click below for more ↓

Striving for Mediocrity

2021-01-20 2021-01-31 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Local media / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration3 Comments

On a council laden with dunces, deadwood, and dullards, it must be some consolation to our elected representatives, that they can at least claim to be less mediocre than Councillor Steve Berman. We all need someone to measure ourselves against, I suppose, and a low bar is so much easier to rise above. Berman’s first year in office was spent mostly consuming oxygen at the table and saying nothing of consequence. Of so little consequence were his words that even the normally sycophantic local media hardly ever bothered to reprint them. But when the pandemic struck and council retreated into ……… click below for more ↓

What would $9 Million Buy Our Town?

2021-01-01 2021-01-02 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Development & Growth / Entitlement / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryOne Comment

Back a few years ago, the 2010-14 council led by Mayor Cooper approved building for the community several important structures and buying for public ownership several properties, any of which — indeed, several of which — could have been built for less than the $9 million cost we taxpayers are burdened with paying for the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) this term. For example, the new firehall we commissioned in 2012 cost $4.75 million. For roughly twice that amount, you know what you got from this council? Right: a report. And not just any report: we got a digital report, ……… click below for more ↓

The $9 Million Dollar Mayor

2020-12-25 2020-12-26 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

More than eight million of your dollars have been spent to date on the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI), and it may top $9 million if you add in the costs the town doesn’t include in its calculations, as well as the proposed $700,000 report-about-the-report. And that should stick to our $9 million-dollar mayor. There is a breakdown of the SVJI costs as of Dec. 18, 2020, on the town’s website. Sort of. The $8,098,547.40 total doesn’t include two key components: first, the salary and expenses of the inquiry’s judge. While that was paid for by the province, not simply ……… click below for more ↓

As Important as Clean Drinking Water?

2020-12-19 2020-12-19 Collingwood / Council / Ethics and behaviour / Financial follies / Planning & Policies / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Staff and administration5 Comments

I wonder how the people of Walkerton would feel about Collingwood CAO’s statement, reported in Collingwood Today, that implementing the 300-plus recommendations of the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) is “equivalent with the top priorities we have, like providing clean drinking water.” I wonder how many people in our town will be saved from a painful, water-borne illness and possible death if, for example, the town encourages the province to implement recommendation number two: 2 Describing the mayor as both the head of Council and chief executive officer blurs the fact that the mayor is the head of Council and ……… click below for more ↓

The irony, the hypocrisy

2020-12-12 2020-12-12 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

There’s a letter on the council consent agenda that will either make you shake your head in wonder at the brash irony of it, or laughing at a writer who plays a fawning Rudy Giuliani to Saunderson’s Trump. It’s from Claire Tucker-Reid, the co-chair of the former Central Park Steering Committee (SPSC; our current mayor was the other), the committee that can be argued to be the cause of this recent and expensive turmoil that led to the town wasting more than $8 million of your money on a vindictive judicial inquiry (or, as some believe, a vendetta). The inquiry ……… click below for more ↓

No Enemies; No Accomplishments

2020-12-01 2020-12-01 Collingwood / Council / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Entitlement / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

Have you ever read this poem? I hadn’t, until recently. But now it makes sense. Take a moment… No Enemies You have no enemies, you say? Alas! my friend, the boast is poor; He who has mingled in the fray Of duty, that the brave endure, Must have made foes! If you have none, Small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip, You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip, You’ve never turned the wrong to right, You’ve been a coward in the fight. As Wikipedia tells us, Charles Mackay (27 March 1814 – ……… click below for more ↓

The Judicial Inquiry and $7+ Million

2020-11-05 2020-11-05 Collingwood / Council / Election 2018 / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry2 Comments

Was it worth more than $7.7 million of your tax dollars? That’s roughly $8,400 a page (including, yes, the blank pages). That includes $232,866 in town staff salaries and $48,008 in staff travel expenses. Fifty-seven percent of that total went to legal costs, including $1.58 million on the town’s own legal costs. I can’t tell from the article linked above if the total includes the cost of having to rent commercial space downtown for the treasury department during the inquiry. I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t speak to what a Judicial Inquiry is supposed to do, how it is ……… click below for more ↓

The towering heights of the SVJI

2018-12-13 2018-12-13 Collingwood / Council / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / TaxesLeave a comment

Four hundred and twenty seven thousand, two hundred and sixty five. That’s how many documents have been submitted to the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) to date, according to a story in Collingwood Today.* There is no indication if more are expected after that, but it wasn’t ruled out, either. More than 425,000 documents. The sheer volume is gobsmacking. Let’s take a look at what that might mean. It isn’t specified if these are single or multiple page documents. We have to assume at least some are more than a single page. For the sake of easy calculations, let’s say ……… click below for more ↓

SVJI costs continue to skyrocket

2018-11-20 2018-11-20 Collingwood / Council / Deceit / deception & secrecy / Disrespect and bad behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial InquiryLeave a comment

As I predicted earlier, the costs for Saunderson’s Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (SVJI) are going to climb through the roof. And of course you, the taxpayer, are going to pay for it. Last month local media carried stories that the SVJI – scheduled to begin this month (November) – wasn’t going to meet its deadlines. It was delayed and would not start until the “new year” (apparently not until February, 2019). Bayshore Broadcasting notes in its coverage*: The inquiry team had hoped they would start this fall, but Inquiry Counsel Janet Leiper tells us that won’t be possible and that it ……… click below for more ↓

Statement for the Judicial Inquiry

2018-08-13 2018-08-13 Collingwood / Council / deception & secrecy / Election 2018 / Ethics and behaviour / Saunderson's Vindictive Judicial Inquiry / Utilities: electricity and waterLeave a comment

NB: This is the statement I read aloud at the public meeting for the Judicial Inquiry, Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. It is a much-abbreviated version of a statement I have made in my written submission to the inquiry. Thank you, your honour, for letting me speak tonight. My name is Ian Chadwick. I was a member of the previous council. This inquiry is about two of the many challenges council faced and overcame last term. First was the changing nature of Ontario’s energy sector. Prior to the provincial election, all three political parties vowed to reduce the number of Local ……… click below for more ↓