The report to council adds that “staff will develop procedures to formally document what is considered new information.”

The proposal mirrors one put forward in 2016, when council implemented the committee of the whole structure. Council voted against that recommendation 11-1.

“From a staff standpoint, we’re coming back to that original recommendation, but ultimately the decision will be in council’s hands,” O’Brien says.

“I recognize that it’s a very challenging decision for council to make with respect to that, but we still think that there’s ample opportunity for the public to engage with council.”

Proposed changes to decorum, correspondence

Along with potential changes to when people would be able to delegate in front of council, the list of staff recommendations includes changes to decorum and how delegates act in council chambers.

“Feedback was received regarding the decorum of the public, delegations and members of council,” the staff report reads, adding the current bylaw “outlines appropriate conduct of council and committee members as well as the public but does not explicitly refer to the conduct of delegations.”

As a result, staff are recommending that delegates be officially included in the list of parties to whom the decorum rules apply, and “to include stronger language.”

Those additions, according to a draft version of the bylaw attached to the report, include barring members of the public and delegations from “clapping, shouting, jeering or any other form of disorderly conduct,” or bringing in “any signs or placards into, or hand out any brochures, pamphlets, buttons or literature in the council chambers.”

As far as council conduct is concerned, the sole proposed change would see members barred from taking part “in private conversations, verbally or electronically, which disrupt the business of council” during meetings.

Changes are also being proposed to written submissions as well.

According to the staff report, the updated bylaw could include a provision that the clerk’s office would “not accept any written submission or petition that contains any obscene or improper content or language or defamatory allegations.”

“There may be different methods in which we would sort of hold back on certain pieces of correspondence being included, or parts of correspondence,” O’Brien says.

The city clerk says this could range from reaching out to the submitter and asking them to reword their correspondence “and ask them to reframe it and resubmit it,” or redacting portions of correspondence appearing on committee or council agendas.

O’Brien says the city’s legal team and solicitor would work to determine what crosses that line.

“Because when you talk about things that are defamatory, for example, you’re talking … the type of thing that is defined by either law or jurisprudence in case law,” he says.

O’Brien adds that entire pieces of correspondence likely would not be removed in full, “unless it was significantly over a majority of that piece of correspondence that had that type of tone or language or defamatory remarks.”

“To be honest with you, we haven’t had a whole lot of examples in the past where this has occurred,” he says.

O’Brien says if a full piece of correspondence were to be removed from the agenda, “we would somehow be considering ways in which we could signal to council and publicly that something had been removed from the agenda for this reason.”



