Cogeco's The Issue panel discusses Burlington's difficulty putting a code of conduct ion place for its members of Council

Event 100By Staff

November 6, 2015

BURLINGTON, ON

Additional background information has been added to this piece after it was first published.

Cogeco Cable Community TV does a regular program live from their studio on Syscon Road where Mark Carr hosts The Issue and brings in guests to talk about specific issues.

pepper

Pepper Parr, publisher of the Burlington Gazette

The Issue invited the publisher of the Gazette, Pepper Parr to take part in a panel discussion about the problems the city of Burlington is having getting a Code of Conduct for its Council members in place.

Che Marvel NDP

Che Marville, NDP candidate in Oakville during the last federal election.

Che Marville, the New Democratic candidate for Oakville during the last election and CEO of Marville Media plus the founder of multiple social enterprises including the Children’s Media Museum. Rachel Halliwell, a Cogeco volunteer last year and now a student studying sports broadcasting completed the panel.

Mark Carr, moderator, was once a city of Burlington council member – at a time when a motion from then Council member Mike Wallace to reduce the size of Council from the then 17 members to the current seven.

Then Mayor Walter Mulkewich preferred a nine member Council and put forward a motion to that effect – it was defeated and the motion for a seven member council passed by a vote of 9 for and 8 against. Which is why we currently have a seven member  city council.

Mulkewich points out in his response to the first version of this story that the Region of Halton had at the time reduced its size by four Councillors from 25 to 21 by taking away two from Burlington and two from Halton Hills which meant Burlington had to reduce its Regional Councillors by two and this became the trigger for the Council size issue in Burlington.

There is a longer story to this, to the saga of the debate at both the Region and City, and the reasons I voted as I did at that time. Now that Milton has dramatically grown as has Oakville, and therefore the Regional representation issue needs to be revisited – how will the Region deal with representation in this term or will it – and will there be ramifications for Burlington?

Is Burlington’s seven member Council more effective?  Debatable and Carr made his views known.

Carr, who is well versed on public issues, gets into the debate and discussion as much as he can – few softball questions from him.

Che Marville can also get quite scrappy

One of the best comments was made by 18 year-old Halliwell who suggested city council take part in events that called for them to work as a team “seems to me” she said “that they need some team building opportunities.”

Halliwell voted in her first election this year

Mark-Carr

The Issue moderator Mark Carr –  Live on Cogeco Cable television

The program was broadcast live Tuesday, and will be re-broadcast on the following dates on Channel 23 and HD 700

Fri, Nov 6, 2015 @ 2:00pm
Sat, Nov 7, 2015 @ 10:00am
Sun, Nov 8, 2015 @ 1:00pm
Sun, Nov 8, 2015 @ 9:30pm
Tue, Nov 10, 2015 @ 2:00pm

It got lively.

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