By Pepper Parr
October 19th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
OPINION
The news that ward 1 Councillor Kelvin Galbraith has been in a conflict of Interest with properties within the MTSA boundary.
A number of people in a group of about 20 people have been claiming this for some time but were never able to have a meeting with Galbraith to voice their concerns.
They believed that their council member was not going to be in a position to represent their interests because of the Conflict.
What happens now?
Ward 1 Councillor Kelvin Galbraith
We have put a number of questions to the Councillor; we have not heard from him yet.
There are three people who have told the Gazette they will file a complaint with the Integrity Commissioner and realize that complaints are never heard during an election’
If the Integrity Commissioner finds against Galbraith what are the options? At the worst he can have Galbraith removed from office which would mean the calling of a by-election for ward 1 – and those things are not cheap.
Will the news of the Integrity Commissioner’s report have an impact on the election?
Will Robert Radway find a way to alert the Aldershot voters and swing public sentiment?
What does Galbraith do now? Assume he can continue campaigning?
Would he consider bringing his campaign to a halt?
Heck of a mess isn’t it ?
The Gazette wonders why Galbraith did not advise Council that he was in a Conflict and doubted that he could fully represent his constituents.
Galbraith told the Gazette very recently that he was not in a Conflict and that he had met with the Integrity Commissioner – what Galbraith did not tell the Gazette was that he had a report in hand that said very clearly that he was.
Councillor Galbraith will not be permitted to discuss developments in this part of the ward due to his conflict of Interest.
Galbraith said on or before May 14th that he was going to run for re-election – knowing that he had advice from the Integrity Commissioner that he was in a Conflict of Interest when any property within the MTSA boundary was being discussed.
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Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.
Although I have seen bias in some of your reports on the mayor and Lisa Kearns, in this situation Galbraith is entirely at fault. How could he not see that owning property in the area being discussed is a conflict of interest? Now that it has been confirmed it is a bit late for those who have voted early. I think this is a serious issue because it appears that Galbraith was slow in letting voters know.
Surely not declaring a conflict of interest in these circumstances is an issue that could be deemed a Criminal Code Officence through an appropriate police investigation. While Galbraith deserves the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty of such surely the Chief Executive Officer of the City of Burlington (elected), the Chief Administrative Officer, City Manager who is also responsible for Risk Management (appointed by an elected Council) and the Head of Legal need to have a conversation with a good criminal lawyer to determine if this matter should be reported to police for investigaton asap before they become accessories to what police and a court of law may decide is a criminal offence.
I am really surprised by this comment. The proper place to deal with this is with a complaint to the Integrity Commissioner. The Integrity Commissioner can then determine what the appropriate response should be.
I expected better from the Marsdens