Cambridge mayor broke no rules sitting on multiplex task force, report says

Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig did not break any rules when he sat on the multiplex task force, the city's integrity commissioner has ruled.

A resident's complaint about the mayor's role on the task force was "reasonable," the commissioner said in a report to council this week.

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But the mayor's belief he wasn't breaking the rules of the council code of conduct was also reasonable, he said.

"I therefore do not recommend that the mayor be sanctioned for a violation of the code," arbitrator Marshall Schnapp wrote in his report.

Difference between committee, task force

On Sept. 28, resident Dave May sent a complaint to ADR Chambers, a Toronto legal and mediation office that serves as Cambridge's integrity commissioner, about Craig's involvement on the multiplex taskforce.

May argued Craig violated the city's procedural bylaw in regards to board and committee meetings.

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Under the bylaw, a committee must be made up of 50 per cent council members. The multiplex task force, however, was made up of two members of council, two members of staff and three members of the public.

In normal committee circumstances, the mayor can attend any standing committee of council and have his vote counted because he has ex officio status or basically, because he's the mayor.

May argued the rules of a committee did not apply to the task force and Craig should not have been a member of the task force.

"In this case, I felt the mayor was using his ex officio status to try to vote on what should have been a neutral task force," May told CBC News in an interview.

"I thought his influence on that type of committee would be detrimental."

Bylaw 'ambiguous'

Schnapp met with the mayor, the city's clerk, Michael Di Lullo, and May. He wrote in the report he agreed the wording of the bylaw was "ambiguous," but that the mayor did not do anything wrong.

May said he is still not happy with that answer.

"The problem resides around the fact the bylaw was ambiguous and could be interpreted two different ways, according to the integrity commissioner," May said.

"But from my perspective it's pretty clear. It did not define the task force as a committee that the mayor could utilize his ex-officio status on."

Craig voluntarily stepped down from the committee in August after May raised concerns.

Craig told CBC K-W at the time he didn't want to see the task force "get embroiled in what is essentially was a sideshow I want that process to go ahead, my council wants that process to go ahead."

Council is expected to make a decision on a location for the multiplex in the next few months.