By Cheryl Jahn

New Code of Conduct for Council

Dec 22, 2023 | 3:02 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – Conflicts of interest, inter-Councilrelations, dealing with the public and so on. That’s what is laid out in the new Code of Conduct for Council, which according to one long-time Councillor, Garth Frizzell, was in need of an upgrade.

“The old code of conduct was done early days quite a long time ago. And it was it was good at the time. But in the interim, we’ve had pretty significant changes to what expectations are in the workplace and among colleagues. Councils are different because we’re not employees. So some of the regulations that help regulate workplaces for good behavior aren’t in place.”

The debate around the wording of the bylaw and the roles of individual Councillors as well as staff were debated for hours throughout two meetings. In the end, the final product was not accepted unanimously. One of the dissenters was Mayor Simon Yu, who disagreed with the City Manager being the first in line to deal with a conflict.

“I really don’t want our only employee, the CAO, as a as conduit when there’s a dispute that goes through his office and then goes to another outside judge and jury, so to speak. Eventually the jury it’s the council itself, right?”

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In fact, he suggested that an independent body possibly be made up of former mayors and Councillors.

“We can have as some a committee form up with former mayors and former councilors as they could be a volunteer body, too. They have a lot of experience in the area to see where we go from there. There are different mechanisms and we can we can deal with that code of conduct when there’s conflict arises.”

Frizzell says this new code of conduct has teeth compared to its predecessor.

“In short, the big difference is now there are consequences. Before there weren’t really any consequences if you violated a code of conduct and now an investigator would come in and if found to be a violation, they could lose part of their paycheck, and they could lose some of the privileges they need to do the job. So it’s got more teeth. Now, if there are bad apples, the bad apples aren’t able to continue doing what they did.”

But, as what noted by Council, a bylaw can be changed at any time.

by Cheryl Jahn

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New Code of Conduct for Council

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