Emails from 2022 appear to show that a group of city hall staff with aboriginal roots or interests refused to fill out a survey in time for a series of Truth and Reconciliation Day events — even though that survey was exactly one question long.
An administrative assistant with the shelter, support and housing division sent an email to members of the Ambe Maamowisdaa Employee Circle. The email was sent the afternoon of Sept. 27, 2022 — three days before Truth and Reconciliation Day.
The staffer asked the group, often referred to simply as Ambe, if they could fill out a one-question survey by 11 a.m. the next day. “The staff in people and equity (the city’s HR department) … are looking for your thoughts on including the African ancestral acknowledgment in the corporate (Truth and Reconciliation Day) events happening this week,” he wrote.
City representatives declined to comment to the Sun in time for publication.
City hall has previously refused to answer questions about Ambe, including how many members it has. The email chain that followed that survey request involves responses from just three city employees.
One of them, a public health nurse, was the first to respond.
“I wanted to know if we could discuss this as a group so that this … can be a decision that is made as a collective and not just individuals answering a survey. I would like to talk about this as our Ambe circle, all of us together,” she wrote.
Minutes later, a project manager wrote that she agreed with the nurse, but “I suggest we all respond to the survey and then we can discuss it at our gathering tomorrow. I am going to refrain from how I feel about this for now and will be openly vocal tomorrow.”
The nurse responded: “We don’t need to provide an answer at a given time for something that is important to us as a group of indigenous staff. This can be done when we meet as a circle on Thursday. This week is very important to us as indigenous people for our truth and reconciliation with Canada and we can’t just have a rushed individual survey, especially if we have concerns and rights that we need to share together.”
The email exchange picks back up on Oct. 3, when a director who works out of Metro Hall said he shared the nurse’s “concern with being rushed to make a decision on something like this, without having and hearing the entire voice of Ambe.”
“Can someone update me as what took place with this?” he asked.
The project manager responded: “I just wanted to clarify that the survey question was about … events last week, specifically on the 30th. It was not a question asking if it should be used within the city on a regular basis. That’s why they requested the survey be done by the 28th.”
The emails were turned over to the Sun as part of a freedom-of-information request into the city’s use of its African ancestral acknowledgment. If there are more than three members of Ambe, it’s unclear why there’s no sign of them in these emails.
The Sun has previously reported on the power Ambe appears to wield at city hall.
Last year, a city bureaucrat told fellow members of a task force charged with eliminating the former Etobicoke coat of arms that they would take “direction” from Ambe. The group also called for an aboriginal symbol to take the coat of arms’ place.
Russell Baker, the city’s manager of media relations and issues management, at the time denied Ambe has a role in making “policy decisions.”
Baker offered few other details about Ambe, which he said is comprised of “city staff who identify as First Nations, Inuit and Metis.”