A local council east of Toronto says it’s cancelling in-person sessions and moving meetings online citing “increasingly hostile threats” to its members as an internal battle around one councillor escalates.
The mayor and councillors in the City of Pickering have been engaged in a growing battle with one member of council, whom they claim is linked to alt-right figures and has repeatedly disrupted meetings.
Ward 1 Coun. Lisa Robinson has been docked nine months of pay by her colleagues over the past year after three successive integrity commissioner investigations found she had broken the code of conduct.
Robinson has denied wrongdoing, asked a judge to overrule the integrity commissioner’s findings and alleged there is a conspiracy against her led by the city’s mayor.
Now, as council prepares to hold its first meeting of the year, tensions have risen again with the release of a 13-minute video on the city’s official YouTube channel announcing the end of in-person council meetings.
“Over the past two years, the City of Pickering has witnessed a growing infiltration of alt-right individuals, ideologies and influences that have created an atmosphere of uncertainly, fear and intimidation over our council,” Mayor Kevin Ashe said in the video’s introduction.
The video tracks a series of times the town and mayor allege Robinson, who is still a sitting councillor, has been involved with alt-right figures. It references meetings and town halls she has held, as well as a controversial appearance on a far-right show where the host referred to the host referred to Robinson’s council colleagues as “pedophiles” and “Nazis.”
At the end of the video, Ashe announced official meetings will no longer take place in council chambers. Instead, they will be held through a video conferencing platform, as they were during the pandemic.
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“The increasing threats to our safety demand action,” Ashe said in the video, which also included messages and voicemails that appear to reveal threats to council members. “This business of our city must, and will, continue.”
A date has not been set for council to return to in-person meetings, Ashe said in a statement to Global News. The city planned to move to virtual meetings for a year beginning in the summer as council chambers undergo renovations.
“For the foreseeable future, meetings will continue in a virtual format until a determination is made by the City Clerk in consultation with the chief administrative officer, corporate security specialist, and the mayor, in accordance with the City’s Procedure By-law,” Ashe said in his statement.
Coun. Robinson called the video “hilarious propaganda” in her own video response to the allegations, saying it “works more in my favour by exposing the mayor” and claiming the mayor and council were using “bullying tactics.”
Robinson claimed Mayor Ashe and council have “a troubling pattern of labelling anyone who disagrees with them as ‘alt-right’” and said she doesn’t “dictate anyone’s opinions or actions.”
The latest twist in a two-year battle on Pickering council comes weeks after the Ford government tabled a proposed law at Queen’s Park that would allow towns and cities to remove elected councillors in certain, specific situations.
The bill, which has not yet been passed into law, would allow for the creation of a standard code of conduct for all municipalities and penalties of removing and disqualifying a member from office if they are in serious violation of the code.
The government said that removal and disqualification could only happen if the municipal integrity commissioner recommends it, if Ontario’s integrity commissioner agrees and if councillors except for the member in question unanimously agree to it in a vote.
Mayor Ashe has been a vocal advocate for harsher penalties to be available when councillors are found to break the code of conduct, including potential removal from office.