Two Toronto councillors used constituent contact info for election purposes without permission: integrity commissioner

July 19, 2024 Canuck

Two councillors should be reprimanded for violating the city council’s code of conduct when they used their constituents’ contact information for election purposes without permission, Toronto’s integrity commissioner says.

On Friday, Jonathan Batty submitted his final reports of his investigations into separate complaints against Mayor Olivia Chow, Councillors Frances Nunziata, Brad Bradford, and Anthony Perruzza.

The integrity commissioner cleared Chow, and while he found Perruzza violated the Code of Conduct regarding a flyer his officer printed and distributed before voting day during the 2022 election despite a distribution ban, Batty recommended not imposing any penalty on the councillor as he self-reported the matter and fixed the issue.

As for Nunziata and Bradford, who sent election-related emails to constituents who did not sign up to receive such information, Batty ruled that their actions violated two articles of the code and recommended that council reprimand the them.

The incident involving Nunziata occurred during the 2022 municipal election. According to the report, a constituent signed up for the councillor’s newsletter but did not join her re-election campaign email list, yet they still received a message from the Vote Nunziata campaign days before the election.

When asked to respond, Nunziata intially told the integrity commissioner that the complaint was politically motivated, his office did not have jurisdiction to investigate it, and her office’s mailing account was not used for her election campaign.

However, when the investigation began, Batty said the councillor and her staff were fully cooperative and supplied him with information.

“Councillor Nunziata has taken full responsibility and has committed to taking the necessary steps to make sure the confidentiality of constituency contact information is protected,” Batty stated in the report. “However, the transfer of constituent contact information was not accidental or inadvertent.”

He noted that the councillor did not mislead his office as she did not know the truth until his investigation findings were shared with her.

“Councillor Nunziata accepts my findings and I understand is taking steps to apologize to her constituents and the complainant directly,” Batty said.

Meanwhile, the integrity commissioner’s office received four complaints against Bradford for incidents that occurred during the 2023 mayoral byelection. They stem from emails received from the councillor’s campaign team. While the complainants are on Bradford’s e-newsletter list, they did not sign up to receive communications from his campaign.

In his response to the commissioner, Bradford admitted at the outset that his campaign used constituent information and took steps to probe the matter. It was found that his former chief of staff transferred contact information of approximately 10,000 constituents from City Hall to his campaign.

“While the upload has been described as an inadvertent error by Councillor Bradford, it is evident that his office did not exercise due care in managing constituent contact information,” Batty said. “Had due care been exercised, this mistake would not have happened.”

The commissioner noted that Bradford wrote to him that he takes full responsibility and apologizes for the incident.

“I believe the constituents who have entrusted him with their personal information, the people who complained to his office, and the people who complained to my Office will welcome hearing this directly from him,” Batty added.

In a separate letter to council, the commissioner said the unauthorized use or disclosure of personal information is a “serious public concern” and urged councillors to review policies and guidance governing the protection of constituent contact information.

Chow did not breach Code of Conduct

The complaint against the mayor claimed that she failed to manage an alleged conflict of interest in her office involving one of her staff.

Chow’s director of policy development and community outreach was allegedly still a registered lobbyist for advocacy group RideFairTO while working in her office and was “actively involved” in the introduction of a cap on the number of rideshare licences in 2023 – a decision city council later reversed.

The complaint accused the mayor of breaching the Code of Conduct when she did not ensure the policy director “was walled off from any involvement in the shaping of policy for which he has been advocating as a paid and registered lobbyist.”

Batty said when he contacted the mayor about the complaint, legal counsel representing Chow informed him that the policy director was removed as an “in-house” lobbyist for RideFairTO before beginning his position at the mayor’s office and received an official confirmation from the Lobbyist Registrar—which the Batty verified during his investigation.

“Looking at the evidence obtained in connection with the different allegations in the complaint, it is not reasonable to conclude on a balance of probabilities that the Policy Director had a real or apparent conflict of interest in carrying out his duties. There is not clear and convincing evidence this was the case,” Batty said in his report.

“It is also clearly evident Mayor Chow’s office was alive to concerns that political staff can have real or apparent conflicts of interest. There were formal contractual requirements in place that addressed this and, when the possibility arose on other files in the Mayor’s Office where the Policy Director might have a conflict because of a family relationship, he was screened from working on such matters.”

As a result, Batty said he found that the mayor did not violate the Code of Conduct and dismissed the complaint.

The city council will consider Batty’s reports when they meet next week.

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Two Toronto councillors used constituent contact info for election purposes without permission: integrity commissioner

Chow did not breach Code of Conduct

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