'An outrageous affront to democracy': Surrey City Council to consider pausing new ethics complaints until October election
CTV
Surrey City Council is set to consider a bylaw amendment to pause new ethics complaints for most of this year, ahead of the municipal election.
Surrey City Council is set to consider a bylaw amendment to pause new ethics complaints for most of this year, ahead of the municipal election.
A motion listed on Monday night’s agenda says the proposed bylaw would “suspend the processing and investigation of complaints by the Surrey Ethics Commissioner in the period leading up to the 2022 Local General Election, effective Jan. 31, 2022.”
Coun. Jack Hundial, who pushed for Surrey to create the ethics commissioner’s office in 2019, described the proposal as “disturbing.”
“I was actually really disappointed, and I think it really goes at the heart of democracy,” Hundial said, adding he believes the motion will be “aggressively debated.”
Fellow councillor Doug Elford told CTV News in an email the proposal is “not out of the ordinary,” and only new to B.C. because Surrey was the first jurisdiction to establish an Ethics Commissioner office. Elford added that other cities have moratoriums in place in election years.
Hundial acknowledged other cities had made the same move, but said none have done so this far out from an election.
“It’s not uncommon to suspend investigations during the writ period, or leading up to the writ period, which is basically the election period. But certainly not for the whole year of election going into it,” Hundial said.
