Kincardine council rejected a recommendation from the Integrity Commissioner to suspend the pay of Councilor Bill Stewart for one week, for undermining the decision to decommission the Secord Monument.
Council voted to decommission the monument on September 11, 2024, with Stewart the lone dissenting vote.
The May 5 report from Integrity Commissioner Jeffrey Abrams found that Stewart "inflamed public sentiments on the issue by twice sending letters to the editor of the Kincardine Record that were inappropriate and inflammatory."
The letters were published on September 18 and 20, 2024. In the first letter, Stewart wrote that the monument already been destroyed as he "was working on litigation to protect [Kincardine] history but the staff at the municipality worked faster than my lawyers."
The IC found that statement suggested that Municipal staff were somehow working against Stewart, and that Council had made a decision that was somehow shameful.
Along with those letters, which the IC wrote violated sections 14 and 15.1 of the Code of Conduct, Stewart was found to have shared what was thought to be a confidential letter addressed to members of council with his personal lawyers.
Stewart told council that he and Abrams disagreed on whether it was clear that the letter from an Alberta law firm, which suggested potential legal action as a result of the monument decision, was confidential.
"Now this particular letter in question was very unusual, because in my eight years of being a councillor, I never received a letter from a lawyer that had my personal name on it. So because it wasn't under personal or confidential at the time, I sent if over to my lawyer... Mr Abrams and I went through this but we couldn't come to an agreement on this. He felt that I allegedly broke the Code of Conduct and I felt that I had my personal interest and I had to protect myself and my family, and I decided that I need to go talk to lawyers."
In the report, Abrams said Stewart acknowledged his behaviour crossed a line and thus the recommendation was to suspend Stewart's pay for a week, but Deputy Mayor Andrea Clarke said it seemed unnecessary.
"When I read the report, I take the position that you were contrite, that you accepted that there was some, perhaps, wrongdoing or at least you would have acted differently in retrospect," she said. "I guess from my perspective, I think I would be content to receive this this evening, based on some degree of contrition."
Council voted to accept the Integrity Commissioner's report with no other follow-up