Ontario Municipal Human Resources Association

Municipal councillors may soon be subject to stronger codes of conduct and harsher penalties for breaching them.

On May 1, 2025, the Ontario government introduced Bill 9. If passed, it will replace municipal codes of conduct for members of council and local boards with provincially standardized ones. It will also provide a process to remove a member of either council or a local board from their elected position for breaching codes of conduct in certain circumstances. The goal is greater accountability and consistency in local governance.

Standardized codes of conduct and overseeing Integrity Commissioners

Currently, the Municipal Act requires each municipality to establish its own code of conduct for members of council and local boards. If passed, the Act will enable the government to make regulations:

• prescribing a code of conduct for members of council and local boards and requiring members to comply
• requiring integrity commissioners to provide education or training on the code of conduct and for each member of council and local board to take that education and training, and
• requiring integrity commissioners to hold meetings with members of council and local boards regarding matters specified in the regulations

Bill 9 also provides the Integrity Commissioner of Ontario (ICO) with the power to:

• advise municipalities, on request, about the independence of a person being considered for appointment as an integrity commissioner, including whether they have a personal conflict of interest
• educate and train integrity commissioners
• providing certain information to a municipality about the status of each integrity commissioner’s training and education; and
• conduct inquiries

The Integrity Commissioner of Ontario’s process to recommend declaring a seat vacant

Along with creating standardized codes of conduct, Bill 9 introduces harsher penalties for breaching them, including possibly removing members of council and local boards from their elected positions. This is a significant change from the current Municipal Act, under which penalties for code of conduct breaches are limited to issuing a reprimand or a suspension up to 90 days’ remuneration. Through our investigation practice, we hear that municipalities feel these measures do not adequately address serious or repeated breaches.

Under Bill 9, if a breach is found, the municipality’s integrity commissioner may recommend to the ICO that the seat of a member of council or local board be declared vacant if:

• the member has contravened the code of conduct
• the contravention is of a serious nature, including if it is a repeated contravention
• the member’s conduct resulted in harm to the health, safety or well-being of any person, and
• the penalties of reprimand or up to a 90-day remuneration suspension are insufficient to address the breach or to ensure that the breach is not repeated.

This means that for serious contraventions, a member of either council or a local board can be removed from their elected position despite having been chosen through a democratic process. These measures respond to pressures on the provincial government to improve ways to address serious or repeated breaches of a code of conduct by council or local board members.

Bill 9 provides a process for the ICO to follow if it receives a recommendation from an integrity commissioner that the member of either council or a local board vacate their position. This includes considering whether the contravention negatively impacts public confidence in a member’s ability to discharge their duties or the ability of council or the local board to fulfil its role.

If the ICO agrees that the member of either council or a local board meets these requirements, it will issue a report to the municipality recommending that the municipality declare the member’s seat vacant. All eligible members of the municipality would then vote to determine whether to approve the ICO’s recommendation. If so, the member of council or local board is removed from their seat which is then declared vacant. The member is disqualified from being a member again for four years.

If the ICO determines that the member of council or local board’s conduct does not meet the requirements to declare the seat vacant, the ICO will refer the matter back to the municipality’s integrity commissioner. Then the integrity commissioner reports to the municipality or local board whether a reprimand or financial suspension should be imposed instead.

Better behaviour?

If Bill 9 with its extraordinary remedies is passed, will members of council and local boards behave better? Only time will tell.

Written by Alison Renton