By Kelly Allard

Community TV / The Trash Panda’s newest contributor Alex McCuaig obtained the unredacted Kingsgate Report and made it available to us. Alex highlighted the redacted parts.

I am so excited to welcome Alex to the team, I have admired his writing for years! This is from his X (formerly known as Twitter) profile.

“Freelance reporter formerly w/Brooks Bulletin, Medicine Hat News, CHAT News,Western Producer. Former CoS to #ableg speaker”

I attached the reasons for each redaction to the unredacted document, just open the comments part of the pdf file. At times the redactions appear to be nonsensical.

We are two days away from a judicial review of the sanctions placed on Mayor Clark by TMSOC (The Mutinous Seven of Council). Councillor Sharps did not take part in the deliberations but she did file the original Code of Conduct complaint.

Part One of the Analysis

Part Two of the Analysis left off at page 13.

Pages 14-17 of the Unredacted Report contain the transcript of the Shitshow Showdown.

Part 3 starts off with the Mayor's Response on page 18. Most of her response and interview is redacted. When I spoke with Mayor Clark on July 15 2024, she said that people named in a document can authorize the release of information. Clark said she was not asked about redactions.

Redacted parts in bold italic
FOIP Act quotes are in italic posted above the relevant redacted portions
Links at bottom of article

Page 18

VII. RESPONDENT’S INFORMATION

pg 18 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

pg 18 first redaction add

Privileged information
27(1) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose to an applicant
(a) information that is subject to any type of legal privilege, including solicitor‑client privilege or parliamentary privilege,
(b) information prepared by or for
          (i) the Minister of Justice,
           (ii) an agent or lawyer of the Minister of Justice, or
             (iii) an agent or lawyer of a public body, in relation to a matter involving the provision of legal services, or
(c) information in correspondence between
         (i) the Minister of Justice,
         (ii) an agent or lawyer of the Minister of Justice, or
          (iii) an agent or lawyer of a public body, and any other person in relation to a matter involving the provision of advice or other services by the Minister of Justice and Solicitor General or by the agent or lawyer.

Below are excerpts from the Respondent’s interview statement:

53 During the August 21st Council meeting, I know that everyone in the room was upset. It was very clear they were gesturing while I was talking, and it was a very tense situation for sure. But I had tried to provide this information repeatedly to the City Manager in our one-on-one meetings and I did do it at our July 4th Council meeting, which was the first time Council met to discuss this reorganization.

Each time I raised my concerns one-on-one with the City Manager it was dismissed. She said Section 6 shouldn’t be in your bylaw anyway so she didn't; have to follow it. Then, on July 4th, the City Manager told Council she had a legal opinion from the City Solicitor, Ben Bullock, that said that she was allowed to do the reorg, and she didn't need Council’s permission because it was operations. She said, in the City Solicitor’s opinion, because the City Manager has a right to appoint up to five Managing Directors under the Administrative Organization (AO) Bylaw she could do this. That did not seem accurate at all to me.

The layoffs had already occurred and no one else on Council seemed to really be interested in what I believe is doing our job. I think to a certain extent, there's this feeling on Council that we should just trust and compliment Administration rather than what I believe our job is, which is providing oversight and making sure we understand the risks of what we’re doing and making sure that the City Manager is following her job or doing her duties appropriately. It is the City Manager’s job, according to the AO Bylaw and Municipal Government Act (MGA), to inform us of what policies and bylaws we have to be following. And in this case, it just didn’t happen. In fact, I have tried to obtain a copy of the legal opinion that she said she got from Ben, but it has not been forthcoming.

In the community it was obvious that layoffs had occurred without Council first passing a resolution, which was Council's authority to do. I wanted to understand how that happened so it wouldn't happen again in the future. I was very clear with Council on both July 4th and during the August 16th workshop that the AO Bylaw had been violated. That shouldn't have been a surprise to them regardless of who was saying it. I had been very clear about that the entire time. I wish that my words would've been believed, but at the August 16th gathering it was, well, this is how we did it before. But it is not our job to do things wrong repeatedly. And it also hadn't been done that way before.

I felt I had exhausted my avenues of getting Council to do the right thing. I mean it is clear in the community. I didn't cause it to be the case that our bylaw was violated. I just said that it was, and I felt it was reasonable for me to try and understand how that (next page) happened so that it wouldn’t happen again.

Page 19

pg 19 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

… happened so that it wouldn’t happen again. And it was clear because the layoffs had already happened, and the reorg. had already happened. All staff knew that the reorg. had happened, they had been notified. It was clear that Council didn't approve that reorg. and it was clear in the documents that were provided to us that we were currently in violation of our AO bylaw. I didn't cause that to be the case. I just wanted to understand how that happened and how we can prevent it in the future.

I didn't get this far during the August 21st Council meeting, but if we are making these changes, we need to understand the risks. We must understand what this reorg. means for the City.

If something is Council’s decision to make, we're asking the right questions and making sure we're satisfied with the answers before just rubber stamping something. So, I really don’t understand why it’s inappropriate to ask questions of the City manager. That’s who we’re supposed to ask our questions to. It was an open discussion; it was well known. I feel that potential embarrassment is not a reason for going into closed session for something. It wasn;t a personnel issue. It was like everyone can see that we didn’t make this decision before it happened. How did that happen and how is it not going to happen again?

It feels like it almost seems like people think I created that situation. I didn't. I was just trying to make sure that it was understood how we got here, what could have been done better so that maybe in the future we need to have a different process

I communicated with the City Manager multiple times since she started. Our AO Bylaw says this, you can’t just make those changes. I was trying not to humiliate her, trying to make sure she understood what the rules are.I think that as the Mayor and a politician, the public needs to believe that the municipality has integrity and just sweeping things under the rug doesn't do that. If we would've just rubber stamped it, why would the community trust us to do our jobs?

My job is to ask questions. My job is to get to the bottom of things. Sometimes that’s not going to be like saying you’re doing the best job ever. I have questions about what the City Manager’s doing. My job is to question. I feel like I did question her courteously and I wasn’t shouting. I wasn’t accusing, I was asking questions. I don't really know why the complaint is saying I can’t even do that. It wasn’t courteous enough because you can’t ask questions to your Chief Administrative Officer (CAO)? I think that;s pretty chiling to me, it would be different if this was someone from Parks presenting before Council, but this is our City Manager, that’s her job, so give us the information.

Page 20

pg 20 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

I think that instead of the City Manager just doing the reorg., there should have been a briefing note that came to Council with multiple options, or an option with a clear explanation of why each of those options were beneficial, what the potential risks were, including job loss. There’s always potential risk around people being laid off. What's the cost of that? How much money are we going to spend paying people out? Then Council could make that decision and that decision would’ve been implemented.

But it had already decided and done before it came to Council. I don’t think that was fair to Council. It is usurping Council’s authority to make the decisions that we are entitled to make. Having layoffs occur before Council approved it created some pretty significant risk for the City. The AO Bylaw says that we must pass a resolution to make those organizational changes. The AO Bylaw says that we have to amend the Bylaw in order to change the reporting structure of the city Clerk, who’s a designated officer that the City Solicitor is in charge of. Those things should have happened in order so that Council could have been well informed to decide about what the organizational structure should look like and why it’s better for the City Clerk to report to the City Manager, rather than the City Solicitor. The basic information that you would want before disrupting the organization.

The City’s gone through multiple reorgs., lots of change. Employees are very fatigued. So, we need to think carefully about reorganizing everything. Mental health scores are very low in our organization. The view of leadership has very low scores in our organization. Even retention is something that we need to consider before doing a reorg. Obviously, it has to be based on the advice of the City Manager and Administration and Legal, but it was Council’s decision to make. And that should have happened before the layoffs, the reorg., the announcing to staff, announcing to the public.

The City Manager reports to Council. Council provides direction as per the MGA. Previously though, the mayor was full-time and they just had more discussions, weekly meetings and exchange of information with the City Manager. The City manager is obligated still to provide all information that she gives to one councillor, to every councillor.

It was in these one-one-one meetings, when the City Manager would mention that she’s moving so-and-so here and that our Chief of Staff was going to report to her permanently, I would say, well, you can’t just do that. That’s a Council decision. AO Bylaw, Section 6. The City Manager was just dismissive of it, but at that time it didn’t seem official like an official reorg. It was just maybe more of like, oh, she’s trying things out.

Page 21

Redactions 1, 3, 4, 5

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

pg 21, 2nd redaction

24(1) The head of a public body may refuse to disclose information to an applicant if the disclosure could reasonably be expected to reveal
(a) advice, proposals, recommendations, analyses or policy options developed by or for a public body or a member of the Executive Council,
(b) consultations or deliberations involving
(i) officers or employees of a public body,

I didn't want to create a situation over it, so I just kept raising it with the City Manager and I thought that when it came to the actual implementation that it would be done properly. There are other issues, I’ve had concerns that I’ve raised with the City Manager that I wish I had gotten a different response. So, when it came to the July 4th meeting, and I raised this and she said she got an opinion from our City Solicitor, I guess I can understand why Council believed her, but what she said the City Solicitor said didn't make any sense. I didn’t want to put Ben in an awkward situation. It has been clear to me that nobody really has that much of an interest in following the rules; that whatever the City Manager says is true.

The City Solicitor wasn't present for the July 4th closed session, which is unusual.

Its unusual because meeting with just the City Manager, in my view, should be reserved for things where it wouldn’t be appropriate for Executive to hear (we call them Managing Directors who report to the City Manager and then there is the City Solicitor and the City Clerk to record minutes).In this case, the reorg., had already, everyone knew the layoffs had already occurred, staff already knew that it happened, so I don’t understand the reason why Executive was excluded from the meeting.

The City Manager called it a legal opinion from the City Solicitor, but I don’t know if it was a written opinion. I’ve asked for it and haven't gotten it. The City Manager replied and she offered to provide it to me, but then in following up, she said that she wouldn’t give it to me. She replied to all of Council saying that what I was doing requesting or to get the opinion was inappropriate. I just replied that she offered to provide it to me, so that I didn't think it was inappropriate for me to follow up on that.

The City Solicitor reports to the City Manager. Whether a member of Council can go directly to the City Solicitor to ask for advice changes, whether you’ll get called out on it or not depends on which councillor you are. The City Manager doesn't really like me talking to any of the Managing Directors without her there. I also felt like I would be putting Ben in an awkward position to say, this is the opinion that Anne (sic) said that you gave her. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Can you please explain it to me? And maybe he didn't give that opinion to the City Manager. Then he’s in conflict with the person who is his boss.

There was never any discussion about Council seeking an external legal opinion regarding the AO Bylaw and the reorg.

No one else on Council really had concerns. I think if the City Manager would’ve said under the AO bylaw, this is Council's decision, it would’ve been a different discussion. But that wasn’t what was discussed. And I think in fairness to me, it’s not my job to tell. The City Manager should be explaining this is what your bylaw says, and this is how the (next page) process is supposed to work.

Page 22

pg 22 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

…process is supposed to work. I did that and the City Manager dismissed it and said, no, that’s not true. It’s my decision to make. The decisions had already been made by the City Manager, so it was a short conversation.

But it made me feel very concerned. And then especially after it got announced publicly, before we even had a chance to make the decision, even if it was going to be like, oh, we’re rubber stamping this, it is your decisions, but we’ve already made it, you’re just going to say yes, we’ll do what you say you think should do to announce it to the public. It’s obvious that we didn’t make the decisions that we’ve done, we absolutely have not followed the process that’s in our bylaw is when I just thought, I don’t think that we followed it regardless of what Ben said, I don't think that’s accurate. So, I want to make sure that I am not in the wrong.

We're supposed to follow our bylaws. It's a Council decision until Council approved it. I think it’s disrespectful of Council. What is the point of Council being there if this job is to hire the City Manager and then ignore all the rules. The City Manager wasn’t following the rules. It was flagging, disrespecting the rules. It caused risk. Every decision that she made, every layoff she didn’t have the authority to do that. And so that creates risk. Also, if it is a Council decision, we need to be more informed about why it is that we’re making this decision to change the organization around again. Good decision making requires information and an assessment of the risks and the pros and the cons and why we are doing this. It wasn’t her decision to make and announce.

In the City Solicitor’s briefing note, which came forward to Council on August 21st you can tell at the bottom when it was prepared. I believe it was prepared on June 27th (NB - the agenda packet says July 27th) but the City Manager didn’t approve it until August 8th. There's a concern too that even the information we’re getting might not be accurate. I need to know that in the future we’re going to do things properly and I get the right information so that we can do our job.

I contacted Guy Giorno to obtain a legal opinion. Yes, I paid for it personally. But then on August 22nd, Councillor Sharps stormed into my office making threats and stated that if I didn’t give Council a copy of the opinion, she was just going to sit in my office until I gave them a copy of it.

By the August 21st Council meeting everything was already public. The reorg. had already been announced. It was public. People had commented that they thought this was a Council decision, it was already in the public. August 21st was the next Council meeting after the July 4th meeting. (NB- July 17 was the next meeting but the Mayor was away for that one.) I did bring it up with just Council at the August 16th workshop, but again that was in context of the City Manager’s performance evaluation.

Page 23

pg 23 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

During the August 16th workshop, I did not disclose to Council that I was getting legal advice from Mr. Giorno. At that point I was just checking to make sure that I was not out to lunch because it seemed like no one else thought that anything was amiss. Maybe I was wrong, so I reached out to him.

The August 21st Council meeting was the first time I disclosed to Council that I had obtained an external legal opinion. I don't know that I intended necessarily to mention it during the meeting. I had it with me. I thought depending on how the conversation goes, I had it with me, but it obviously wasn't my go-to, I just wanted to ask the questions and get the answers, and I hoped that I would get answers that would shed light on how the heck this happened.

But it seemed to me during my questioning of the City Manager, it was like, well, there have only been four Managing Directors this whole time and well, this is how it’s always been done before. It seemed to me that it was being kind of dismissed as no big deal. Well, I missed a process. No big deal on me. I missed a process. But, I don’t think that not following the bylaws of the City is merely missing a process. It creates consequences and risks, and if those risks aren’t understood, maybe it’s not understood why we should follow any of our bylaws or policies.

I don't know what all the risks were. The immediate risk I could think of is if someone fires you and they didn’t have the authority to fire you, that’s a pretty easy lawsuit. Although it’s remedied now, I would depend on Administration to tell me what the risks are. That's their job.

What I said in the public meeting on August 21st are just facts. That is the case. That's truth. Whether I say it out loud or not, the fact is, in the section that I read from the opinion, if Council approves it now, then it resolves those risks or at least the risks that I knew about or I had considered.

The City Manager didn’t disclose to us that it was our authority to approve the reorg. She repeatedly told us that it was her authority to do it, but at the end of the day, as the opinion says, if Council ratifies those decisions, then they are now, I guess blessed at that point. Council has now done its piece. But that doesn’t mean that we still shouldn’t try and understand because for that whole period of time that she was making those decisions, until Council ratified it, she didn’t have the authority to do any of it. And so how do we not get in that situation again?

We need to understand that there could be consequences to not following a bylaw. How do we not get into that situation again and give the public the belief in us that this is (next page) our decision, and we are not taking it lightly. We’re trying to do our best to understand what’s best in the context of the situation.

Page 24

pg 24 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

…our decision, and we are not taking it lightly. We’re trying to do our best to understand what’s best in the context of the situation.

I questioned the City Manager about it in a private setting as well, but there didn’t seem to be an understanding that anything wrong had happened.

I guess I could have gone to Ben instead of someone external. I guess I could have asked to see his legal opinion and then I guess I could not have said I got a legal opinion. I mean there’s lots of things I could have done, but I don't know that the result would've been any different. It’s just maybe that the public would right now believe that we didn’t do our job. That announcement hadnt come out. I don;t know, probably lots of things I could do different all the time. I was trying to do my best and this was the Council meeting that we were discussing it.

I believe that the City Manager should have been able to answer the questions that I was asking on August 21st. The fact that she couldn’t answer the question means that I was somehow being malicious? The questions were basic, considering we’re re-organizing the whole organization. What are the consequences of having done this without authority? To me, she should have had a response to that that said what the consequences were, and then how it’s going to be remedied. I don't think my questions were super tricky and I think they were obvious given all the things I have said in the past and that I had challenged it even in a previous Council meeting and at admin committee.

To me, any of the humiliation would be that she wasn't able to answer any of my questions. She should have prepared the answers to those questions. She makes a lot of money to do that. Should I have assumed that she was incompetent and won’t be able to answer any of these questions, so I better not ask them in public, even though this has already been announced and it is already in public? I'm the only one who can’t say anything in public? It just seems so weird to me.

I asked Guy Giorno if it would be acceptable for me to disclose the legal opinion, and he said, because it was my legal opinion that I could disclose it and that he didn't see an issue with it. Even in the context of the code of conduct, he didn't see any reason why that would be unacceptable.

There are conversations that should definitely be had in private, but in this case it had already been announced; the cat was out of the bag that we didn’t follow our processes. So for me to ask about those processes in public seemed obvious, this already happened. We clearly didn’t follow our processes. It shouldn’t be a secret to ask how did this happened To just explain how that happened and how we can avoid it in the future. It was already public. It’s already clear that we hadn’t followed our processes, our bylaw.

Page 25

pg 25 entire page

17 (4) d, 17 (4) f
(4) A disclosure of personal information is presumed to be an unreasonable invasion of a third party’s personal privacy if
(d) the personal information relates to employment or educational history,
(f) the personal information consists of personal recommendations or evaluations, character references or personnel evaluations,

Three members of Executive were at the City during the last reorg., and they knew how it was supposed to happen. How is it that at no point anyone said, oh, we need Council approval on this, or is that what happened, or is it just we misunderstood what Section 6 of the AO Bylaw meant or some reason why we just completely disregarded our bylaw for six months?

The public knew what had happened. To just be silent on it makes Council look like an idiot, Council looks like they’re asleep at the wheel. They aren’t really paying attention, don’t know what their role is. Oh well, it’s already been announced and now they’re after the fact just rubber stamping it because Administration tells them to. Again, it's very important that it was already announces in this whole scenario because that drew the people who I have an obligation to into the conversation, and so my role, I have to be accountable to them, and so I need to help it be understood that this isn’t just going to be regular thing where we understand that this was not done properly and that there were potential consequences. Here’s how it’s not going to happen again. .

I’m answerable to the public.

We're not doing our jobs and we have obligations to be oversight in government
governance and actually do our job. It's a very serious criticism about the last Council. And if the reorg hadn’t been announced then things might’ve been different, but it had been. To just ignore that, it was obvious that we didn’t follow our proper processes. We had just done a reorg a couple of years ago. It was obvious how it was done except I guess to Council.

It wasn’t about humiliating anyone because maybe to a certain extent it’s that I did not want to be having to go and explain to people why didn’t you know that was wrong? Why did you do that wrong thing? Why did you not follow your bylaw? I know we didn’t. So, I’m going to say I know that and I’m going to try and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

I had been very clear the whole time that it was a violation of our bylaw. I don’t really understand what’s wrong with me getting a legal opinion and double checking that I’m correct about that. I had told them, any of them could have read the bylaw, any of them could also have gone to Ben and asked Ben. Again, I had asked Guy about it and it didn’t seem like it was a huge deal to get a second opinion on something.

If there’s truly a personnel matter, like the City Manager’s performance evaluation, absolutely, that should not be discussed in public. But if it’s like this happened, it’s in public, and I have questions about how or why it happened, that’s something that we deal with in public. It was just questions that I do feel like should have been straightforward to respond to.