Ontario’s minister of municipal affairs and housing says he will pass new code of conduct rules for councillors into law before October’s elections take place, emphasizing the need to bring order to how integrity commissioners across the province function.
Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Rob Flack told Global News he still intends to pass new municipal rules, including the ability to remove sitting councillors from office in the most extreme cases.
The legislation was first tabled by the former minister, Paul Calandra, in December 2024, before being discontinued by an early election call. It was reintroduced by Flack in May 2025, passed through committee hearings, but has sat untouched since last October.
“It’s in process here, we’re confident it’s going to be able to be dealt with by the house before the end of the session,” Flack said. “We’re waiting on the legislative of this house, of this government.”
He said he was “confident” it would not be abandoned — a fate which has befallen municipal reform under the current government in both 2021 and 2024.
Flack’s commitment to pass his municipal reform, which advocates have said does not go far enough, comes shortly after a former Brampton councillor alleged the integrity commissioner was deliberately not removing a sexual misconduct investigation into him — even after the complainant appeared to recant.
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In that case, Gurpreet Dhillon said an unnamed woman who accused him of sexual misconduct six years ago had written to the city to withdraw her complaint, but neither council nor the integrity commissioner had removed the report of the alleged incident.
Flack declined to get into the specifics of the Brampton situation at Queen’s Park. He did, however, say he wanted to see more unified standards and selection for integrity commissioners.
“What I think we need to do is make sure we have a better vetting process with respect to choosing integrity commissioners locally,” he said.
“I’d like to see the provincial integrity commissioner, Commissioner (Catherine) Motherwell, be involved in the process. We’re working on opportunities to bring that to fruition.”
NDP MPP Jeff Burch said, while he had concerns about elements of the legislation, it was a step in the right direction he wants to pass.
“There are things in Bill 9 that are good in terms of integrity commissioners, professionalizing that role and some standardization across the province,” he said. “The sticking point is the removal of elected officials. That, we feel, is why the bill has been held up.”
It’s been a long journey for the Ford government to get to this point on municipal conduct reform.
Back in 2021, the province came within days of introducing a law which would have allowed judges to disqualify councillors and made elected officials pay for the cost of investigations into their conduct.
But the legislation disappeared without ever being tabled. A new version was finally introduced at the end of 2024 and was later ditched when Premier Doug Ford called a snap election.
Burch said he suspected it was the premier’s office that may have delayed the legislation.
“This goes back, we’re looking at four or five years, we’ve been trying to get some movement on this,” he said.
“It keeps getting blocked. I think if it was up to the minister, or even the majority of the government members, I think we would have had movement a long time ago. But it’s currently being blocked at the top.”
Bill 9 was reintroduced in May and then sent to committee, where advocates pushed for changes around how a councillor can be removed.
As it stands, the legislation will allow for the creation of a standard code of conduct for all municipalities, with penalties of removing and disqualifying a member from office if they are in serious violation of the code.
Removal and disqualification could only happen if the municipal integrity commissioner recommends it, if Ontario’s integrity commissioner agrees and if councillors, except for the member in question, unanimously agree to it in a vote.
Allowing council to vote again to endorse the removal has raised concerns among some advocates and smaller municipalities.
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Ford government commits to passing code of conduct reform before municipal elections
