SUDBURY - For her conduct during a public meeting on April 8 at LiUNA Union Hall, Ward 12 Coun. Joscelyne Landry-Altmann may face a 20-day suspension in pay.
That is, if the city’s elected officials vote to support a recommendation by city integrity commissioner David Boghosian on Sept. 3.
In his conclusion, Boghosian wrote that the April 8 Flour Mill Community Action Network (CAN) meeting “is a prime example of a councillor supporting NIMBYism in its most offensive and vitriolic form.”
In order to advance this NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) agenda, Landry Altmann “engaged in
the breach of four fundamental tenets of democracy which are enshrined in the CAN Terms of
Engagement and Standard Operating Procedures.”
For this, Boghosian concluded that Landry-Altmann should face a 15-day pay suspension.
For “maligning the integrity and objectivity of a particular, identified journalist,” which Boghosian describes as a “serious violation of the rules of decorum,” Landry-Altmann should face an additional five-day pay suspension, bringing the total to 20 days.
Sudbury.com journalist Jenny Lamothe attempted to attend the public meeting on April 8, but was kicked out by CAN Chair Claude Charbonneau and Landry-Altmann.
“We don’t need the slant of a media person who wasn’t invited here,” Landry-Altmann was heard saying during the meeting, in an audio recording provided to Boghosian.
The April 8 meeting in question was set up by the Flour Mill Community Action Network to address concerns from residents and business owners regarding the Sudbury Centre for Transitional Care (SCTC), which at the time was providing services to people who are homeless from a temporary location on Notre Dame Avenue. The facility closed on April 30.
On March 4, city staff signed a contract to fund the organization, which helped extend their hours from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., to 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
In audio of the meeting provided to Sudbury.com and Boghosian, Landry-Altmann could be heard chairing the meeting and what has been interpreted by some, including Boghosian, as guiding its outcome.
The first of two complaints Boghosian received against Landry-Altmann’s conduct centres on her taking control of the meeting and deciding who was allowed to attend what was supposed to be a public meeting, according to Community Action Network rules.
The four people behind the second complaint were asked to be named, and include SCTC executive director Jehnna Morin, Go Give project Evie Ali, Community Builders executive director Carly Gasparini and Sudbury District Restorative Justice executive director Jackie Balleny.
There’s some overlap in their complaint, and they note Landry-Altmann personally invited a select number of local businesses and residents through a flyer they handed out.
“It was alleged that this CAN meeting was not open to the public, participants were selected by the chair and councillor to attend to the purposeful exclusion of other residents and businesses, and that this demonstrated a blatantly unethical abuse of integrity, accountability, transparency and improper use of the influence of the duty of a CAN chairperson and the office of a city councillor,” according to Boghosian’s report, which summarizes complaint No. 2.
Those who declined to fill out a form which requested their full name, phone number and email address were asked by Landry-Altmann to leave, according to their complaint.
Questions on the form included:
- Please describe what has happened to your residence, quality of life in the past year, 6 months or 2 months? Have you noticed an escalation of concerns/criminality?
- Are you thinking of moving out?
- What are the changes that you would like to see that would convince you otherwise?
The group of four complainants allege that Landry-Altmann used her authority and influence for the purpose of “intimidating, threatening, coercing” people who did not share her opinions, and that “her privileged and biased focus on issues of substance use and homelessness suggested that she is not considering the interests of all members of the public when making decisions.”
Those in attendance described SCTC clients as “druggy guy,” “derelicts,” “sickos,” “zombie time,” “a bunch of spiders,” "vagabonds,” “rats — if you feed them they can come,” among other things, including such language as “I’m going to carry a crowbar up my shirt.”
Through it all, neither Landry-Altmann nor Charbonneau offered any interruption or objection, according to the complainants' submission.
Landry-Altmann refused to allow the executive director or staff from SCTC to speak in rebuttal to the “forgoing malicious, false and reckless statements made by members of the public,” and “frequently exhibited an arrogant sense of power and entitlement in arbitrarily determining who could speak and when.”
Although Morin was eventually allowed to speak, it was as speaker No. 37 of 40.
In her response to these allegations, Landry-Altmann clarified that the meeting was advertised via 200 flyers that were handed out by volunteers and during a tour of area businesses she conducted with Charbonneau on April 5.
She admitted to kicking a journalist out of the meeting, as Sudbury.com’s reporting offered no “empathy for the concerns, fear or anger voiced by the residents at the meeting who feel they were ambushed, threatened, stabbed.” She also gave her word to those invited to attend that journalists would not be attending.
Landry-Altmann said that she said at the start of the meeting that there was to be “no berating, no arrogance or ignorance or you will be asked to leave,” and that she interrupted a speaker who was “ranting” at one point and used hand motions and head shakes to express disapproval.
She also said that she did not decide who spoke and in what order, “the sign-in sheet did.”
The Ward 12 city councillor maintains that she demonstrated integrity, and that complaint No. 2, signed by four community advocates, is “a vexatious attempt at impugning the reputation” of various people expressing opposition to homelessness services in the community. She included several letters of support in her response.
In his review of audio from the meeting, Boghosian concluded that, despite several cases of name-calling in relation to the area’s homeless population and disrespectful language targetting SCTC staff, Landry-Altmann issued only one warning concerning appropriate language, and that no attendee was kicked out for their comments.
“Landry-Altmann, in particular, repeatedly interrupted the pro-SCTC speakers, such as to ask for or confirm details about the capacity of the SCTC buildings, funding, how much they paid in rent, and even whether the speakers were Flour Mill residents, interruptions that did not happen when other business representatives and residents were speaking,” Boghosian reported.
“Our impression is that the meeting took on a combative atmosphere when the SCTC supporters were speaking, which was far from true when others at the meeting spoke.”
The meeting’s purpose, he wrote, was to support Landry-Altmann’s position to city council and city staff that the city should relocate SCTC from the Flour Mill neighbourhood, or at least discontinue funding it.
When Morin asked during the meeting what solutions might be proposed to address the problems people were expressing, Landry-Altmann said, “We are not doing that tonight.”
Those in attendance were “effectively hand-picked” by Landry-Altmann, Boghosian wrote, adding that the city councillor allowed abusive comments to take place, and treated the SCTC director and supporters with “disrespect and “contempt.”
CAN meetings are supposed to be “open and transparent to the public,” which Landry-Altmann allegedly breached by kicking out a journalist, not allowing people to record the meeting and only selectively advertising it in advance when it could have been delayed a week to permit wider circulation of invitations.
Boghosian found that Landry-Altmann also breached “decorum” for alleging a journalist’s bias, which he said does not demonstrate decorum or integrity.
In arguing for an “appropriate penalty” of rescinding 20 days’ pay, Boghosian wrote that docking Landry-Altmann’s remuneration would send a message.
“If elected officials lose respect for and ignore the basic tenets of democracy, who is left to uphold them?” he asked.
“Does the adage ‘the ends justify the means’ entitle those in power to circumvent rules of democracy to accomplish what they believe is for the greater good, which might otherwise not be accomplished? I certainly hope that no-one reading this report believes that this is ever acceptable.”
Landry-Altmann’s responses are limited within Boghosian’s report. In an addendum, the integrity commissioner notes that she improperly directed the city clerk to pull any initial comments she did provide as confidential.
“Since receiving my report which found her guilty of misconduct and recommended sanctions, Cllr. Landry-Altmann has raised one technicality after another in an attempt to undermine the credibility of my investigation and report, and, indeed, suppress my report altogether, on spurious grounds having nothing to do with the merits of the Complaints against her,” Boghosian wrote in his addendum. “This is far from consistent with the principle of accountability that the Code of Conduct is intended to uphold.”
Greater Sudbury city council will vote on the code of conduct complaint during their Sept. 3 meeting. The meeting’s public portion begins at 6 p.m., and can be viewed in-person at Tom Davies Square or livestreamed by clicking here.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.