StratfordToday received the following letter to the editor from Robert Roth in response to former mayor Karen Haslam’s endorsement of city’s Workplace Respect Policy:
Dear Ms. Haslam,
Your letter to the editor of July 7 supporting the city’s Workplace Respect Policy reflects a complete detachment from reality. If you have been studiously “reading stories” about this issue, as you say, you must be aware of my high public profile over the past few weeks as someone who is staunchly opposed to this profoundly anti-democratic policy as applied against citizens in public forums. Consequently, you have snagged me in your widely cast net of naysaying. Let us now trawl for the truth.
YOU SAY:
“The removal (of the workplace policy) would leave city council and the mayor with little or no ability to combat the vicious attacks and ramblings of certain individuals and groups now harassing council members.”
MY RESPONSE:
Shame on you. As a former mayor, you know better – as I do as a former municipal councillor and deputy reeve.
First of all, the city’s Procedural Bylaw gives the chair of a meeting all the authority he or she needs to control a meeting that gets out of hand. The workplace policy is not required in that regard. It is meant only for employees within the internal confines of a traditional “workplace,” not a democratically constituted public forum where wide-open free speech is protected under The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Secondly, the implicit assertion that you or any politician should have the power to decide – and veto – which opinions are substantive and which are merely “ramblings” is dangerously pretentious. The Charter, and court decisions relating to it, give people every right to “ramble,” as you so disdainfully put it.
Thirdly, your suggestion that the fight for free speech centres on “certain individuals and groups now harassing council members,” is a mischaracterization of the fundamental principle at stake here.
You and the free speech denialists on council are engaging in the well-known, mischievous tactic of setting up a “straw man.” That is when someone with a feeble argument sets up an intentionally misrepresented position because it is easier to knock down that misrepresentation than to deal with the “real man,” the real issue.
The legitimate discussion here is about principle, not personality. Until a few weeks ago, I never publicly criticized the new council for any of its actions nor appeared in delegation to viciously attack them with my ramblings. I am critical now for one specific reason – their assault on free speech. As the spokesperson for Save Our Speech Stratford, I can assure you that there are many citizens who stand with me right now who are likewise not perpetual, harassing, hound dogs.
YOU SAY:
“Yes, not all decisions will be unanimous within the city, but to abandon the duty to make these decisions without looking over our shoulders to see if we look good, is a derelict (sic) of duty.”
MY RESPONSE:
Elected officials are public servants, not public rulers. We call our system “representative” democracy. Despite what you say, it is, in fact, a moral obligation for representatives to continually look over their shoulders – not to “look good,” but to make sure their constituents are still behind them and not left totally abandoned in an accountability wasteland of closed meetings and more than 100 violations of the Municipal Act over the past five years. Do you really wonder why some people are a touch testy – or “vicious,” as you prefer to put it?
You argue that councillors “engage in educated discussions in order to make informed decisions.” If that were true, how do they end up breaking one of the most well-known, longstanding practices of open government and sound financial management, namely, awarding contracts by open competition?
The independent investigator looking into Stratford councillors’ affinity for hiding from the public via closed meetings wrote that council has engaged in some “flagrant or egregious breaches” of the Municipal Act.
“One of those,” says the report of Tony Fleming of Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bonham LLP, “occurred May 24, 2022, when council voted to give the city’s chief administrative officer the authority to issue a request for proposal and then, without tender, enter into a contract for as much as $300,000.”
I have been on two different municipal councils and have never seen anything like this kind of irresponsible behaviour. In fact, a further probe of that action might conclude that “irresponsible” is a gross understatement. Informed decisions? Hardly. Not by a country mile.
Ms. Haslam, while you have, as you say, been “reading stories,” you would be better advised to read reports, instead of denigrating the vicious ramblers who have done so.
YOU SAY:
“Decision making should not revert to earlier times when all it took was a few loud, uninformed, individuals looking for the spotlight, to change the rules that govern proper behaviour both within our city and within our council.”
MY RESPONSE:
What on earth are you talking about? In what “earlier times” did this massive seizure of civic authority by “a few, loud, uninformed individuals” take place? When you were mayor?
This is just one more scarecrow in a fallow field of fabrication.
In fact, one of the overriding “rules that govern proper behaviour” is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that permits people to question and criticize governments – even with “vicious” language. And those rights are in jeopardy in the City of Stratford.
How do you so cavalierly cast aside the startling fact that the bans implemented under this workplace policy against citizens at public meetings are so patently illegal that the Stratford Police Service, to their immense credit, have refused to enforce them? But instead of recognizing this profound repudiation of their policy, councillors doubled down by calling in their own private security guards. Even though these rent-a-cops have been totally ineffective, their presence will still be handsomely rewarded with our tax dollars. How much more money is the city prepared to spend defending the indefensible?
I have never been more proud of the chief of police and the men and women of our Stratford Police Service for not bowing to the bans. They have made it very clear that they are here to serve and protect the people and the Canadian Constitution, not to blithely assume the historical role of the Praetorian Guard, subservient sentries of the Caesars.
MY CONCLUSION:
As you suggest, Ms. Haslam, there are always diminutive demagogues around who simply want to bask in the egocentric glare of “the spotlight.” I see them. Every community has them. But this battle is not about them. It is about something much bigger than them. Do not make wild accusations and generalizations about the fine people who are extremely sincere about defending fundamental rights, for in so doing you provide succor to authoritarianism.
I cannot speak for other groups, but I can assure you that the members of SOS Stratford do not seek the spotlight. We have better things to do with our lives. But the price of democracy is eternal vigilance and it is a responsibility we willingly, dutifully and energetically embrace.
Yours truly,
Robert Roth
